The Role of Phonological Awareness in Learning to Read

Research has documented that phonological awareness is one of the most important factors in learning to read (Lyon and Alexander, 1996). But what is phonological awareness? Phonological awareness is most commonly defined as one's sensitivity to, or explicit awareness or, the phonological structure of words in one's language (the sound system of a language).

Deficits in phonological awareness are characterized by weaknesses in the ability to "hear" the individual sounds in words. An adult with weak phonological awareness might not be able to identify the final sound in a word like "clap," or to generate other words that start with the same first sound. In short, phonological awareness involves the ability to notice, think about, or manipulate, the individual sounds within words (Torgesen et al., in press).

The smallest unit of meaningful, or functional, sound in a language is called phoneme. For example, the word bat has three phonemes, /b/, /a/, /t/. By changing the first phoneme, we can produce the word hat, /h/, /a/, /t/. Changing the second phoneme creates the word but, and changing the last phoneme creates the word ban. In essence, phonemes are the building blocks of all spoken and written language; words in a language are composed of strings of phonemes. We can create all the words in the English language through various combinations of just 44 phonemes.

Phonemic awareness is important because it supports learning how the words in our language are represented in print, and thus proves a more potent predictor of success in learning to reading than intelligence, listening comprehension, or reading readiness tests. Conversely, lack of phonemic awareness proves the most powerful determinant of failure in learning to read. Individuals with a reading disability have difficulties with this most basic step in the road to reading: breaking the written word into its component phonological units. In other words, these individuals do not easily learn how to relate the sounds of language to the alphabet letters which represent them (Lyon, 1995).

If a person can perform these tasks orally, he or she is ready for instruction in learning how to use letter-sound to identify words. Actually, instruction in letter-sound correspondences (i.e., the sounds that letters represent in words) should be provided simultaneously with instructions in phonemic awareness. As soon as your student knows the sounds of some consonants and vowels, you can begin to use letters in many of your phonemic awareness activities. For example, you might ask the student to show you the letter for the first sound in "cat." Or, you might ask him or her to blend the sounds represented by the letters m-a-n. Or, you could say, "If that says 'man', what letter could you use to make it say 'tan'?" The idea of these activities with letters is to show the student how the skill learned in the phonemic awareness activities can be used in reading or spelling. Once students can do these activities with letters, they have taken one of the most important first steps in learning to read.

Phonemic awareness develops naturally in some people. However, for many people, phonemic awareness must be directly taught (Moats, 1997). Any approach to teaching reading must incorporate what we now know about the key role of phonemic awareness; indeed, throughout the early stages of literacy acquisition, teachers and tutors must begin each lesson with the direct teaching of phonemic awareness. Because a lack of phonemic awareness appears to be a major obstacle to learning to read, individuals with a reading disability must be provided highly structured programs that directly teach application of phonologic rules to print (Foorman et al., in press). The most powerful interventions that have been identified for reading disabilities to date consist of a combination of explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, explicit instruction in sound-symbol relationships (phonics), and direct and integrated instruction in text reading and comprehension.

The Stages of Teaching Phonemic Awareness

There are several stages of teaching Phonemic Awareness. Many of the curricular materials based on the Orton-Gillingham approach to teaching reading employ these stages:

1. Recognizing and Supplying Rhymes

• Does cut rhyme with gut?
  
• Does dog rhyme with mad?
  
• Say a word that rhymes with strong. (long, gong, song, wrong)

2. Phoneme Identity

• What word begins with the same first sound as cat? Dog or kite? As flat? Fig or bat?
  
• What word ends with the same sound as man? Tin or mat?

3. Phoneme Isolation

What's the first sound in fan? /f/
What's the last sound in which? /ch/
What's the middle sound in his? /i/

4. Phoneme Segmentation and Counting

• Say the speech sounds (phonemes) you hear in fan. /f/ /a/ /n/
  
• How many speech sounds (phonemes) are there in fan? (3)

5. Phoneme Blending

Blend these sounds together to make a word: /sh/ /u/ /t/ (shut)

6. Phoneme Deletion

Say:	fan without the /f/	(an)
	slit without the /l/	(sit)
	string without the /st/	(ring)
	pitch without the /p/	(itch)

7. Phoneme Substitution

• Say fan. Now change the first sound in fan to /m/. (man)
  
• Other initial phoneme substitution tasks can begin with
  

  mop /t/;	cake /m/;	pet /g/;	deal /s/;	hope /r/
  (top)	(make)	(get)	(seal)	(rope)

• Advancement: initial phoneme(s) to final phoneme(s) to medial phoneme(s)
  Say fan. Now change the last sound to /t/. (fat)
  Say fan. Now change the middle sound to /i/. (fin)