Category: Phonological Awareness
Oral Language Development-Phonological Awareness56
Phonological awareness skills are developed through a child’s environment. Children are learning what types of words to use for particular situations, based on “modeled” oral language. Children are forming their natural responses to the words heard, based on the responses heard. Children are learning how to form words and sentences based upon what they are hearing throughout their day. I will also argue that children learn how to form verbal responses based on more than their sense of hearing. Children also form language through touching, seeing, smelling, and tasting. Individuals have different types of environmental influence that assist in developing their oral language.
There are different “layers” of influence in developing oral language or verbiage that becomes written language. The first influence is the home. The second influence is where the child spends most of their day—school, daycare, etc. The third layer is those brief encounters with other individuals that may occur during the day, such as listening to a store clerk. In today’s world, “the media/technology” has also become a factor in language development. The amount of exposure/interaction time dictates the amount of influence. The amount of natural phonological awareness skills that a student possesses when entering the formal classroom depends on the exposure within the different layers of language development.
Phonological awareness is the ability to process letter sounds, rhyming words, and segmenting letters within words. These skills may be purposely taught throughout the day before children arrive at school or formal education. Simply stopping and helping a child sound out the correct pronunciation of a word—segmenting each sound, such as /c/ /a/ /t/ is a form of phonological awareness development. Reading a book that emphasizes the alphabet and adding the sound of the letter is another form of phonological awareness development. Reading poetry or books that included rhyming words—Dr. Suess—is a form of phonological awareness development. Formal or purposeful education of phonological awareness is usually woven within a child’s formal education.
Phonological Awareness
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.
