ABSTRACTThe paper summarises the pilot study and the first two phases of a longitudinal study which set out to prevent the emergence of written language difficulties, by addressing the ability of pre‐schoolers to make phonological judgements. It describes the assessment procedure which was used with 240 nursery‐class children, aged 4 years 5 months, and the activities which were designed to give these children experience in attending to the sound structure of languagebeforethe assessment was carried out. Following assessment 41 children were identified as having poor rhyme awareness and were targeted for one‐to‐one training. In the second phase of the study, also discussed here, 21 were given training in the skills supporting phonological awareness and the remainder were assigned to a control group for equivalent training in categorisation skills. It is intended that the literacy skills of both groups will be assessed when the children are 7 ye