Phonological awareness is an awareness of the sound structure of words. It refers to a child’s ability to hear and manipulate the sounds of language. It’s an important skill for reading because it helps children understand how words are made up, which makes it easier for them to sound out new words.
Phonological awareness has three main components:
- Phonemic awareness – the ability to hear and manipulate individual speech sounds in spoken words (for example, knowing that /d/ is at the beginning of dog).
- Syllabic segmentation – identifying syllables within spoken words (for example, separating “kitten” into /kit/ /ten/).
- Rhyme detection – recognizing rhyming patterns between two words (for example, saying “dog” then “log” because they both end with the same sounds).
What the research says about phonological awareness and reading
There have been numerous research studies conducted which support the link between phonological awareness and learning to read. One of the earliest studies I know about was conducted in 1987 by Wagner and Torgesen. They concluded that children who have poor phonological awareness skills have a difficult time learning to read. The reverse is also true- children who have good phonological awareness skills usually have a much easier time learning to read. Since then, the body of research has grown and has continued to support the causal relationship between phonological awareness and reading.
Without early, explicit instruction, non-readers and poor readers will fall further and further behind.
What over 25 years of experience has taught me about the link between phonological awareness and learning to read
One of my first jobs out of graduate school as a young speech-language pathologist was teaching children K-3 in a language development classroom. I was responsible for teaching all their academics and remediating any speech and/or language disorders. I soon noticed that my students who struggled with phonological processing and had poor phonological awareness skills were also having a difficult time learning to read. This was a confirmation of the research I had read on the subject. I provided explicit instruction for phonological awareness and phonics skills to help these students learn to read and eventually succeed.
Based on many decades of research and my own personal experience, I believe a good, comprehensive literacy assessment should definitely include an assessment of phonological awareness skills. If you do not know that the child needs help with phonological awareness, you are missing a huge part of the puzzle in helping them learn to read.
References
Wagner, R. K., & Torgesen, J. K. (1987). The nature of phonological processing and its causal role in the acquisition of reading skills. Psychological Bulletin, 101(2), 192–212. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.101.2.192