For developing efficient reading skills, children need to understand different levels of phonological awareness including phoneme matching, isolation, completion, blending and deletion. In one study Stahl and Murray (1994), reviewed a number of sources for providing evidence that children ability to syllable segmentation, onset and rime awareness is necessary for early word reading. Correlation studies of early reading development and phonological awareness suggested that different phonological awareness skills (blending, segmenting words, manipulating consonants) are highly correlated with later development of skilled reading (e.g., Liberman, Shankweiler, Fischer, & Carter, 1974; Mann, 1984, cited in Stahl & Murray, 1994).

Based on multidisciplinary and cross-cultural studies Anthony and Francis (2005) summarized the development of PA skills of typically developed children. According to their study, in alphabetic languages, PA is pivotal for reading development. They have argued that, individuals those have difficulties to manipulate the sound structure of spoken language for example, blending, rhyming, segmentations and syllabification of sounds in words will face difficulty with reading. One of the significant outcomes of reading research is that PA training has a great impact on reading intervention. A meta-analysis of 52 controlled studies in PA training showed that, for developing word recognition, spelling and reading comprehension instruction of PA skills has statistically significant (Ehri et al., 2001). This investigation of reading and literacy outcomes for children with developmental language disorders has established that PA is a crucial factor in early reading competency.

Decoding and skilled reading

Decoding is recognizing single words accurately, quickly, and silently (Gough & Tunmer, 1986). They argued that, decoding is not necessarily related to word reading. For example: someo