During the symposium "Working Together to Attain Excellence in the Health Care Professions", a number of excellent projects were presented. Among these Karla Ann Brincat from the Institute of Health Care. Communication Therapy Unit presented a project on "Phonological Awareness Skills in Children with a Reading Disability".

Various studies support the existence of a strong association between deficits of phonological awareness and reading difficulties. However, the nature of this relationship remains open to debate. The aim of the study was to examine the nature of the association between phonological awareness skills and reading in Maltese-speaking children with reading disability.

The phonological awareness abilities of five Maltese-speaking nine-year-olds, with a reading age between two years 10 months and thre years below their chronological age (CA match), were compared and contrasted with five nine-year-old 'normal readers' and five children who had the same reading age as the 'poor readers' (RA match).

This study showed that the poor readers and the CA match group differed significantly in the mean scores of phonological awareness. The poor readers achieved a total mean score of 56.9% whereas the CA match group achieved a total mean score of 90.8%. On the other hand the poor readers achieved a 1% higher mean score than the RA match group (56.9% versus 55.8% respectively).

These results indicate a relationship between poor phonological awareness skills and reading ability. Further studies on a larger sample of the Maltese-speaking population are required to obtain more conclusive results.