Why Is Phonological Awareness Important?

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Table of Contents

What Is Phonological Awareness?

Phonological awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate sounds in spoken words. Children are born hearing language as one whole entity. As they grow, they begin to recognize that sentences have individual words and eventually that words are made up of individual sounds. Phonological awareness is the steps that take them from hearing language as one entity to individual sounds.

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Phonological Awareness Hierarchy

The goal of phonological awareness is to penetrate the word and eventually be able to isolate each sound.  The process that takes children from hearing language as one entity to hearing individual sounds in words happens on a hierarchy. Children are introduced to different levels of words, starting with the biggest pieces first

Word boundaries:

The first realization children have is that language consists of words. Dr. Sally Shaywitz, author of Overcoming Dyslexia, compares this realization to a brick wall and bricks. At first, children only see the brick wall as a whole. Eventually, they learn that the wall is made up of individual bricks. In this scenario, the bricks would be the individual words.

Syllable Awareness:

Next children progress to breaking down words into syllables. The best way to introduce syllables is to begin with compound words such as snowman and then progress to segmenting multisyllabic words. 

Onset and Rime:

Next, children learn to isolate smaller sections of words with onset and rime. Onset is the letter or letters before a vowel and rime is the vowel and all letters that follow. For instance, m-ap, l-og, tr-ain, and fl-ip. This is their first experience isolating individual sounds.

Individual Sounds:

The final step on the phonological awareness hierarchy is the ability to isolate individual sounds, also known as phonemic awareness. For instance, a child would segment the word slap into (s)(l)(a)(p). Once children can isolate each sound in a word, then they learn to manipulate sounds by adding, taking away, and replacing sounds. For example, when asked to remove the sound (s) from the word slap, they should be able to produce the word lap. Follow our guide to teaching phonemic awareness for an in-depth explanation of phonemic awareness activities to practice with your child.

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Why Is Phonological Awareness Important For Reading?

Phonological awareness is the precursor to reading. Children must be able to hear the individual sounds in words before they can associate letters to the sounds. Phonological awareness activities can also tell you a lot about your child’s future reading journey. According to Dr. Sally Shaywitz, the main deficit in dyslexia is a problem getting to the individual sounds. If your child is struggling to hit the phonological awareness developmental milestones, it would be great to be involved with your child’s reading journey at school to ensure they are progressing.

Literacy Skills

When children practice phonological awareness skills, they are practicing reading skills with only the sounds. Reading just adds the letters to the phonological activities. Below are specific ways that phonological awareness skills contribute to literacy.

Phonics:

The two components necessary for phonics instruction are phonemic awareness and alphabet knowledge. Once children can isolate individual sounds in words, they can associate letters to those sounds and start decoding words.

Reading:

Activities that ask children to blend sounds together use the same phonological skill that is required to read words. For instance, when you ask a child what word they get when they blend the sounds (d)(o)(g), they are using the same skill when reading words on a page. Children first sound out each letter when reading, then blend them to read the word. 

Spelling:

Activities that ask children to segment words into their individual sounds contributes to spelling. For instance, in order for a child to spell the word tip, they must first segment the word into the individual sounds (t)(i)(p). Next, they would tie the appropriate letters to each sound and write them.

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