Analyzing the significance of phonological and phonemic awareness in reading acquisition

The National Reading Panel’s report (2000) on learning to read specifically listed phonemic awareness as one of the five critical skills necessary to learning to read. It also discussed the need for overall phonological awareness. As discussed in the previous section, phonological awareness involves recognizing that spoken words are comprised of a set of smaller units—including syllables and sounds, and phonemic awareness is a specific type of phonological awareness that focuses on the ability to distinguish, manipulate, and blend specific sounds or phonemes within a given word. Think of phonological awareness as an umbrella and phonemic awareness as a specific spoke under this umbrella.

Since the ability to distinguish between individual sounds, or phonemes, within words is a prerequisite to association of sounds with letters and manipulating sounds to blend words—a fancy way of saying “reading”—the teaching of phonemic awareness is crucial to emergent literacy (early childhood K-2 reading instruction). Children need a strong background in phonemic awareness in order for phonics instruction (sound-spelling relationships in print) to be effective.
The National Reading Panel (2000) specified six phoneme awareness skills crucial to learning to read:

• Phoneme isolation: recognizing individual sounds ( /g/ and /O/ in “go”)
• Phoneme identification: Recognizing common sounds in different words (/b/ in boy, bike, and bell)
• Phoneme categorization: recognizing sounds in sequence (bus, bun, rug)
• Phoneme blending: hearing a series of individual phonemes, then blending them into a word ( hearing /g/ /O/ and saying “go”)
• Phoneme segmentation: separating and counting out the sounds in a word (given “go” saying /g/ and /O/)
• Phoneme deletion: recognizing what would be left if one phoneme is removed ( hear “flat” and remove the /f/ sound and state that “lat” would be left)

Phonics deals with printed words and the learning of sound-spelling correlations;
that is, learning to assign discrete phonemes to various letters and letter combinations. Children, who have problems with phonics, learning the letter sound code of English, often have deficits in these phonemic awareness skills. Often, they have not acquired or been exposed to phonemic awareness activities usually fostered at home and in preschool to second grade, such as extensive songs, rhymes and read –alouds. In other cases, the child may have a disability that affects phoneme awareness, and needs more explicit instruction and/or more practice with these skills.

Assessment of Phonological and Phonemic Awareness
These skills can be assessed by having the child listen to the teacher say two words. The child should then be asked to decide if these two words are the same word repeated twice or two different words. When you make this assessment, if you do use two different words, make certain that they only differ by one phoneme, such as /d/ and /g/. Children can be assessed on words that are not real words or that are not familiar to them. The words used can be make-believe.

Teachers can maintain ongoing logs and rubrics for assessment throughout the year of Phonemic Awareness for individual children. Such assessments would identify particular stated reading behaviors or performance standards, the date of observation of the child’s behavior (in this context, phonemic activity or exercise), and comments.

The rubric or legend for assessing these behaviors might include the following descriptors: demonstrates or exhibits reading behavior consistently, making progress/strides toward this reading behavior, and/or has not yet demonstrated or exhibited this behavior.
Depending on the particular phonological task you are modeling, the performance task might include:

• Saying rhyming words in response to an oral prompt
• Segmenting a word spoken by the teacher into its beginning, middle, and ending sounds (phonemic)
• Correctly counting the number of syllables in a spoken word (phonological)
• Changing or rearranging a syllable orally in a word (e.g., “change the first syllable in the word ‘cricket’ to /pak/.”)(phonological)
• Changing the beginning, middle, or ending sound in a word (e.g., “change the sound at the beginning of the word ‘dog’ to the /l/ sound”—phonemic, etc).

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THE ROLE OF PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSING IN THE READING DEVELOPMENT OF INDIVIDUAL STUDENTS

English Language Learners (ELL)
Children who are raised in homes where English is not the first language and/or standard English is not spoken may have difficulty with hearing the difference between similar sounding words like “send” and “sent.” Any child who is not in a home, day care, or preschool environment where English phonology operates may have difficulty perceiving and demonstrating the differences between English language phonemes. In other words, their phoneme awareness in terms of the English language will be poor. If children cannot hear the difference
between words that sound the same like “grow” and “glow,” they will be confused when these words appear in a print context. This confusion is likely to impact their comprehension.

Considerations for teaching phonological processing to ELL children include recognition by the teacher that what works for the English language speaking child from an English language speaking family does not necessarily work with students who speak other primary languages.

Research recommends that ELL children initially learn to read in their first language. It has also been found that a priority for ELL should be learning to speak English before being taught to read English. Research supports oral language development, since it lays the foundation for phonological awareness.

All phonological instruction programs must be tailored to the children’s learning backgrounds. Rhymes and alliteration introduced to ELL children should be read or shared with them in their first language, if possible. If you do not speak the student’s first language, get a paraprofessional or pull out an ELL educator to support your instruction in the first language.


Struggling Readers
Among the causes that make reading a struggle for some children (and adults) is auditory trauma or ear infections that affect the ability to hear speech. Such children need one-on-one support with articulation and perception of different sounds. When a child says a word such as “parrot” incorrectly, repeat it back as
a question with the correct pronunciation of the sounds. If the child “gets” the sound correctly after your question, this type of extra support was all that was needed. If the child still has difficulty with pronunciation, it may be necessary to consult with a speech therapist or audiologist. Early identification of medical conditions that affect hearing is crucial to reading development. Therefore, as an educator, you need to make the time to sit with struggling readers and play games such as “same or different” in order to identify those children who may be struggling due to a hearing difficulty.

The most common characteristic among children with language learning disabilities that produce delays in learning to read is weakness in either phonological or phonemic awareness. Many students with reading disabilities will have been diagnosed with some form of Dyslexia. Dyslexia is a language learning disorder that is often based on difficulties with phonological awareness and processing. Common symptoms included difficulty decoding words, poor fluency, poor writing and spelling, and sometimes comprehension difficulties, as well. These difficulties are present in spite of normal intelligence and instructional methods. Pierangelo & Giuliani (2007) describe a variety of types of Dyslexia cited by and most of them have phonemic or phonological weakness as one significant component.
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