Gorrie, B., & Parkinson, E. (1995). Teaching phonological awareness and reading. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 11, 127-143. Description of subjects   Nine male students were chosen for this study. All of the subjects were Year 8 pupils. Their average age was 12;6. The students all had literacy difficulties. "They had attended the school for between 6 months and 4 years and, despite intensive teaching and therapy, had made minimal progress in reading and spelling" (p. 133). Description of methodology   The Phonological Awareness Procedure consisted of three areas: syllable segmentation, intrasyllable segmentation (onset and rime), and phoneme segmentation.   "The first two are preliteracy skills and the third develops after the onset of reading" (p. 129). During the syllable segmentation training, students were required to clap out the syllables in words spoken to them, and the students were also asked to determine the number of syllables without using an aid. The intrasyllable segmentation instruction consisted of detecting, deleting, and producing the onset and rimes of words. Finally, the phoneme segmentation tasks involved blending phonemes, counting phonemes, and phoneme deletion.   A control group was not used in this study. Students were assessed before and after the training. The assessment measures used were the Vernon spelling test, the Neale Analysis, and the Phonological Awareness Procedure. The students were divided into groups of three and were taught by one teacher for a third of the year. The groups changed during the year, so the children were instructed by different teachers involved in the study. Students were grouped according to their weaknesses and strengths. Summary of findings   The results of the phonological awareness training indicated that phonological awareness skills can be trained. The investigators evaluated the students reading skills. They were looking at the students' abilities to use phonological strategies, which resulted in fewer refusals. Five out of the nine students increased the number of mispronunciations and decreased the number of refusals. "This change in pattern would appear to indicate that the pupils were moving from the alphabetic to the logographic stage" (p. 139). Eight of the nine boys made improvements on their spelling measures.