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Phonological awareness, i.e. the ability to analyse speech into phonological units, and to represent and manipulate these units
The development of decoding, both for reading and spelling, entails the ability:
- i) to segment the spoken or written words into their smallest possible units – the ‘sounds’ or the ‘letters’
- ii) to recode these units into a format corresponding to another sensory modality (from ‘written’ to ‘spoken’ for reading, from ‘spoken’ to ‘written’ for spelling)
- iii) to blend these small units in order to pronounce or spell the word correctly
Any of these abilities, or several, may be weaker in children with dyslexia.
Using tests to examine phonological awareness, you will be able to determine whether the child has difficulties segmenting spoken words into small units of sound and/or manipulating and blending these units in order to produce the target answer.
You will also be able to determine whether the child has particular difficulties with one or several of the major phonological units (syllables, onset-rime units, or ‘sounds’), all of which are important to be able to develop reading and spelling abilities:
- syllable awareness is important to reading longer words because these have to be segmented into syllables in order to be read quickly and accurately
- onset/rime awareness is important to reading or spelling words such as ‘light’, ‘fight’ and ‘right’, for which segmentation into ‘sounds’ would not lead to the correct pronunciation because the whole rime (in this case ‘- ight’) needs to be represented as such
- phonemic awareness is of paramount importance for the development of the decoding system, i.e. for being able to map each grapheme (or ‘letter’) to its corresponding counterpart in order to read or spell regular words
There are many ways of assessing phonological awareness which vary in terms of complexity. Broadly speaking, as the units of sound tested become smaller, from syllable to onset/rime to ‘sound’, the more difficult the task.
To see whether the child is aware of the various phonological units, each activity usually consists of between 10 and 20 items.
The tasks used to examine phonological awareness vary in terms of cognitive demand. As the task becomes more complex, from comparing to detecting to isolating to manipulating, the level of abstraction of the phonological units to be processed becomes higher.
It is always better to start with simple tasks and short words, and then progress to more complex tasks and longer words, rather than presenting a task that is too difficult right away.
When working with ‘sounds’, the teacher should always be sure to pronounce pure phonemes and make sure the pupil is able to do the same. Above all, the consonants should be said on their own and not followed by a vowel, however faint.
For example, the sound which corresponds to the letter < t > is [ t ], short and crisp, and not [ tuh ]; the sound which corresponds to < s > is [ sss ] and not [ seuh ].
ACTIVITY 7
Why do you think it is so important to pronounce pure ‘sounds’ or phonemes and ask the child to follow?
Discuss this with your course partner and then compare your answer to ours.
Phonemes are abstract units. The child needs to be made aware of what these are in order to be able to represent them properly, and to understand how they function.
If the child thinks that the phoneme corresponding to < s >, for example, is [ seuh ], he or she will start representing this unit as a syllable and not as a phoneme. So [ seuh ] can be a syllable in a word like [ sudden ].
The child will be able to represent and manipulate phonemes only if he or she is taught to analyse the speech stream into these units, i.e. process, manipulate and pronounce them in isolation.
Otherwise the child will not grasp the alphabetic principle and cannot begin to establish the decoding system.
Another example: < cat > will be transcoded as [ keuh-ah-teuh ] and not [ k-a-t ].
Phonemic awareness does not develop spontaneously, least of all in children with dyslexia, which is why it is essential that they are taught explicitly how to analyse spoken words into phonemes.
Generation
In this activity the child is asked to generate words containing the same phonological unit as the target unit.
Example: syllable
- ‘Can you give me a word starting with [ pî ], as in [ pî lot ]’?
- Answer: for example [ pî rat ] or [ pî napel ] (pineapple)
ACTIVITY 8
With your course partner, think up some examples in order to test the child’s ability to generate words with a similar rime, onset or phoneme. Take care to distinguish the different units. Then compare your suggestions with ours.
For example, if you are going to test for onset, you must use words which begin with at least two successive consonants, for example [ tr ], [ pr ], [ str ], [ spr ], etc). If you use a word beginning with a single consonant, for example as in [ lag ], then you are asking for either an onset or a phoneme, [ l ].
Onset
- ‘Can you say a word starting with [ tr ] as in [ trak ]?’
- Answers could be [ trap ], [ trafik ], [ trik ], [ truk ] …
Rime
- ‘Can you say a word ending in [ ak ] as in [ bak ]?’
- Answers could be [ pak ], [ sak ], [ rak ], [ bak ] …
Phoneme
- ‘Can you give me a word ending with [ l ] as in [ bel ]?’
- Answers could be [ tel ], [ bowl ], [ ful ], [ nail ], …
- The vowel can be either short or long; what matters is that the word ends with [ l ].
Detection
This is more difficult than generation because it also requires the intervention of auditory working memory. In this task you say three words and ask the child to pick the odd-one-out. In order to be able to do this the child must keep the three words in working memory in order to compare them.
Example 1: syllable
- ‘Which word does not start in the same way as the other two: [ mar ket ], [ mar jin ] (margin), [ vî cownt ] (viscount)?’
- Answer: [ vî cownt ] (viscount)
It is important to provide words in which the first syllables share the same structure (Consonant-Vowel or Consonant-Vowel-Consonant). For example, the first syllable of [ tâlor ] has a Consonant-Vowel structure ([ tâ lor ]), while the first syllable of [ tâlbak ] (< tailback >) has a Consonant-Vowel-Consonant structure ([ tâl bak ]).
Example 2: Rime
- ‘Which word does not end in the same way as the other two: [ mil ] (mill), [ kil ], [ son ], [ kil ] (kill) ?’
- Answer: [ son ]
Example 3: Onset
- ‘Which word does not have the same beginning as the other two: [ stop ], [ flag ], [ flop ] ?’
- Answer: [ stop ]
Example 4: Phoneme
- ‘Please tell me which word is different at the very beginning: [ krab ], [ krâne ], [ frog ]?’
- Answer: [ frog ]
ACTIVITY 9
In the four examples just given we deliberately made the odd-one-out quite different from the other two words. You can make the detection task more difficult by increasing the resemblance of the odd-one-out to the other two words. With your course partner, think up some examples in which the odd one is less easily distinguished. In each case, use the same four pairs of similar words provided in the examples.
Syllable
- Instead of [ vî cownt ] (viscount) in the first syllable, change only the first vowel, [ mur der ], or the first consonant [ var nish ]
Rime
- Instead of [ son ], change only the vowel of the rime [ pul ] (pull) , or only its consonant [ sin ]
Onset
- Instead of [ stop ], change the first consonant only [ blab ] or the second consonant only [ frap ]
Phoneme
- Instead of [ frog ], use a word which is fairly similar to the first word, like [ trap ], or to the second word, like [ grân ]
Blending
In this task, you are asking the child to put linguistic units together. This is more difficult because it not only involves auditory working memory but also manipulation and sequencing skills.
You can do this test in the guise of a game by saying that you are going to speak a bit like a robot, and the child must find the whole word.
It is important to pause between each element for about a second.
Example 1: Syllables
- ‘Please give me the whole word when you join together [ te ]-[ le ]-[ vi ]-[ j’n ]’
- Answer: [ televij’n ] (television)
Example 2: Onset-rime
- ‘What word do you get when you join up the sounds [ tr ] and [ ap ]?’
- Answer: [ trap ]
Example 3: Phonemes
- ‘What word do you get when you join up the sounds [ k ]-[ a ]-[ n ]-[ a ]-[ l ]?’
- Answer: [ kanal ] (canal)
Segmentation
In this task the child is asked to perform the opposite task to blending: he or she is given a word and is asked to segment it into linguistic units. These activities require the same skills as the ones used for blending.
The segmentation task is usually introduced with examples so that the child knows into which linguistic units the words have to be segmented. For example, if you want the child to segment monosyllabic words into onsets and rimes, you can say, ‘we are going to break up words into two small parts, like for example [ snail ], which contains the two parts [ sn ] and [ ail ]’. Then let the child practice this type of segmentation with a couple of other examples for which you provide corrective feed-back before giving the test items.
ACTIVITY 10
Discuss with your course partner and find some words for tests, using syllables, onset-rime, and phoneme, to find out if the child can segment words into these units correctly.
Example 1: Syllable
- ‘Can you cut up this word into three pieces, [ dificelt ]?’
- Answer: [ di ]-[ fi ]-[ celt ] (difficult)
Example 2: Onset-rime
- ‘Can you cut up this word, [ truk ], into two pieces?’
- Answer: [ tr ]-[ uk ]
Example 3: Onset
- ‘Please cut up this word into the very smallest bits you can: [ majik ] (magic) ‘
- Answer: [ m ]-[ a ]-[ j ]-[ i ]-[ k ]
Deletion
The child is asked to delete a linguistic unit from a word. This test is even more difficult because it requires a greater degree of abstraction of the phonological units: the child needs to be able to isolate the unit from the rest of the word in order to delete it.
Example 1: Syllable
- ‘Please say [ kabin ]; now say it again without [ ka ]’
- Answer: [ bin ]
Example 2: Phoneme
- ‘Please say [ meat ]; now say it again without [ m ]’
- Answer: [ eat ]
Substitution
The child is required to substitute one linguistic unit for another. This is still more difficult because the child has not only to isolate the targeted unit but to manipulate it, and to hold the rest of the word in short-term memory in order to replace the unit.
Example 1: Onset
- ‘Listen to this, [ track ], now tell me please what happens if I replace [ tr ] with [ cr ]’
- Answer: [ crack ]
Example 2: Phoneme
- ‘Listen to the following, [ pat ], now tell me please what happens if I replace [ p ] with [ b ]’
- Answer: [ bat ]
Phoneme fusion
The child is required to substitute one linguistic unit for another. This is still more difficult because the child has not only to isolate the targeted unit but to manipulate it, and to hold the rest of the word in short-term memory in order to replace the unit.
Example: ‘Put together the two very first sounds of these two words: [ bigger animal ]’
Answer: [ ba ]