Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic Awareness

Angela Black, Mollie Bobay, Megan Bowers

Yopp, H. K. (1992). Developing phonemic awareness in young children. The Reading          Teacher, 45(9), 696-703.

Definition of process: Phonemic awareness is “an understanding that speech is composed of a series of individual sounds” (Yopp, 1992, p.696). For example, the word “cat” is broken down into three sounds /k/ /a/ /t/ . Children demonstrate this awareness when they are able to control phonemes through successfully engaging in phonemic awareness activities.

Developmental information of process: By kindergarten, most children have a substantial vocabulary and command of phonemes. They can accurately produce most sounds. At this age, however, children typically do not have phonemic awareness. Since phonemes are not discrete units in speech, they are difficult to identify and engage in awareness. They also are greatly influenced by their phonological context. Phonemic awareness is a necessary condition to learn to read that children should acquire before or during first grade (when reading is taught).

Stage of reading impacted: Phonemic awareness is both a prerequisite and a consequence of learning to read.  Therefore, it impacts the reading acquisition stage. Phonemic awareness is related to a child’s success in the beginner reading stage. Phonemic awareness impacts reading because readers must understand the concept that letters and phonemes are related.  Evidence supports the notion that reading performance is affected by phonemic awareness instruction.  For instance, Lundberg et al, as cited in Yopp (1992), found that six year old children from low socioeconomic status homes who had training in phonemic awareness outperformed the control group on reading achievement tests.  These tests were given when the children were in the first grade.  In addition, the children who received phonemic awareness training also became more proficient spellers.  Another study by Bradley and Bryant, as cited in Yopp (1992), showed that training four and five-year-olds to categorize words based on initial, medial, and final sounds, had higher spelling and reading achievement when tested after two years of instruction.  

Based on this evidence, it is suggested that teachers should use less formal activities, such as rhyming, storytelling, word games, and riddles to increase phonemic knowledge.  There are a variety of activities that teachers can do; however, the objective should be to facilitate children’s ability to recognize that speech is comprised of sounds.  

All activities should emphasize the phoneme sounds, and not the letter names; therefore, the children and teacher should refer to the segments by their phoneme name.  The following are types of phonemic awareness activities:  Sound matching, sound isolation, sound blending, sound addition or subtraction, and segmentation activities.   These activities should be fun and can be made into songs or games. Sound matching tasks require children to match words based on a given sound.  They could also be asked to generate or identify a word that has a particular sound.  Sound isolation activities are when a child is asked to tell what sound occurs at a specific position (e.g. middle of the word).  Blending activities require the students to blend given sounds into a word.  For instance, the teacher may say /b/-/a/-/t/ and the children blend the sounds together to form the word ‘bat’.  Sound addition or subtraction is when sounds are added or subtracted in words from familiar songs.  An example would be changing the familiar phonemes in “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” from Ee-igh, ee-igh, oh to Bee-bigh-bee-bigh-boh.  Segmentation activities is the most difficult activity for children to grasp as it requires them to isolate sounds in a spoken word.  Each sound is separated from one another, but Yopp cautions that words with no more than three phonemes should be used when working on segmentation.  

Connections to oral language: Phonemic awareness is best taught through oral productions of the sounds. Teachers should rarely use letters that correspond to the sound, especially when working with young children who may not know the alphabet. Children have vocabulary filled with multiple phonemes, but they may not have made the connection that individual sounds make up a word. The phonemic awareness exercises are to be used as a supplemental activity for teachers to engage students in the sounds of the oral language.

Connections to bilingual or culturally/linguistically diverse: Although no specific information is given in the given article, phonemic awareness in bilingual children may facilitate a connection between languages because some languages have phonemes that are identical. Additionally, it is speculated that bilingual children may benefit from phonemic awareness activities to help build English language and reading skills.

Videos:
Silly Sound Attendance for Phonemic Awareness
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwqeWEUBxgU

Phonemic Awareness, A Resource for Parents
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzbMkYeIwFc&feature=related