ABSTRACT
Some 20 years ago Isabelle Liberman initiated a branch of reading research that later turned out to become a scientific success story. A wealth of clear evidence from many countries has now been accumulated to demonstrate the critical importance of phonological awareness in the process of learning to read. Peter Bryant and Usha Goswami at Oxford (1987) were bold enough to characterize the state of the field in these rather strong words: “The discovery of a strong relationship between children's phonological awareness and their progress in learning to read is one of the great successes of modern psychology” (p. 439).
