Phonological Awareness

683 Words2 Pages

Vera Blazevska
12/21/2017
Dr. Davidoff

Making Evidence Based Decisions Regarding Phonological Awareness Intervention in Young School-aged Children

Phonological Awareness Defined
Spoken speech consists of linguistic units that vary in size from larger (sentences, words, syllables) to smaller units (morphemes and phonemes). Typically, these linguistic elements are consciously and effortlessly recognized by adult speakers. In a simplified form, an individual’s ability to analyze spoken language is known as “phonological awareness.” In his book Phonological Awareness. From research to Practice, Gail T. Gillon (2004) defines phonological awareness as “a multi-level skill, typically seen as compromised of syllable awareness, onset-rime awareness, …show more content…

In his study, he states, “Phonological sensitivity is the sensitivity to and ability to manipulate the sound structure of oral language. It encompasses both phonemic awareness and more rudimentary phonological skills such as rhyme detection” (p. 473). Stanovich (1992) stated that the term, “Phonological sensitivity should be viewed as a continuum ranging from ‘deep’ sensitivity to ‘shallow’ sensitivity” (p.317). Therefore, a more encompassing perspective of phonological awareness includes reference to skills ranging among that continuum of shallow to deep level awareness (Anthony et. al 2003; Stanovich, …show more content…

Early stages of development include shallow levels of phonological awareness skills and they are at the less complex end of the continuum. These skills require the child to detect larger phonological units such as words and syllables. At these levels, children begin to identify rhymes (melt and belt– these words rhyme) and segment sentences. The center of the continuum demonstrates skills such as segmenting words into syllables (eg. pancake = pan+cake) and blending syllables into words (eg. door + bell = doorbell). Next is segmenting words into onsets and rimes. Such activities include dividing words into two smaller units and recognizing its onset and rime (eg. t(onset)+el(rime)=tell). The other end of continuum includes deeper levels of awareness. These skills require a deeper level of sensitivity. Often, researchers use the term phonemic awareness to refer to this sophisticated level of awareness. Phonemic awareness includes tasks such as blending and segmenting individual phonemes. This requires the child to be able to isolate and manipulate the sounds within words and syllables. Having strong phonemic awareness skills allows the child to recognize that each word/syllable consists of varying discrete phonemes and that these phonemes can be identified, blended and segmented to create new

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