Phonological awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate the different sounds found within a given language. While most children learn this skill automatically, many children with trouble reading show difficulty acquiring this ability prior to learning to read. In fact, deficits in this skill serve as the best predictor of failing to learn to read.
Phonemes
A phoneme is a single speech sound which is represented by either a single letter of group or letters (known as graphemes). The English alphabet has 26 letters which represent 42-44 different phonemes. The word sheep is composed of three phonemes, /sh/ /ee/ /p/. Phonological awareness contributes to reading and spelling in three ways:
- Understanding how spoken words are represented in print
- Recognizing how letters correspond to sounds
- Determining what a word is when it is only partially sounded out
There are two main challenges in learning phonological awareness:
- Phonemes overlap to create fluent speech and are not pronounced sound-by-sound (e.g., dog and not /d/ /o/ /g/)
- Speech sounds and letters do not always have a one-to-one correspondence. For example, box has three letters but four sounds (/b/ /o/ /k/ /s/), which is why children often spell it as boks.
Symptoms of Poor Phonological Awareness
The following is a list of symptoms which can be indicative of challenges with phonological awareness:
- Articulation errors (e.g., boo for blue)
- Mispronouncing multisyllable words (e.g., aminal for animal)
- Difficulty remembering the relationship between sounds and symbols (e.g., the sound /bl/ is made with the letters b and l)
- Over relying on whole-word and context clues when reading
- Trouble spelling and pronouncing phonically regular nonsense words
- Difficulty pronouncing unfamiliar words by applying phonics
- Slow reading rate
- Trouble sequencing sounds when spelling
- Confusing similar-sounding sounds (e.g., multiblication for multiplication)
How Phonological Awareness Develops
Phonological awareness skills generally develop in the following manner:
- By Age 3-4: Children can spontaneously produce rhymes, though they may not realize they rhyme
- By Age 4-5: Children can use clapping to identify the number of syllables in a word, blend syllables to form whole words, delete syllables from a word and correctly identify the remaining word, and recognize when two words rhyme
- By the End of Kindergarten: Children can produce rhymes, identify the initial sounds of words, and blend two phonemes
- By the End of First Grade: Children can identify which words do and do not rhyme within a group, identify the phonemes in words with four-five phonemes, and blend four-five phonemes to create words
- By the End of Second Grade: Children can perform all phoneme awareness and manipulation tasks
If your child is struggling with phonological awareness, a formal assessment can help determine if they have dyslexia and provide strategies for improving these skills.
Reference:
Mather, N, & Wendling, B.J. (2012). Essentials of dyslexia assessment and intervention. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.