An Important Early Step in Learning To Read

With little or no direct instruction, almost all young children develop the ability to understand spoken language. While most kindergarten children have mastered the complexities of speech, they do not know that spoken language is made up of discrete words, which are made up of syllables, which themselves are made up of the smallest units of sound, called "phonemes."




This awareness that spoken language is made up of discrete sounds appears to be a crucial factor in children learning to read. This Digest discusses the concept of the awareness that spoken language is made up of discrete sounds, why this concept is so important to early childhood educators, its relation to the debate on the best type of reading instruction, and finally, teaching methods that may help children in developing such an awareness.

Teaching Phonological Awareness

Early experience with nursery rhymes can help children begin to notice and think about the phonological structure of words. Several research studies have shown that the children who know more about nursery rhymes at age 3, are those that tend to be more highly developed in general phonological awareness at age 4 and in phonemic awareness at age 6.

You don’t have to stop with nursery rhymes though. Read rhyming books, sing rhyming songs and chants. Have children identify the rhyming words using picture cards and do rhyming sorts with picture cards.

Also play games that teach children to isolate individual sounds in a word. For example, this game can be played with the “BINGO” song. There was a letter had a sound and you can say it with me b,b,b,like ball…… Play the game – “What’s the First Sound in this Word” This can be done orally or with picture cards.

When children learn how to “listen to language”, they are also learning to connect oral language with the written word. Once they hear, know, and are able to manipulate sounds, they begin to realize how words work.

from : nowlearnmore.com

What Is Phonological Awareness?

Phonological awareness is the ability to break words into separate sounds. A child who has phonological awareness can tell you when two words rhyme and when two words start with the same sound. Further development of phonological awareness will allow the child to tell you when two words end with the same sound. For example, they can tell you that “bat” and “sit” end with the same sound but “bat” and “sad” do not end with the same sound.

Phonological awareness is a broad term that includes phonemic awareness. In addition, to phonemes, phonological awareness activities can involve work with rhymes, words, syllables, and onsets and rimes.

The key to the process of learning to read is the ability to identify the different sounds that make words and to associate these sounds with written words. In order to learn to read, a child must be aware of phonemes. A phoneme is the smallest functional unit of sound. For example, the word cat contains three distinctly different sounds. There are 44 phonemes in the English language, including letter combinations such as /th/.

In addition to identifying these sounds, children must also be able to manipulate them. Word play involving segmenting words into their constituent sounds, rhyming words, and blending sounds to make words is also essential to the reading process. The ability to identify and manipulate the sounds of language is called phonological awareness. There are five levels of phonological awareness ranging from an awareness of rhyme to being able to switch or substitute the components in a word.

Children generally begin to show initial phonological awareness when they demonstrate an appreciation of rhyme and alliteration. For many children, this begins very early in the course of their language development and is likely facilitated by being read to from books that are based on rhyme or alliteration.

Why Is Phonological Awareness So Important?

An awareness of phonemes is necessary to grasp the alphabetic principle that underlies our system of written language. Specifically, developing readers must be sensitive to the internal structure of words.

If children understand that words can be divided into individual phonemes and that phonemes can be blended into words, they are able to use letter-sound knowledge to read and build words. As a consequence of this relationship, phonological awareness is a strong predictor of later reading success. Researchers have shown that this strong relationship between phonological awareness and reading success persists throughout school.

Early reading is dependent on having some understanding of the internal structure of words, and explicit instruction in phonological awareness skills is very effective in promoting early reading. However, instruction in early reading — especially instruction in letter-sound correspondence — strengthens phonological awareness.

Success in early reading depends on achieving a certain level of phonological awareness. Instruction in phonological awareness is beneficial for most children and critical for others.

from : nowlearnmore.com

Teach your child phonological awareness

Phonological awareness skills are key to reading success.Phonological awareness is an important foundation for learning to read. Scientific research has documented that phonological awareness is a better predictor of reading success than IQ, vocabulary, or socioeconomic level of the family.
Research has shown that children who begin reading instruction with sufficiently developed phonological awareness understand the instruction better, master the alphabetic principle faster and learn to read quite easily.

Children who will later be identified as being dyslexic often do not have phonological awareness skills. Teaching these skills has been shown in research to prevent the occurrence of dyslexia in many children. Accordingly, many school systems now follow a program of early screening for phonological awareness skills.

No area of reading research has gained as much attention over the past two decades as phonological awareness. Perhaps the most exciting finding emanating from research on phonological awareness is that critical levels of phonological awareness can be developed through carefully planned instruction, and this development has a significant influence on children’s reading and spelling achievement.

By: Deanna Mascle

The Phonological Approach to Developing Correct Sound Production

When a child learns to talk, he is actually acquiring skills in four different areas: sound (phonology), vocabulary (semantics), syntax (grammar and morphology) and usage (pragmatics). When any one of these areas is defective, a communication problem results. While all of these areas are important, only one, phonology, will be addressed in this article.
The improvement of inadequate phonology has been one of the major tasks of speech-language pathologists. Until the 1970s, the typical remediation approach involved teaching sounds, one-by-one to a pre-selected criterion (for example, 90% accuracy). If a child had multiple sound errors, the process usually took years (Kahn, 1985).

In the 1970s, speech-language pathologists began revising their approach to sound remediation, especially in the cases of the severely unintelligible child. They started looking beyond the individual sounds and set about identifying patterns of errors called phonological processes.

All children use phonological processes (rule governed simplifications of the adult form) as they learn to talk. These processes normally drop out as the child progresses toward adult speech. When they do not, speech intelligibility remains at a level expected of a younger child. The more phonological processes a child uses, the more unintelligible he is to the rest of the world.

According to Hodson and Paden (1991), if a child uses a basic process more than 40% if the time, the process is clinically significant and requires remediation. The phonological approach provides a systematic way of teaching the sounds of the language quickly and efficiently.

While both phonological remediation and traditional articulation therapy focus on speech productions that are acceptable and intelligible, they differ in many other areas, such as, goals, acceptance of misproductions, and reinforcement (Khan 1985). Traditional therapy techniques emphasize mastering sounds (90% accuracy) in increasingly more complicated contexts (syllables, words, sentences, etc.); whereas the phonological approach focuses on suppressing phonological processes. As a phonological process is inhibited, the sound system becomes more similar to the adult system and the child's speech becomes more intelligible. Any production in which the targeted process has been eliminated is judged to be "correct", even though a sound may be produced incorrectly.

Keeping in mind that the ultimate goal is correct sound production, misproductions in the early phase of treatment are accepted if the targeted phonological process has been eliminated. For example, when a child says "ho" for "home", he has used the phonological process known as deletion of final consonants. Utilizing the phonological approach, the clinician will devise a program that focuses on teaching the child to produce "a sound" at the end of target words. While a specific sound is preferred, any consonant sound produced at the end of the word is accepted. The verbal feedback (reinforcement) a clinician gives after these misproductions is critical. While the misproductions are accepted as correct, only a portion of the child's response is reinforced. For example, if deletion of final consonants is the phonological process being suppressed in the target word "home", a clinician will accept "hone" as correct and say, "Good, you put a sound at the end of the word". A child's production is termed incorrect only if he fails to close the syllable with a final consonant.

While there are several different procedures for remediating phonological disorders, only the two most common ones will be presented. Hodson and Paden have introduced the concept of cycles, in which several phonological processes are modified in a specific sequence. Several sounds are used to facilitate the suppression of each phonological process. A cycle may be introduced several times. When the sounds utilized to eliminate the phonological process emerge (50% accurate), the process is said to be suppressed sufficiently and that cycle is dropped and another one is introduced. Hodson and Paden also incorporate the concept of auditory bombardment at the beginning and end of each session. The purpose of auditory bombardment is to enhance the child's ability to auditorially discriminate the target sounds. During the auditory bombardment phase the clinician reads a word list modeling the sounds that are being used in the cycle to suppress the phonological processes. This list is read at a comfortable loudness level and the child is only required to listen to the words.

The second treatment method is know as minimal pairs. Minimal pairs consist of two words that differ in pronunciation by only one sound. This method of instruction takes advantage of the semantic confusion which exists because of a phonological process the child is using. For example, if the phonological process to be suppressed is deletion of final consonants, one of the minimal pairs presented in treatment could be "bee" and "beep". Utilizing the minimal pairs method, situations are devised in the treatment session to capitalize on the semantic confusion that exists when a child pronounces both words as "bee". The child must revise his productions until his clinician is no longer confused between the two words.

Whereas the traditional articulation approach is effective with children who demonstrate difficulty with a limited number of sounds, the phonological approach is better suited for use with children who are severely unintelligible due to difficulty with numerous sounds. Using the phonological treatment approach with severely unintelligible children shortens the length of time necessary to improve their sound systems. And in today's time-pressured world that is important.

from : overtonspeech.net

The Relation between Phonological Awareness Skills and Reading Skills

The section above, on phonological awareness, stated that phonological awareness skills are believed to be indispensable to reading and spelling skills. This section will explain this relationship.

English is written with an alphabet. The defining characteristic of an alphabet is that it uses its written symbols to stand for the individual sounds, or phonemes, that make up words (this is the alphabetic principle). Someone learning to read or write an alphabetic system must grasp this basic insight to really understand how the writing system works. In order to be able to grasp this notion, however, a person has to know about individual sounds in words--the person has to have phonemic awareness. If a person does not realize that words are made up of individual sounds, that person has nothing to associate with the written symbols of the alphabet. The person without phonemic awareness can only memorize the image of each written word.




I once witnessed a dramatic demonstration of this situation. I was visiting a friend whose son was in the early months of first grade at the time. The child was apparently not getting any phonemic awareness training, and so was only learning how words are written one by one, memorizing each word independently of all the others. The father and I were working through a homework assignment with the child. There was a page with rectangles on it; above each rectangle was the name of a color: black, blue, white, red, etc. The instruction was to color in each rectangle with the color named by the word. The child was supposed to read the color name, then choose the correct crayon and color the box.

This child guessed randomly at the color names. Upon seeing the word 'black', the child guessed 'white'. When asked about the sounds associated with the 'bl' of 'black', or the 'w' of 'white', the child stared at us blankly. The child did not notice the similarity between the beginnings of the words 'black' and 'blue'. This was not a child of below-average intelligence (if anything, the opposite was true), and the child was not socioeconomically disadvantaged--his family was quite affluent. The problem was that the literacy training the child was getting introduced him to neither the phonemic makeup of words nor the regular sound-symbol correspondences of English spelling. He was unable to decode simple words.




This event seems bizarre to literate adults like you and me, for whom sound-letter relationships are deeply entrenched from years of education and reading. But it is a stark reminder of how foreign the notion of writing is to an illiterate child, even a child who speaks very fluently. Essential to decoding and independent reading is awareness that written symbols stand for individual sounds. Essential to understanding this idea is knowing that a word is a string of individual sounds. Hence the crucial importance of phonemic awareness.

Background knowledge - general world knowledge

Efficient readers do not rely just on the words on the page to develop comprehension. They use their general knowledge of the world or their knowledge of topics in the text to 'fill in' background information, and to predict what is coming up in later paragraphs. The wider a reader's general knowledge base, the better that reader will be at reading comprehension. Of course, the main way we develop our world knowledge is through reading, since reading allows us to explore areas we cannot directly experience. So this skill both feeds and is fed by generous reading.

Whole-word recognition

Whole-word recognition: Mature readers rarely decode. They generally read larger chunks at a glance--a whole word or even a whole phrase at a time. This is why mature readers can read fast. Reading skill acquisition should move from decoding to whole-word recognition fairly rapidly.



Being a slow reader generally slows down comprehension, and makes reading effortful, thereby reducing motivation to read. This creates a vicious circle: The slow reader doesn't like to read, so doesn't read much; not reading much keeps the reading speed slow, making comprehension effortful, so the slow reader doesn't like to read ... and so it goes.

Decoding

Decoding: This refers to figuring out how to pronounce a word by associating the graphemes in it with phonemes ('sounding out' the word). This skill is most important in early reading, when children frequently come across words they probably know but have never seen in print before.



To decode a word such as shift, for example, a reader needs to know the sounds that are regularly associated with each of the graphemes in the word: 'sh', 'i', 'f', and 't'.

Memorizing highly irregular words

Memorizing highly irregular words. Most spelling instruction programs have lists of 'sight' words for each grade. These are words which are unique or extremely unusual in their spelling (judged by the sounds in the words).

The spelling of such words as once, people, said, and women does not follow any spelling pattern of English. These words simply have to be memorized.

Mastering spelling rules or spelling patterns

Mastering spelling rules or spelling patterns, that is, peculiar yet fairly regular ways English spelling works. This includes patterns such as the 'hard c or g' vs. 'soft c or g' rule (the reason these expressions are in single quotes is that these are not technically sound terms):



When followed by 'e', 'i', or 'y', 'c' and 'g' have their 'soft' sound (that is, /s/ and the 'j' sound), but when followed by 'a', 'o', or 'u' they have their 'hard' sound (/k/, /g/). This alternation can be seen in the words gym, gin, and gentle vs. game, go, gum; and cent, city, cyst vs. cot, camera, cup. There is a relatively large number of such patterns in English spelling.

Mastering the regular grapheme

Mastering the regular grapheme/phoneme relationships (often called sound-symbol correspondences or 'letter sounds') in English spelling. This means, for instance, learning that the 'uh' sound is most often spelled 'u', as in but, nut, fun, tub, stuff, and so on.

Understanding the alphabetic principle

This means being consciously aware of the basic logic of our writing system: that individual written symbols (graphemes) represent or stand for individual phonemes. This means grasping, for example, that the letter 'a' is intended to call to mind the sound /æ/ in a word like cat.

Spelling/Reading Skills

Skills needed to read and spell successfully pertain to the written word, therefore knowledge of letters is needed in addition to knowledge of phonological structure.
Spelling/reading skills include:

• Understanding the alphabetic principle.
• Mastering the regular grapheme/phoneme relationships
• Mastering spelling rules or spelling patterns
• Memorizing highly irregular words.
• Decoding
• Whole-word recognition
• Background knowledge/general world knowledge

The deep phonological awareness skills

The deep phonological awareness skills are called phonemic awareness skills because they pertain to individual sounds that build words, i.e. phonemes. This is the most detailed level of word structure that is relevant to reading and spelling.

Phonological awareness training can be accomplished without any reference to letters or written words at all, and most programs begin such training by using pictures, nursery rhymes, songs, and games of various sorts that involve only listening and speaking.

Most programs do introduce letters fairly early on, however. Thus many programs combine phonological awareness training with phonics or letter/sound correspondence training. It is still important to remember that pure phonological awareness does not involve knowledge of letters. Those acquiring literacy skills should be checked periodically to be sure that they have knowledge of word sounds and sound structure apart from knowledge of letters.

Deep phonological awareness skills

• Awareness that you can change single sounds in a word, thereby producing a new word
  For example, removing the m from mat and replacing it with b to make bat
  
• Awareness that a word can be broken down into single sounds (phonemes); ability to count the number of phonemes in a word
  For example, being aware that the word boot has three sounds, and that they are /b/, /u/, /t/
  
• Segmentation: The ability to identify the sounds in a word singly:
  For example, being able to pronounce each sound of boot separately, in any order: the last sound is /t/, the first is /b/, and the middle sound is /u/.
  
• Manipulation: The ability to move single sounds in a word around, creating new words
  For example, given the whole word cat, being able to produce act or tack
  
• Blending: The ability to put single sounds together to form one or more words For example, when given separate sounds such as /æ/, /t, /p/, being able to use them to form tap, apt, or pat.

Intermediate phonological awareness skills

• Awareness that a word can be broken down into component syllables
  o For example, that tomorrow has the three parts to, ma, row.
• Awareness that a syllable can be broken down into onsets and rimes
  o For example, that the one-syllable word black has the onset bl and the rime æk or
  o that the syllables of the word sandy, san and dy, can be broken down into /s/ + /æn/ and /d/ + /i/

Phonological Awareness Skills

Phonological awareness refers to metalinguistic knowledge of the sound structure of language--that is, conscious awareness of the phonological structure of sentences, phrases, and words. Phonological awareness skills are not spelling skills; they do not concern knowledge of letters at all. A child can be completely phonologically aware and still be completely illiterate, with no knowledge or understanding of letters or the relationship between letters and sounds. Children develop phonological awareness skills by consciously attending to how words sound--by listening to words, not looking at how they are written. Phonological awareness skills are, however, believed to be an indispensable foundation to the acquisition of spelling and reading skills. This point will be explained below.

It is important to know that, unlike the ability to use and understand spoken language, phonological awareness does not develop naturally. Like other metalinguistic knowledge (for instance, identifying the subject of a sentence or detecting a phonological process in action), most people do not develop it unless they are directly taught. Therefore, if phonological awareness is founational to reading skills, and it does not develop unless taught, many reading experts recommend phonological awareness training as a prerequisite to early literacy training. Phonological awareness can develop in some people as a result of being trained to use an alphabet, but there is no guarantee that it will. Research has found a strong correlation between lack of phonological awareness and reading failure. This suggests that some people need phonological awareness training in order to learn to read.

There are several levels of phonological awareness skills, corresponding to layers of phonological structure in language. Phonological awareness develops in top-down fashion; that is to say, the learner begins at the level of the whole word and gradually moves to ever-smaller parts of the word. Some scholars refer to these as shallower vs. deeper levels of phonological awareness. The shallower skills pertain to larger word-parts, the deeper skills to smaller word parts.

Shallower phonological awareness skills:

• Awareness that sentences and phrases can be divided up into single words
  o For example, knowing that 'what're ya doing?' can be divided up into what, are, you and doing
• Awareness that some words share sounds or sound sequences
  o For example, that the words sing and ring rhyme, or that the words sat and mad have the same middle sound, or that the words black and blue have the same beginnings.

When should my child be assessed for phonological awareness skills?

Talk with your child’s classroom teacher. If the child is having great difficulty learning to read for no known reason, it might be beneficial to explore his phonological awareness skills.
www.indiana.edu

Parents help a child develop phonological awareness

The most important thing that a parent can do to help a child succeed in school is to read to the child on a regular basis from infancy. To aid in developing phonological awareness skills the parent should read books that rhyme. Parents should take every opportunity to talk about words, especially about how they sound. This will help the child develop the skill of thinking about words as entities separate from their meaning. When you are looking at books with the child talk more about the sounds in the word than the letters that are in the print.