Phonological awareness is a key cognitive function in learning how to read. Phonological awareness skills are more important during the early years of education when children are learning to read (Vaessen & Blomert, 2009). Phonological awareness skills are often used for initially processing letters into words that are coded into memory for future use in reading fluency and reading comprehension. The reliance of students on phonological awareness skills often declines as their cognition develops, and proficient readers use their memory rather than the assistance of phonological awareness skills to decode written words. Students’ level of phonological awareness is often used as a predictor for later reading skills. High phonological awareness skills frequently void the effects of lower socioeconomic status (Nobel, Farah, & McCandliss, 2006). Low phonological awareness can also lead to diagnoses of developmental phonological dyslexia.
Phonological awareness is the ability to process letter sounds, rhyming words, and segmenting letters within words (Molfese et al., 2006). Students use phonological awareness skills to process pseudowords or nonwords, and they provide the rules and sounds of letters to sound out these words. Phonological awareness skills are developed through oral language. Oral language is developed through child’s environment, which may happen through chance or purposeful conversations. Earlier oral language skills often predict later phonological awareness skills (Peterson, Pennington, Shriberg, & Boada, 2009). The phonological processing skills of children usually determine their rate of letter identification (Molfese et al., 2006).
References
Molfese V., Modglin, A., Desbick, J., Neamon, J., Berg, S., Berg, C., & Mohar, A. (2006). Letter knowledge, phonological processing, and print knowledge: Skill development in nonreading preschool children. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 39(4), 296-305.
Peterson, R., Pennington, B., Shriberg, L., & Boada, R. (2009). What influences literacy outcome in children with speech sound disorder? Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 52, 1175-1188.
Vaessen, A., & Blomert, L. (2009). Long-term cognitive dynamics of fluent reading development. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 105, 213-231.
