Previous research has shown a clear relationship between phonological awareness and earlyreading ability. This article concerns some aspects of spoken language skill that may contribute tothe development of phonological awareness, as manifested in rhyme awareness and phonemeawareness. It addresses the hypothesis that phonological awareness abilities are associated withmeasures that purportedly tap into the strength of phonological representations. We examinedrhyme awareness, phoneme awareness, articulatory skill, speech perception, vocabulary, and letterand word knowledge in 40 children, aged 4 to 6, who were just beginning to be exposed to formalreading experiences in private preschools. The children also received cognitive tests and tests ofreading ability. The results did not validate strength of phonological representation as a unitaryconstruct underlying phonological awareness more generally, but instead revealed a selectivepattern of associations between spoken language tasks and aspects of phonological awareness.Speech perception was closely associated with rhyme awareness measures when age, vocabulary,and letter knowledge were controlled. Children with a less developed sense of rhyme had a lessmature pattern of articulation, independent of age, vocabulary, and letter knowledge. Phonemeawareness was associated with phonological perception and production. Children with lowphoneme awareness skills showed a different pattern of speech perception and articulation errorsthan children with strong abilities. However, these differences appeared to be largely a function ofage, letter knowledge, and especially vocabulary knowledge.