The term phonological awareness is one that appears frequently in the literature regarding the literacy development of young children. The definition of this term is a broad one. It involves an awareness of the phonological structure of spoken language as well as the ability to orally manipulate that structure (Troia, 1999).
Included under the umbrella of phonological awareness are the terms syllable, onset and rime, phoneme and phonemic awareness. In order to understand the concept of phonological awareness, it is important to have a clear understanding of each of these terms, all of which have to do with sounds in spoken language.
A syllable is a building block of a word. Each part of a word that contains a vowel sound is a syllable.
Onsets and rimes make up syllables. An onset is the initial consonant sound in a syllable while the rime is the part that contains the vowel and the sounds that follow the vowel. In the word cat /c/ is the onset and /at/ is the rime. In the word black /bl/ is the onset and /ack/ is the rime.
A phoneme is the smallest unit of spoken language. The word cat contains three phonemes, /c/ /a/ /t/. The word black contains four phonemes /b/ /l/ /a/ /ck/. It is estimated that the English language has at least 41 phonemes (Armbuster, Lehr, & Osborn, 2001).
The term phonemic awareness is often used interchangeably with the term phonological awareness, yet, by definition, these terms are very distinct. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the individual phonemes (sounds) in spoken words (Armbuster, Lehr, & Osborn, 2001).
It is important that phonological awareness is also not confused with the term phonics. As previously stated, phonological awareness has to do with the sounds of spoken language. The term phonics refers to the relationship between the phoneme (sound) and the grapheme (the written representation of the phoneme).
In order to clearly understand the research written about phonological awareness, to communicate clearly with colleagues regarding it, and to plan effective early literacy instruction, it is important that teachers clearly understand the language of phonological awareness and use it correctly.
Research
Findings
The research on phonological and phonemic awareness is voluminous. Researcher Gary Troia, reviewed studies on phonological awareness. His work, Phonological awareness intervention research: A critical review of the experimental methodology, published in the Reading Research Quarterly, 31 (1)., examined thirty-nine studies representing nine countries and four continents. In assembling its meta-analysis of the research done on phonemic awareness, the National Reading Panel reviewed over 169 studies from the United States, Great Britain, Sweden, and Denmark. The research reaches consensus on three important points:
·
Upon entering school, a child's facility with tasks of phonemic
awareness may be the single most powerful predictor of the success that he or
she will experience in learning to read (Adams, 1990).
·
The acquisition of phonological and phonemic awareness skills
develops sequentially.
·
Phonological and phonemic awareness can be explicitly and
systematically taught.
Additionally, studies have shown that early training in phonemic awareness enhances early word recognition and developmental spelling (Ball & Blachman, 1991; Davidson & Jenkins, 1994; Gaskins, Ehri, Cress, O'Hara, & Donnelly, 1997; Griffith & Olson, 1992; Juel, 1988; Lie, 1991; Lunberg, Frost, & Petersen, 1988; McGuinness, McGuinness, & Donohue, 1995; Murray, 1998).
Further, studies indicate that explicit individual instruction in phonological and phonemic awareness can enhance the achievement of students in remedial programs such as Reading Recovery (Iversen & Tunmer, 1993).
Most importantly, however, based on the research it can be concluded that explicit and systematic training in phonological and phonemic awareness has a place in a comprehensive literacy program (Castle, Riach, & Nicholson, 1994; Cunningham, Cunningham, Hoffman, & Yopp, 1998; Eldredge & Baird, 1996; Moustafa & Maldonado-Colon, 1999; Richgels, Poremba & McGee, 1996; Yopp & Yopp 2000).
The
Acquisition of Phonological Awareness Skills
Phonological awareness is an awareness of the sound structure of the language. It is an awareness of any size unit of sound (Yopp & Yopp, 2000). The ability to recognize and generate rhyming words, count syllables, separate onsets and rimes and count phonemes are all phonological awareness skills (Yopp & Yopp, 2000). Each of these skills develops sequentially, in a whole to part fashion. Children develop the facility for rhyme, prior to developing the ability to count syllables. Counting syllables precedes the ability to separate onsets and rimes, which is followed by the knowledge of individual phonemes.
The works of Adams et al, (1998); Cunningham et al, (1998); Goswami, (2000); Griffith & Olson, (1992); Moustafa, (1997); and Yopp & Yopp, (2000) advocate that children's phonological and phonemic awareness skills can be developed by exposure to and participation in language and literacy rich environments where they are exposed to nursery rhymes, songs, chants, finger plays, sound and word games, and predictable texts that contain rhyme, rhythm, and repetition.
The
Acquisition of Phonemic Awareness Skills
As a subcategory of phonological awareness, phonemic awareness focuses on the smallest unit of speech, the phoneme. As mentioned previously, the English language has at least 41 phonemes (Armbuster, Lehr, & Osborn, 2001).
The goal of instructing students in phonemic awareness is to teach them how to identify and manipulate the sounds of spoken language.
Eight key tasks constitute phonemic awareness instruction. These include:
Phoneme isolation - the ability to recognize individual sounds in words
Phoneme identity - the ability to recognize the same sound in different words
. Phoneme categorization - the ability to recognize in a series of words which one has the "odd" sound, which word does not belong
Phoneme blending - the ability to hear separately spoken phonemes and bend them into a word
Phoneme segmentation - the ability to break a word down to its separate phonemes
Phoneme deletion - a task that requires a student to identify what remains of a word if a phoneme is deleted
Phoneme addition - a task that requires a student to make a new word by adding a phoneme
Phoneme substitution - a task that involves substituting one phoneme for another to create a word
It is the consensus among researchers, (Ball & Blachman, 1991; Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley 1991, 1993, 1995; Davidson & Jenkins, 1994; Ehri et al, 2000; Iversen & Tunmer, 1993; Juel, 1998; Murray, 1998) that explicit training in phonemic awareness tasks facilitates the reading and spelling achievement of young learners.
Phonemic
Awareness and the Alphabetic Principle
The research on phonemic awareness shows that children who lack phonemic awareness are at risk for failing to learn to read (Adams, 1990). This is due to the alphabetic nature of our language (English) and is also true for other languages that follow the alphabetic principle. Before children can map sound to print (map phoneme to grapheme), they must be aware of the sounds of spoken language and be able to recognize them in a stream of speech. The fact that some children enter school lacking in phonemic awareness skills, demonstrates that it is not spontaneously acquired (Adams, 1990). However, research has proven that it can be successfully taught.
Classroom
Instruction
Having established that phonological and phonemic awareness are important to student success in reading and spelling achievement and that they can be explicitly and systematically taught, leaves one wondering:
·
What constitutes explicit and systematic training in phonological
and phonemic awareness?
·
How much time should be set aside for it each day?
·
Is instruction best delivered whole class, small group or
individually?
·
How does phonological and phonemic awareness instruction fit into
a comprehensive literacy and language rich early education program?
To answer these questions, it is perhaps best to begin with the last question first. Much of the research on phonological and phonemic awareness has centered upon children in kindergarten to grade two. These are typically grade levels where students are immersed in activities involving rhymes, songs, chants, word games, and involved with predictable text containing rhyme, rhythm and repetition. These are the types of activities that naturally promote phonological awareness as they promote attention rhyme, syllable and in some cases onset and rime. However, in addition to this exposure, beginning readers and writers need explicit instruction in these skills and those involving phonemic awareness to help them “crack the code” of the alphabetic principle.
In a longitudinal study by Lunberg, Frost, and Petersen (1988) of kindergarten students in Denmark, an experimental group of students received whole class instruction that focused on listening games, rhyme, sentence segmentation and syllable segmentation. Follow-up testing in grades one and two showed that on tests of reading and spelling, the experimental group out-performed the control groups who received no additional training.
Ball and Blachman (1991) studied the effect that phonemic awareness training had on the development of word recognition skills and spelling skills of kindergarten students. They trained children with segmentation activities and letter-name and letter-sound training. The findings from their study indicated that kindergarten children can be trained to segment words into phonemes and that once trained, the students are then capable of transferring this knowledge to novel situations. They concluded that phoneme segmentation training contributed to students' ability to read and spell words. Similar conclusions were reached by Gaskins, et al (1997) in their work with struggling readers.
In a study of first graders in Norway, Alfred Lie (1991) found that students who received sequential analysis training (phoneme segmentation) out-performed students who received positional analysis training (phoneme isolation) on tests of reading in grades one and two. Lie's students received their instruction in groups of 16 for 10-15 minutes per day.
Additional studies by Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley (1991, 1993, 1995), and Davidson & Jenkins (1994) found that students who received training in phoneme manipulation skills (particularly phoneme segmentation) out-performed their peers who did not receive training on tests of reading and spelling. In the Report of the National Reading Panel, (Ehri, et al, 2000), a meta-analysis on phonemic awareness, it was concluded that:
·
It is as essential to
teach phonemic awareness as it is to teach letters
·
Various forms of phoneme manipulation can be taught (identifying,
segmenting, blending, deleting, and manipulating onset and rime)
·
Phonemic awareness is best taught in small groups
· 20 hours of phonemic awareness training proved to effect the most gains with regard to students' reading, writing, and spelling achievement
Phonological
Awareness and Reading Recovery
In an effort to evaluate the effect of integrating phonological awareness skills into a Reading Recovery Program, Iversen and Tunmer (1993) studied three evenly matched groups of first grade students from Rhode Island. Two of the groups were control groups, one which received standard Reading Recovery Training, and another group that received no additional training. As part of their Reading Recovery Training, the experimental group received explicit instruction in letter-phoneme patterns in place of the letter identification portion of the lesson. This was the only modification to their program. During instruction on letter-phoneme patterns, students worked with magnetic letters to make, segment and build new words. The purpose of this was to make students more aware of the fact that words with common sounds, share common spelling patterns. At a later part in the lesson, students were required to repeat the same activity in writing. The aim of this was to help students develop metacognitive strategies for reading and spelling.
Examination of posttest scores at the discontinuation of the program revealed that both Reading Recovery groups significantly out-performed the group that received no additional treatment, especially on tests of phonological awareness that measured both phoneme segmentation and phoneme deletion.
A most significant finding of this study was in the mean number of lessons students participated in prior to program discontinuation between the two Reading Recovery groups. The mean number of lessons for the standard group was 57.31, while the mean number of lessons for the modified group was 41.75. The results of this study indicate that at-risk readers learn to read more quickly when given explicit systematic instruction in phonological recoding.
Assessment
One assessment tool that has proven to be a reliable measure of a student's phonemic awareness ability is The Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation .
Designed to be used with English speaking kindergarteners, this 22-item test is individually administered and requires about 5 to 10 minutes for each student. The test is designed to measure a student's ability to orally segment the phonemes in a word in their correct order. Immediately prior to the administration of the test, a student is trained with three practice items. Feedback is provided to the child in the form of praise, or in the case of an error, the correct answer is modeled. A correct response is one in which each phoneme in the target word is correctly articulated.
Students who obtain a perfect or nearly perfect score are those who are phonemically aware. Students who are able to respond correctly to some of the items may be thought of as having emerging phonemic awareness skills. A low score on the test indicates that a student is lacking in phonemic awareness skills. Low performing students are most likely to experience difficulty with reading and spelling unless immediate, intensive intervention is provided.
Analysis of the Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation indicates that
it is a valid measure of phonemic awareness.
This tool serves as a powerful predictor of possible reading and spelling
difficulties. If used correctly and
in a timely fashion, the information gained from this test can be used to
identify students and to plan intervention programs for “at-risk” readers
and spellers.
Discussion
The review of the literature on phonological and phonemic awareness clearly indicates that training students in phonological awareness tasks involving rhyme, syllables, and onsets and rimes as well as phonemic awareness tasks, particularly phoneme blending, phoneme segmentation, and phoneme manipulation; significantly contributes to their reading and spelling achievement.
While some aspects of phonological awareness such as rhyme may develop “naturally” as a result of a language and literacy rich background; explicit, systematic instruction in phonological and phonemic awareness must be an integral part of an early literacy program. It is as important to involve students in interactions with sound and word and language play as it is to surround them with print.
As a result of the voluminous research on this subject, a new genre of teacher resources in phonological and phonemic awareness is appearing in educational bookstores and catalogs. Activities involving phonological and phonemic awareness that are based on scientific research can be child-centered, rich in language, and engaging. Training in phonological and phonemic awareness provides students with the building blocks for a strong foundation in reading and spelling.