Consciousness of the phoneme has often been studied in relation to reading skill. However, it is possible that reported differences in segmentation performance between good and poor readers are due to subjects' differences in spelling skill. Using two novel tasks which required the production of spoonerisms and the judgement of phoneme length respectively, segmentation in a group of subjects who read well while spelling poorly was compared with that of good readers/spellers and poor readers/spellers. Irrespective of reading skill, the poor spellers showed difficulty in phonemic segmentation. Spelling error patterns of the two groups of poor spellers were similar and this was linked to their segmentation performance. Examination of spelling errors in two tasks suggested that error pattern can be manipulated by word characteristics and testing situations. Certain errors in Expt 1 indicated that the relationship between spelling and segmentation performance was due to the use of an orthographic code in segmenting phonemes. Expt 2 varied orthography in order to investigate this possibility. A clear effect of word type was found in all groups indicating that, although poor spellers have problems in phonemic segmentation, they employ strategies similar to those of good spellers, using spelling knowledge as a guide in their attempts to segment phonemically. Since reading level alone does not ensure phonemic awareness and since orthography affects segmentation performance, further studies of phonemic segmentation should take spelling ability into account.
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