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October 6-8, 2003

Do You Hear What I Hear? Phonological Awareness in Young Children

Michael Marks
Education Specialist, University Primary School, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

See also: Biography and Related Resources

Question
Mr. Marks, please talk about the difference between phonics, phonemic awareness, and phonological awareness. Some of the things I read are so confusing! And what do these have to do with learning to read?

Michael Marks
Phonemic awareness refers to the ability to recognize and break spoken language into its phonemes, or basic sounds, and manipulate these sounds.

While phonological awareness and phonemic awareness are often used interchangeably in print, phonological awareness can specifically refer to the ability to accurately differentiate each of the phonemes and would be more commonly used by a speech and language specialist.

Phonics is the representations of these basic sounds or phonemes using letters of the alphabet. This is usually the last step and taught after a child has a good grasp of phonemic awareness skills.

IEL Editor:
For more information on terminology, see the Glossary of Terms.

Jodie
My son is 3 years old and has some difficulty with recognizing certain consonants, for example: p, g, b, d. How can I overcome this?

Michael Marks
Jodie, it is common for young children to mix up similar-looking letters such as you mentioned (p and g, b and d). In fact, letter reversal often persists into first grade as children become able to correctly discern left and right consistently. At 3 years of age, it is developmentally appropriate to be playing with the sounds letters make. Spend time with your son singing songs and nursery rhymes.

Try making up silly rhyming word lists where you and your child practice changing the initial sound of a word (table, pable, mable, dable). Play word games with initial sounds. (For example: What sound does "bear" start with? Look around the room, can you find anything else that starts with a "buh" sound?) It helps to especially play with helping your child discriminate between voiced and unvoiced phonemes. These are phonemes where the mouth, lips, and tongue are exactly the same and the only difference between the two sounds is whether you use your voice box or not (p/b, t/d, f/v, s/z are examples). Thanks for your question.

Question
Is teaching the alphabet part of phonemic awareness development?

Michael Marks
Phonemic awareness deals with the sounds, phonics deals with the sound-letter association. Using a phonemic awareness approach, the emphasis is placed on learning to hear and play with the sound system before you worry about associating the sounds with certain letters.

Question
Is there a point to doing activities such as "Letter of the Week" in preschool?

Michael Marks
While these types of activities are common, they often don't result in more than memorization of certain words for certain letters with no real understanding of the relationship. I have often worked with children who can tell me that "a is for apple" and "b is for bear," but don't know how to answer the question, "What sound does bear start with?" They will often just repeat what they have memorized, "b is for bear."

Question
If a child is often around adults (family and caregivers) who talk to her, sing to her, and listen to her, and if somebody reads to her several times a week, what are the chances that she will have a problem with phonological awareness? I know it can happen; I just want to know the likelihood.

Michael Marks
Studies show that around 70% of children seem to develop skills in phonemic awareness with just the types of exposure to words and sounds and activities you describe. The remaining 30% need additional help and direct instruction to understand that words are made up of discrete sounds that they can manipulate.

Question
What role do rhymes and music have in developing phonemic awareness?

Michael Marks
The ability to pick out rhyming words is one of the first skills in phonemic awareness. Children who have been exposed to lots of music and nursery rhymes have a huge head start on these skills. There are many songs that play with sounds. The Raffi song "Willaby, Wallaby, Woo" is a wonderful way to play with initial consonant sounds. Children go around a circle and playfully insert a child's name into each verse. The song for Justin and Emily would be as follows:

Willaby, wallaby, wustin; an elephant sat on Justin.
Willaby, wallaby, wemily; an elephant sat on Emily.

Children love this song and its fun to use other consonant sounds. On another day you could sing "Tillaby, tallaby, tustin… This can be done with all the basic consonant phonemes as well as the digraphs (ch/th/sh).

A good song for vowel songs is "Apples and Bananas", an old song but also recorded by Raffi. The children sing "I like to eat, eat, eat apples and bananas." Each verse is then changed to a short vowel sound or long vowel sound and most of the vowel sounds in the song change to match. For example, for "short e" you would sing, "I like to et, et, et epples and banenes," and for "long e" you would sing, "I like to eet, eet, eet eeples and baneenees."

Question
What can teachers do to support phonological awareness in children who speak English as a second language?

Michael Marks
An important thing to remember is that ESL children are already developing phonemic awareness in their native language. Complications can occur when sounds are used in one language but not in another. It is important for a child to clearly hear and replicate the basic phonemes of both languages. It is especially important to speak slowly with clear articulation for ESL children.

To get a better understanding of what it is like for a child developing phonemic awareness, imagine you are learning a foreign language. You are told a phrase and asked to say it back. The speaker talks at a rapid pace and slurs their speech. Think how difficult it would be to write down the sounds you heard or to accurately speak them back. And you already have good phonemic awareness in your native language.

Question
How can a teacher or parent help a child who has a problem with phonemic awareness?

Michael Marks
If a child is having difficulty identifying sounds in a word, it can be helpful to start with larger chunks. Start with asking the child to repeat after you. Tell her a compound word "sailboat" and ask the child to repeat it, then ask the child to say "sailboat" without the "sail", help the child say "boat". Do this a few minutes at a time over several days until the child becomes skilled. Then move to syllables. "Say table. Now say table with the ta." "Say bumblebee. Now say bumblebee without the bee." Eventually you can do this with words and initial sounds. "Say pig. Now say pig without the puh." Remember that children progress at different rates. Give your child lots of exposure to clear spoken language and stories. Play with sounds in songs and conversation and games. All these help give a child the strong foundation they need to be a successful, fluent reader and writer.

Question
What developmentally appropriate activities can teachers use to teach phonemic awareness? What are some inappropriate activities?

Michael Marks
Emphasis should be placed on playing and having fun with the sounds in words. Sitting children down to do a letter worksheet or writing sounds is not developmentally appropriate. Songs, nursery rhymes, stories, and games are more appropriate ways to practice and develop phonemic awareness skills than group instruction. Remember that phonemic awareness is concerned with the ability to identify and manipulate the sounds of spoken language, it is not drill in letters and sounds.

Question
What kinds of behavior might a teacher see that indicates a developmental delay or early reading difficulty in a child?

Michael Marks
I have found that parents and teachers usually have a pretty good sense of how their child is doing. If you have a concern, it is usually worthwhile mentioning early. It is much easier to help a child with a mild delay than to wait until there are clear problems.

At ages three and four, it is still common for children to still be developing some sounds and to substitute easy sounds for more difficult ones. Common substitutions are w/r/l, d/t, f/th. Children may also drop one sound when there is an initial or ending blend in a word. What parents and teachers should watch for are problems hearing the difference between sounds more than the child's ability to accurately say them. Watch for signs that a child does not notice when you change words, or deliberately mispronounce words in a familiar story or song (for example, reading "wittle, wed, widing hood" - that may be how a child says it, but they should be able to tell when you are reading it incorrectly to them.)

At age 5, children should be able to pick out two words that end in the same sound (rhyme) from a choice of three (for example, "which words end in the same sound? me, bee, you"). Children this age should also be able to tell you the initial sound of words ("what sound does boot start with?").

Question
What are some good resources teachers can use to help them increase children's phonemic awareness?

Michael Marks
One of the best all-around resources I have found is the book Phonemic Awareness in Young Children: A Classroom Curriculum by Marilyn Jager Adams, et.al. It is used by several early childhood programs and has clear explanations of phonemic awareness as well as great activities. It is appropriate for teachers and parents. I highly recommend it. For more information and to view sample pages, check this title at www.amazon.com.

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