Phonologica Awareness
Phonological Awareness Explained through a Case Study
Foram Naik
Brock University
Phonological Awareness Explained Through a Case Study
Phonological awareness is the understanding that oral language can be manipulated and broken down into many smaller components (Chard & Dickson, 1999). Manipulation of sounds refers to adding, subtracting, and substituting phonemes (smaller components of words) to make different sounds. Sentences can be broken down into words, words into syllables, and syllables into smaller components (e.g., onset and rime, and individual phonemes like /f/) as illustrated in Table 1 (Goswami, 1990). Phonemic awareness is a subset of phonological awareness; it is an understanding that individual words are made up of phonemes or individual sounds and can be changed and manipulated by blending, segmenting, and substituting different letters in the word to make different sounds (Chard & Dickson, 1999). Phonological awareness and phonemic awareness differ distinctively from each other. Phonological is oral and auditory manipulation of words whereas phonemic is the manipulation of the written letters and sounds (Chard & Dickson, 1999). Manipulation of oral and written words is important for children to develop eventual fluency in reading. The lack of good quality phonological/phonemic awareness is a cause of young children developing eventual reading disability. The ability to distinguish between different phonemes as an infant is referred to as the universal phonemic sensitivity. Experiments conducted showed that this ability decreases as age increases (Werker, 2010). Therefore, it is important for children to develop their phonemic awareness at a young age.
Table 1
|Word |Syllable |Onset and rime |Phoneme |
|“cat” |cat |c - at
Foram Naik
Brock University
Phonological Awareness Explained Through a Case Study
Phonological awareness is the understanding that oral language can be manipulated and broken down into many smaller components (Chard & Dickson, 1999). Manipulation of sounds refers to adding, subtracting, and substituting phonemes (smaller components of words) to make different sounds. Sentences can be broken down into words, words into syllables, and syllables into smaller components (e.g., onset and rime, and individual phonemes like /f/) as illustrated in Table 1 (Goswami, 1990). Phonemic awareness is a subset of phonological awareness; it is an understanding that individual words are made up of phonemes or individual sounds and can be changed and manipulated by blending, segmenting, and substituting different letters in the word to make different sounds (Chard & Dickson, 1999). Phonological awareness and phonemic awareness differ distinctively from each other. Phonological is oral and auditory manipulation of words whereas phonemic is the manipulation of the written letters and sounds (Chard & Dickson, 1999). Manipulation of oral and written words is important for children to develop eventual fluency in reading. The lack of good quality phonological/phonemic awareness is a cause of young children developing eventual reading disability. The ability to distinguish between different phonemes as an infant is referred to as the universal phonemic sensitivity. Experiments conducted showed that this ability decreases as age increases (Werker, 2010). Therefore, it is important for children to develop their phonemic awareness at a young age.
Table 1
|Word |Syllable |Onset and rime |Phoneme |
|“cat” |cat |c - at
References: Chard, J.D., Dickson, V.S. (1999). Phonological awareness: instructional and assessment guidelines. 34(5), Retrieved from http://www.ldonline.org/article/6254 Gagen, M. (2007). Blending explained. 22. Retrieved from http://www.righttrackreading.com/blending.html Geva, E. (2000). Issues in the assessment of reading disabilities. Informally published manuscript, Department of Human Development and Applied Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada. Retrieved from http://fcis.oise.utoronto.ca/~hmcbride/HDP1285Geva%20RD%20ELL09.pdf Goswami, C.U. (1990). Phonological skills and learning to read. Retrieved from http://books.google.ca/books?id=708McKP5rWcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=phonological+skills+and+learning+to+read&hl=en&ei=eXXlTP3IA4GOnwfAm52RDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false Werker, J. (2010). Discover psychology [pp.111-115]. (Adobe Digital Editions ), Retrieved from http://login.nelsonbrain.com/cb/login.htm