Phonological awareness

In this post, the general health psychologist and neuropsychologist Covadonga García San Nicolás Cantero explains the importance of phonological awareness.

Phonological awareness (PA) is the capacity that allows us to be aware of the language structure, that is, how sounds are organized individually in the words we pronounce, not their meaning. It is a very important skill in literacy development.

Some authors define phonological awareness as a metacognitive skill on one hand, as it involves a conscious reflection of oral language, and metalinguistic on the other, as it includes different dimensions of speech sound. Phonological awareness is a skill learned through a child’s experiences and interactions during their development.

Why is phonological awareness important?

Phonological awareness is crucial in the literacy process, as thanks to it we can decode and break down words into phonemes, allowing us to manipulate sounds and facilitate the understanding of the relationship between sounds and letters consciously. Thus, good phonological awareness will enhance the learning of skills such as reading and writing.

Having good phonological skills is also beneficial when encountering unfamiliar words for the first time and for morphosyntax, allowing for the study of words’ functions and forms in a more appropriate way.

Moreover, both the development of phonological awareness and the literacy process are essential for personal, social, and intellectual development.

What are the components of phonological awareness?

Before discussing the components of PA, it is important to note that it does not involve spelling or a graphic symbol, that is, one does not need to know the grapheme-phoneme correspondence to have phonological awareness yet. This is crucial as these concepts are often confused.

Phonological awareness has two fundamental basic units:

• Phonemes are the smallest units of speech sounds. Identifying phonemes requires training. For example, the word ”dog” is composed of three phonemes: /d/ – /ɒ/ – /g/.

• Syllables constitute phonological units in which words are segmented. For example, the word ”table” consists of two syllables: ”ta” – ”ble”.

Phonological awareness is typically worked on from larger structures to smaller ones. For instance, one would start by working with phrases, words, and syllables before moving on to phonemes, instead of the other way around (from phonemes to phrases). This is because, in general, we always find larger units to be simpler than smaller ones.

In addition, there is a model of phonological awareness acquisition that is hierarchical and consists of the following levels of awareness:

• Syllabic awareness involves being aware of how words are segmented and being able to manipulate them.

• Intrasyllabic awareness allows syllables to be segmented into their parts. A syllable is composed of the onset which refers to the consonant or group of consonants that make up the beginning of the word; and the rhyme, which would be the letters that follow this onset. The following example explains these terms better: the syllable ”me”. The onset would be ”m” and the rhyme would be ”e”.

• Phonemic awareness refers to the ability to segment the smallest units of speech into discrete sounds such as phonemes. That is, it involves being aware that a word is made up of different individual phonemes.

How is phonological awareness developed?

Phonological awareness is learned through children’s exposure to the sounds of language in their environment, mainly through interactions with adults by talking to them, reading stories, telling them stories, rhymes, tongue twisters, music, etc. This allows children to become aware of sounds, recognize them and learn to use them orally.

There is no consensus about at what age or at what stage of development children are best able to develop or learn phonological awareness. Furthermore, pre-reading children do not have difficulties in recognizing and manipulating syllables, so writing or reading are not prerequisites for learning phonological awareness.

However, in order to develop phonological awareness, a number of important skills are necessary:

• Firstly, it is essential to have the ability to listen. This will allow us to perceive sounds, and to pay attention to them through active listening.

• After this, it is essential to have lexical awareness. This involves being able to identify the words that exist in sentences.

• It is also important to have syllabic awareness, explained in previous points.

• Rhyme awareness plays a fundamental role, as it involves an understanding of how language is structured, the segmentation of words and also involves the ability to discriminate between similar sounds, and to recognize the final sounds of words.

• The next step would be phoneme awareness.

What is taught first?

This is a doubt that will surely arise as you go through this entry. What we are clear about from what we have seen so far is that phonological awareness is fundamental in the reading and writing process, that is, both for learning to write and for learning to read. Rather than explaining what is taught first, we will explain some of the skills that are necessary for writing and reading in general.

For example, in order to write, a series of steps must be carried out. First, we think about what we want to write. Once we know this, we discriminate the individual sounds of the words in order to then be able to retrieve the spelling or letter associated with the sound we want to express. To express it, we need motor skills that allow us to make the necessary letter strokes.

Therefore, in order to write a word correctly, in general, we will need to meet the development of some previous requirements:

• Language.

• Phonological awareness.

• Phoneme-grapheme correspondence.

• Motor skills.

However, for reading, the process is different. The first thing we pay attention to is recognizing the letters in front of us. Once we have recognized them, we make the phoneme-grapheme correspondence, producing the phoneme from the letter. After this, the phonemes are integrated, phonetically composing the word. And finally, we search for the word in the lexicon to understand its meaning.

Examples of symptoms of deficits in phonological awareness

Below, you will find examples of when we may suspect that there are difficulties in phonological awareness:

• When phonological pronunciation errors are made.

• When there are difficulties in reading or writing.

• When individual letters are identified but one is unable to read a whole word.

• When there are difficulties in creating rhymes or finding words that rhyme with others.

• When creating new words is quite challenging.

• When errors are made when segmenting words into syllables.

What exercises help us work on phonological awareness?

To work on phonological awareness, materials with written words, incomplete written words, etc., are not necessary since, as explained earlier, phonological awareness does not involve spelling, but the structure of oral language construction.

Exercises involving onomatopoeias, tongue twisters, rhyme games, word segmentation into syllables, oral repetition of words or sounds heard, etc., would be good ways to stimulate phonological awareness.

Conclusions

Phonological awareness is a linguistic skill that allows us to reflect on the organization of language at the phonological level in order to understand and manipulate it. It is essential for learning to write and read. Phonological awareness can be stimulated through exercises involving phonological activities, without the need for the use of written or read letters.

Bibliography

• Andrade-Santamaría, J. V., Andrade-Solís, P. E., y Zumba-Faicán, D. P. (2023). Desarrollo neurobiológico de la conciencia fonológica y su relación con la lectoescritura. Revista Científica y Arbitrada de Ciencias Sociales y Trabajo Social: Tejedora, 6(12), 87-98.
• Chaseling, M. (2022). Reading is not just Something, It is Everything: Using Collaborative Inquiry Twinned with Generative Dialogue for School Improvement in Elementary Classrooms. The Canadian Journal of Action Research, 22(2), 46–71.
• Gutiérrez Fresneda, R. y Díez Mediavilla, A. (2018). Conciencia fonológica y desarrollo evolutivo de la escritura en las primeras edades. Educación XX1, 21(1), 395-416, doi: 10.5944/educXX1.13256 
• Mateo, M. [Cuentos para Crecer]. (10 de junio de 2022). Conciencia Fonológica: Preguntas y Respuestas. [Archivo de vídeo]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_74Ai-VaQXQ&ab_channel=CuentosparaCrecer
• Rivadeneir, E. M., Reyes, C. C., y León, B. B. (2024). Desarrollo temprano del lenguaje: conexiones significativas entre conciencia fonológica, vocabulario y pronunciación. Conrado, 20(96), 139-147.
• Valle-Zevallos, M.-J., Mendez-Vergaray, J., y Flores, E. (2024). La conciencia fonológica y su relación con la lectura: Revisión sistemática. Horizontes. Revista De Investigación En Ciencias De La Educación, 8(33), 1004–1021. https://doi.org/10.33996/revistahorizontes.v8i33.779

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