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Phonological Awareness
and
Phonemic Awareness
and
Phonics
Phoneme awareness is the ability to identify phonemes, the hearing of sounds when they are found in their natural context—spoken words. Children need phoneme awareness to learn to read because letters represent phonemes in words.
Informally, children become familiar with sounds in conversations about books read aloud, especially alphabet books and books of nursery rhymes. Guiding and encouraging children's attempts to invent spelling also helps children make friends with phonemes. Research suggests that getting familiar with phonemes helps children make breakthroughs in learning to decode.
Where to start?
Continuant phonemes such as /f/, /m/, and /s/ are easy to stretch and pronounce by themselves. Unvoiced consonants like/t/ and /p/ can come soon after. We need vowels right away, because we can't put together any word without a vowel. Long vowels are easier to identify than short vowels. However, short vowels should come early because they are typically the first to be introduced in reading lessons—since they have simple one letter spellings. Children do not need to be taught every phoneme. As they get used to identifying a limited set of phonemes, they will learn how to identify others.
The process..
Introduce the phoneme:
Introduce each phoneme one at a time, setting aside time for each one, more at the beginning and gradually reducing time spent. A good introductory strategy is to cue meaningful names. Meaningful names provide a familiar image of a sound similar to the sound of the phoneme in the world: for example /z/ sounds like a buzzing bee.
Make the phoneme memorable:
They will need time to experiment and discover what their mouths are doing as they practice producing each phoneme. Post illustrations of the real-world sounds similar to the phoneme. In the long run, children need to learn letters and digraph as symbols for phonemes. Teach students to print the most common letter form of the target phoneme. Daily writing opportunities with invented spelling allow children to identify phonemes and practice using correspondences they are learning.
Find the phoneme in word contexts:
Phoneme awareness means recognizing phonemes in their natural environments—spoken words. Children have not learned the phoneme until they can spot it in words. For early practice, help them recognize the target phoneme at the beginning of words. For this, you might have them pick out illustrations of words beginning with the phoneme from a bulletin board. Later have them search for the phoneme elsewhere in the word. Have them choose between words related in meaning to practice the switch from meaning to sound. For example, you might ask them to listen for the sound /s/, the "flat tire" sound in words related in meaning: "Do you hear /s/ in mice or rat? In duck or goose? In nest or cave?" Only after children recognize phonemes in words should we ask them to think of words that feature the target phoneme. For example, until they can readily find the phoneme in words, they can't search magazines for illustrations that begin with the phonemes. Blending and segmentation work with the target phoneme is very helpful in recognizing the phoneme in word contexts. Such work usually requires letters to represent the phonemes, because otherwise children have too many things to think about at once.
Marilyn Adams (1990) gives five levels of phonemic awareness:
References:
Adams, Marilyn Jager (1990). Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print. Cambridge, MA: Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, Inc. ED 317 950
Kerby, Damon; Klein, Robin; Sato, Kelly; and Vejar; Robert (online). Quality of Learning Recommendation and Rationale. www.standford.edu
Sensenbaugh, Roger Online. Phonemic Awareness: An Important Early Step in Learning to Read. ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading, English, and Communication, Bloomington, IN.
Stanovich, Keith E. (1993-94(. "Romance and Reality (Distinguished Educator Series). " Reading Teacher, 47 (4), 280-91. EJ 477 302
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.
What is Phonological/Phonemic Awareness?
Stanovich (1993-94) defines "phonological awareness" as the ability to deal explicitly and segmentally with sound units smaller than the syllable. He also notes that researchers "argue intensely" about the meaning of the term and about the nature of the tasks used to measure it. Harris and Hodges (1995) present a brief essay on phonemic awareness. Another oft-cited source (Adams, 1990) uses "phonemic awareness" almost exclusively. Phonological awareness sometimes refers to an awareness that words consist of syllables, "onsets and rimes," and phonemes, and so can be considered as a broader notion than phonemic awareness. Each term is widely used and perhaps (if incorrectly) used interchangeably. In preparing this Digest, both terms were used to search the ERIC database. For the purposes of this Digest, each author's use will be followed.
Adams (1990) describes 5 levels of phonemic awareness in terms of abilities:
*to hear rhymes and alliteration as measured by knowledge of nursery rhymes
*to do oddity tasks (comparing and contrasting the sounds of words for rhyme and alliteration)
*to blend and split syllables
*to perform phonemic segmentation (such as counting out the number of phonemes in a word)
*to perform phoneme manipulation tasks (such as adding, deleting a particular phoneme and regenerating a word from the remainder).
Why Is It So Important?
Educators are always looking for valid and reliable predictors of educational achievement. One reason why educators are so interested in phonemic awareness is that research indicates that it is the best predictor of the ease of early reading acquisition (Stanovich, 1993-94), better even than IQ, vocabulary, and listening comprehension.
Phonological awareness is not only correlated with learning to read, but research indicates a stronger statement is true: phonological awareness appears to play a causal role in reading acquisition. Phonological awareness is a foundational ability underlying the learning of spelling-sound correspondences (Stanovich, 1993-94). Although phonological awareness appears to be a necessary condition for learning to read (children who do not develop phonological awareness do not go on to learn how to read), it is not a sufficient condition. Adams (1990) reviews the research that suggests that it is critical for children to be able to link phoneme awareness to a knowledge of letters.
Once beginning readers have some awareness of phonemes and their corresponding graphic representations, research has indicated that further reading instruction heightens their awareness of language, assisting then in developing the later stages of phonemic awareness mentioned above. Phonemic awareness is both a prerequisite for and a consequence of learning to read (Yopp, 1992).
Instruments to test for a child's phonemic awareness tend to be short, easy to administer, reliable, and valid. Stanovich also provides a quick (7-minute) and easy-to-administer phonological awareness test in an article in which he discusses his career as a researcher. Yopp (1995) presents a similarly brief assessment instrument and offers detailed evidence for its validity and reliability.
Relation to the "Great Reading Wars"
Phonological awareness and its role in beginning reading has the potential to confound supporters at both extremes of the whole language vs. phonics "debate" over reading instruction. Regardless of instructional technique, phonological awareness is an essential element for reading progress (Griffith and Olson, 1992). In another study, Griffith et al. (1992) found that children with high phonemic awareness outperformed those with low phonemic awareness on all literacy measures, whether they were taught using a whole language approach or traditional basal instruction. Whole language advocates need to admit that not all children develop this necessary ability simply through immersion in a print-rich environment, and that some children will need direct instruction in phonological awareness. "Phonics first" supporters (and perhaps even "phonics only" supporters) need to admit that teaching students letter-sound correspondences is meaningless if the students do not have a solid visual familiarity with the individual letters and if they do not understand that the sounds (which can be complex, shifting, and notoriously rule-breaking) paired with those letters are what make up words (Adams, 1990).
What is needed, and what many practitioners probably already actually implement, is a balanced approach to reading instruction--an approach that combines the language- and literature-rich activities associated with whole language activities aimed at enhancing meaning, understanding, and the love of language with explicit teaching of skills as needed to develop fluency associated with proficient readers. Honig (1996) offers a review of reading research supporting such a balanced approach and presents detailed guidelines on how to integrate whole language principles with the necessary foundation reading skills.
Teaching Methods
Research indicates that phonological awareness can be taught and that students who increased their awareness of phonemes facilitated their subsequent reading acquisition (Lundberg et al, 1988). Teachers need to be aware of instructional activities that can help their students become aware of phonemes before they receive formal reading instruction, and they need to realize that phonemic awareness will become more sophisticated as students' reading skills develop.
The following recommendations for instruction in phonemic awareness are derived from Spector (1995): (1) At the preschool level, engage children in activities that direct their attention to the sounds in words, such as rhyming and alliteration games.
(2) Teach students to segment and blend.
(3) Combine training in segmentation and blending with instruction in letter-sound relationships.
(4) Teach segmentation and blending as complementary processes.
(5) Systematically sequence examples when teaching segmentation and blending.
(6) Teach for transfer to novel tasks and contexts.
Yopp (1992) offers the following general recommendations for phonemic awareness activities:
(a) Keep a sense of playfulness and fun, avoid drill and rote memorization.
(b) Use group settings that encourage interaction among children.
(c) Encourage children's curiosity about language and their experimentation with it.
(d) Allow for and be prepared for individual differences.
(e) Make sure the tone of the activity is not evaluative but rather fun and informal.
Spending a few minutes daily engaging preschool, kindergarten, and first-grade children in oral activities that emphasize the sounds of language may go a long way in helping them become successful readers and learners.
References
Adams, Marilyn Jager (1990). Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print. Cambridge, MA: Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, Inc. [ED 317 950]
Griffith, Priscilla, and Mary W. Olson (1992). "Phonemic Awareness Helps Beginning Readers Break the Code." Reading Teacher, 45(7), 516-23. [EJ 439 120]
Griffith, Priscilla, et al. (1992). "The Effect of Phonemic Awareness on the Literacy Development of First Grade Children in a Traditional or a Whole Language Classroom." Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 6(2), 85-92. [EJ 460 128]
Harris, Theodore L., and Richard E. Hodges (1995). The Literacy Dictionary: The Vocabulary of Reading and Writing. Newark, DE: International Reading Association. [ED 385 820]
Honig, Bill (1996). Teaching Our Children to Read: The Role of Skills in a Comprehensive Reading Program. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. [CS 012 479]
Lundberg, I. et al. (1988). "Effectiveness of an Extensive Program for Stimulating Phonological Awareness in Preschool Children." Reading Research Quarterly, 23(3), 263-84. [EJ 373 262]
Olson, Mary W., and Priscilla Griffith (1993). "Phonological Awareness: The What, Why, and How." Reading and Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties, 9(4) 351-60. [EJ 474 132]
Spector, Janet E. (1995) "Phonemic Awareness Training: Application of Principles of Direct Instruction." Reading and Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties, 11(1), 37-52. [EJ 496 026]
Stanovich, Keith E. (1993-94). "Romance and Reality (Distinguished Educator Series)." Reading Teacher, 47(4), 280-91. [EJ 477 302]
Yopp, Hallie Kay (1992). "Developing Phonemic Awareness in Young Children." Reading Teacher, 45(9), 696-703. [EJ 442 772]
Yopp, Hallie-Kay (1995). "A Test for Assessing Phonemic Awareness in Young Children." Reading Teacher, 49(1), 20-29. [EJ 513 301]
Roger Sensenbaugh is CIJE Coordinator at the ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading, English, and Communication.
Digest #119 is EDO-CS-96-13 and was published in June 1996 by
the ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading, English and Communication, 2805 E 10th
Street, Bloomington, IN 47408-2698, Telephone (812) 855-5847 or (800) 759-4723.
ERIC Digests are in the public domain and may be freely reproduced. Additional
copies may be ordered by contacting the ERIC Document Reproduction Service at
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This project has been funded at least in part with Federal funds from the
U.S. Department of Education under contract number RR93002011. The content of
this publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S.
Department of Education nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or
organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.
Phonological Awareness
| Phonological Awareness: Instructional and Assessment Guidelines (LD online) | Wilson--Ten Critical Points |
| Ideas and Activites for developing Phonological Awareness | The Phive Phones of Reading (Reading Rockets) |
| Phonological Awareness Skills and Spelling Skills--Clear language and concise | PALS |
| Research on Phonological Awareness--ETA | |
| What Works Phonological Awareness Interventions | |
Phonological Awareness Tasks
Lewkowicz (1980)
Instructional Sequence
CV and VC words
CVC words
CCVC and CVCC words
SOUND SEGMENTATION AND BLENDING
FINAL SOUNDS
INITIAL SOUNDS
RHYME
Segmenting sentences into words (monosyllabic words
Segmenting words into syllables
What have we learned from phonological
awareness interventions?
Taken in part from: http://wvde.state.wv.us/ose/IPAP060806.ppt.