Deborah Louie

Phonological Awareness

Outline

Definition of phonological awareness

Types of phonological skills

Correlations of phonological skills and reading

Summary

Definition of phonological awareness

Phonological awareness is defined as the “ability to identify and categorize various speech sounds such as rhyme and alliteration”. Also, the “ability to pay attention to, identify and reflect on various sound segments of speech”. (Bear, 2004)

Types of phonological skills

Different phonological skills have been included under the general label of phonological processing. Some researchers have suggested that the different types of phonological skills, such as segmentation, blending, rhyming, alliteration, and elision, should be studied separately, rather than treating phonological processing as a single construct. There is evidence that phonological tasks vary in difficulty and show different rates of development. The relation between letter knowledge skills Letter Name Stage and other cognitive skills seems to argue in favor of the codevelopment of several related skills. It has been documented that children who were proficient in identifying letters at kindergarten entry showed stronger skills at the end of kindergarten and in first grade on measures of phonological processing and word reading compared to children who were not proficient. (Molfese, V et al, 2006).

Correlations of phonological skills and reading

Kindergarten measures of phonological awareness and letter identification provided information to the prediction of 2nd grade reading. A reciprocal relationship was found between phonological awareness and word reading, with kindergarten phonological awareness predicting 2nd grade word reading and conversely 2nd grade word reading predicting 4th grade phonological awareness. Implications: phonological awareness assessment provides information about reading in kindergarten but loses its predictive power at 2nd grade (Hogan, T et al, 2005).

What we do know is that children who make little gains in letter knowledge are lagging behind their classmates in performance on other important cognitive skills. Training that involves both phonological and letter knowledge has been reported to be successful. Success has been reported in training phonemic segmentation to kindergarten children who also received letter name and sound experiences. One excellent activity for emergent readers is by focusing attention on separating the initial consonant sound at the beginning of words from the rhyme chunk at the end Onset and Rhyme. (Bear, 2004) The trained children outperformed children receiving only language activities, including letter name and sound experience, and outperformed a control group in phoneme segmentation skills, in performance on Word Identification, and in reading a list of words (Molfese, V et all, 2006). Another excellent activity is through the use of Picture Sorts activities by beginning sounds as it helps the students acquire more knowledge of letter-sound correspondences through a gamelike phonics activity. (Bear, 2004)

Numerous other studies have documented the robust relationship between early phonological awareness and subsequent reading achievement. Once children begin reading, however, the best indicator of current and future reading may simply be reading itself. This possibility has led reading researchers to question the usefulness of phonological awareness assessments once a certain level of reading achievement has been attained. Initially phonological awareness influences reading, but once reading is underway, the process of learning to read influences phonological awareness (Hogan, T et al, 2005). As Frank Smith says, “I am not saying that it is not useful for children to know the alphabet Phonemic Awareness(phoneme detection), to build up sight vocabularies, or even to understand the relationships between the spelling of words and their sounds and (more importantly) their meaning. But all of these are by-products of reading that make more sense as reading itself is mastered and understood.” (Smith, 2004).

Phonological awareness (described as the ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds within words) is highly predictive of children’s later reading and spelling abilities. Phonological awareness instruction can improve student’s spelling and reading achievement. (Gray, A and Mccutchen, D, 2006) One study found that rhyming games are an excellent way to build phonological awareness and increase a child’s rhyming skills. -- These have also been - -shown to have a strong correlation to future reading skills Children who are strong in rhyming skills show a strong correlation to future successful reading ability. (Molfese, V et al, 2006) Another study I looked at found Another study suggested that rhyming skills and syllable segmentation did not strongly predict reading but were precursors to other phonological insights (e.g., the identification and manipulation of individual phonemes) that were predictive of later reading. (Gray, A and Mccutchen, D, 2006)

Summary

Researchers over the past 20 years had determined that phonemic awareness is one of the best predictors of how well children will learn to read. Further analysis showed that when phonemic-awareness instruction included connections of sounds to letters, the approach was more effective than was teaching without letters. Phonemic Awareness concerns the structure of words, not their meaning (Gromko, J, 2007).

References

Bear,D, Invernizzi,M, Templeton,S and Johnston,F (2004). Words Their Way. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Pearson Education, Inc.

Gray,A and Mccutchen,D (2006). Young Readers Use of Phonological Information: Phonological ''Awareness, Memory, and Comprehension. Journal of Learning Disabilities 39 (4), 325-33.

Gromko,J (2005). The Effect of Music Instruction on Phonemic Awareness in Beginning Readers. Journal of Research in Music Education 53 (3), 199-09.

Hogan,T, Catts,H, and Little,T (2005). The Relationship Between Phonological Awareness and Reading: Implications for the Assessment of Phonological Awareness. Language, Speech and Hearing Services in Schools 36 (4), 285-93.

Molfese,V, Modglin,A, Beswick,J, Neamon,J, Berg,S, Berg,C, and Molnar,A (2006). Letter ''Knowledge, Phonological ''Processing, and Print Knowledge: Skill ''Development in Nonreading Preschool Children. Journal of Learning Disabilities 39 (4), 296-05.

Nancollis, A, Lawrie, B, and Dodd, B (2005). Phonological Awareness Intervention and the ''Acquisition of Literacy Skills in Children From Deprived Social Backgrounds. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 36 (4), 325-35.

Smith, F (2004). Understanding Reading.'' Mahwah, New Jersey. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

External Links

1) International Reading Association home page:

http://www.reading.org/

2)Behrmann, M: Beginning Reading and Phonological Awareness For Students With Learning Disabilities (web page - excellent background information:)

http://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content2/disability.phonological.html

3) Chard, D & Dickson, S (1999). Phonological Awareness: Instructional and Assessment Guidelines.

http://www.ldonline.org/article/6254

4) Stewart, T. PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS RESOURCES AND LINKS. Website that links the user to other helpful sites related to phonological awareness.

http://ca.geocities.com/phonological/index.htm

5) Songs for Teaching/Using Music to Promote Learning. Great resource for songs that will help build phonological awareness (including phonemic awareness).

http://www.songsforteaching.com/phonemicawareness.htm

Commentary by Amanda Hatten

Hello! It seems you have a lot of information, and there are just a few things I would tweak. First, the term "elision", from the second paragraph is one that is unfamiliar to me. Perhaps you could add a supplementary page for this term. Also, you need to add a space after "Letter Name Stage". In paragraph four, I was surprised to see that kindergarten students are trained in phoneme segmentation, but perhaps the relationship is strong because it in conjunction with letter and sound study, not independent. I hope this commentary is helpful.

Commentary by Stacee Jennings

Hello Deborah. I think you did a fantastic job of explaining phonological awareness. I only have a few suggestions for the formatting. First, I think it would be helpful to have an outline at the beginning of your report and then subheadings. This would just help the readability a little. Second, as Amanda said, "elision" is not a term I am familiar with either. A supplementary page defining this word would be helpful. Third, when you put two capital letters in a word (i.e. McCutchen) it automatically links to another page that doesn't exist, so you may want to put a lower case "c" or a space between the two "c's." I hope that makes sense. And lastly, your phonemic awareness page is linked to one that does not seem to be completed. I think the correct name of the page you're trying to link to is Phonemic Awareness (phoneme detection). This would bring the reader to a page that was completed in the first set of topics. Overall, your information was excellent! Great job!

Commentary by Elizabeth Walker

Hey Deborah,

Your paper is great!

I only found a couple of things I would suggest looking at.

1. In paragraph six you may want to clarify the sentence that starts with These have and mention that rhyming games have also shown to have .....

2. In the same paragraph you may want to rephrase Another study, suggested that rhyming ..... instead of I looked at found.

3. Under references you may want to review the foremat of them.