The Relationship between Phonological Awareness and Development of Literacy - Research Paper Example

 What is the relationship between phonological awareness and development of literacy? Abstract Past studies in regard to the relationship of phonological awareness (PA) and literacy have revealed that children with language impairment who show difficulties with phonological awareness are at risk of facing subsequent problems with literacy. A number of studies have provided evidence that are supportive of findings relative to difficulties in reading, decoding, spelling, comprehension and the development of alphabetic skills. Many young children with phonologically based speech impairments encounter noteworthy difficulties not only in reading, but also in oral and written language and comprehension. Specific language impaired children (SLI) show a prevalence in weak literacy and phonology profiles. Children from low socio-economic (SES) backgrounds proved to score poorly in comparison with children who had a history of speech-language impairment that could be resolved by the age of five and children with a history of continual speech –language impairments. Introduction Most studies on the subject are in agreement relative to the connection between a child’s poor spoken and written language skills and his or her low socio-economic background. This link has prompted many implementations of literacy programs such as Head Start. Researchers examined the relationship of early phonological awareness and literacy skills with and without intervention therapy. They compared phonological and literacy skills in children with mild to moderate language disabilities to children from low social-economic background andtypically developing children who come from a middle class background. This research paper also discusses an investigation on relationships of phonological awareness and literacy in young children with mild intellectual abilities compared to children with mixed etiologies who show learning difficulties and weak literacy and language skills. In this analysis vocabulary and letter knowledge, as well as spelling and reading abilities are addressed in the context of phonological awareness. These findings are compared to children from middle class backgrounds with normally developing phonological and literacy skills. Purpose This research report provides data that addresses many important issues. Poor phonological awareness is directly linked to subsequent weak literacy development. Children with specific language impairment who show fragile phonological awareness will have not only difficulties in spelling, learning, reading, decoding, comprehension, nonverbal, oral and written language but mostly show a striking difficulties to cope with task that are more demanding than typical PA exercises. Socially disadvantaged children who enter Kindergarten from families with low social-economic backgrounds are at high risk for delayed oral and written language development. Brief overview of the issue For several decades, children with intellectual disabilities have been taught to read primarily through the use of sight words. This belief is based on the assumption that children who have intellectual disabilities are not able to process phonemic instructions easily due to their limited cognitive abilities. One of the many critics of this belief demonstrated a study conducted by Gombert in 2002 who analyzed reading abilities of children with Down syndrome and the reading abilities of typically developing children. Fowler proved in his research that although children with Down syndrome typically score lower in phonological skills,they too share a strong relationship between visual memory and reading ability. Furthermore, Gombert argued that phonological awareness in comparison to phoneme-spelling, counting and deletion is an easier task for children with Down syndrome. Baroussa and Treiman (2001) have studied the patterns amongst young children on how they learn to understand how spoken language and its phonological sounds can be symbolized through the use of letters. Typically, for developing Kindergarteners, it is required to have the ability to link the use of orthographic knowledge and patterns during their vocal communication to letters. The researchers found that “fine grained linguistic analysis of spelling errors” (Bourssa and Treiman, 2001, p.121) is an important factor to recognize and identify the differences which are present between normally developing children and children with spelling disabilities. Gillon (2004) is in full agreement with this research result and states that phoneme awareness is a reliable predictor of long-term reading and spelling success. Phonological awareness can therefore predict a child’s literacy performance more accurately than previously thought and be a stronger indicator than variables such as a child’s intelligence, vocabulary or socioeconomic background (Gillon, 2004, p.57). A number of research studies have revealed how a child’s reading ability strongly depends on spoken language capacities, particularly the 'phonological skills' by which a young child perceives, remembers and manipulates the sounds of language. The realization how letters in the alphabet represent sound patterns in language is therefore a key element in literacy acquisition. Liberman (1983) proved in her research that phoneme awareness and phonological processing not only play a major role in a child’s reading ability, but also serve as a reliable tool during screening. Foy and Mann found that many of the phonological abilities that we can screen for actually distinguish good and poor readers (Mann, 2002). Phonological awareness is in direct relation to a child’s cognitive development, educational exposure and experience of spoken language (Mann and Wimmer, 1983). Virginia Mann showed in her research that at the same age in which a child realizes that there is a direct relationship between phonemes and literacy his or her ability to recognize morphemes becomes better. In order to understand speech development, Allan Smith researched the timing of brief speech events such as syllables, words, and pauses in young children (Smith et al. 2008). His research proved that children with delayed speech usually demonstrate a pattern of prolonged word duration. His findings helped the medical community to provide early indications of speech, language, and reading disorders. The research data gathered in this context reveal that “Reduced speaking rate is an early indicator of reading disability" (Smith et al., 2008, p.97). Although children with reading disabilities use longer pauses, their articulation abilities do actually not differ significantly with that of typically developing children. Hence, a child’s speaking rate and proportion of pausing in between utterances can serve as an early indicator for reading disability. It has been observed by researchers that there is an underlying connection between phonological processing deficits and a child’s morph syntactic difficulties. Researchers such as Rispens and Been (2007) compared children with developmental dyslexia and children with specific language disorders in regards to their sensitivity to phonological awareness. Their study enabled a better understanding between the relationshipof dyslexia and other specific language impairments. Specific language impairment and developmental dyslexia both compromise a child’s language development. The researchers were hoping to find a common source for the two syndromes, but concluded that the patterns of error in children with dyslexia and children with specific language impairments differ in phonological working memory (Rispens and Been 2007). The Significance of Phonological Awareness There is considerable research indicating that phonological awareness is a very important element of childhood reading success. The phonological awareness of a preschool child, (age 4 or 5) is considered to be an important predictor of his or her subsequent development in reading. High level of phonological awareness allows a child to quickly understand the alphabetic characteristics of the English language in terms of the direct link amongst the sounds of spoken words and the way letters represent that exact sound in a written form. Research has indicated that adequate training in phonological awareness impacts the acquisition of reading abilities more than previously thought. This is particularly true when instructions on phonological awareness are combined with letters. While learning to read and spell, children have to become aware that words comprise of sounds, which are rearranged, blended, segmented and sequenced in order to allow them to absorb the relevant mapping relative to sound patterns of letters. Phonological awareness thus becomes a major contributor in developing spontaneous word recognition. When correct sound and letter patterns are repeatedly matched in building the child’s ability to read relative to his vocabulary level, it results in spontaneous mastery of reading and recognizing words. If this spontaneity is not present, students cannot read independently and this will adversely impact their reading abilities. Thus, it is important to associate phonological awareness with orthographic or letter knowledge in any early literacy teaching program. Reading research revealed that "making meaning" of literacy requires more than phoneme awareness, phonics, and reading fluency.While phoneme awareness is an important factor in literacy acquisition, good “comprehenders” link the ideas presented in print to their own experiences. Researchers agree that in order for a child to develop literacy skills it also needs to have developed the necessary vocabulary to make sense of the content being read. Researchers agree that in order to develop a child’s literacy they need to be able to summarize, predict and understand what they have read. Liberman (1992) established that there are certain aspects of learning how to read that come unnatural to us, because not only children need to be able to recover phonemes from speech and applying them to letter patterns, but unlike learning to speak, beginning readers must learn to understand what the symbols stand for in the writing system. A Broader Perspective Phonological awareness is a kind of meta-linguistic awareness relative to the capacity of carrying out mental operation in regard to speech (Tunmer and Rohl, 1991). In the context of different kinds of phonological awareness, it is known that two interpretations have been used. The first indicates that phonological awareness is not a homogeneous element but can be said to be a kind of awareness relative to varied language units. But there appears to be some confusion in this context in regard to the usage of the term phonological awareness. Different researchers have implied different meanings to the terms. Tunmer and Rohl (1991) have referred to the term as being solely related to phonemic awareness. Conversely, Mann (1992) has referred to it as inclusive of syllabic weaknesses. Some researchers have distinguished between segmentation tasks and classification tasks. From psychological perceptions, researchers have dealt with linguistic units that children can represent in their memory because of the significance of the process of acquiring alphabetic codes (Love et al, 1995). Many studies have compared the different levels phonemes and syllables and concluded that phonemic awareness is mostly followed by syllabic awareness. For instance, Rosner and Stanovich et al (1986) found that omitting consonant sounds in the initial stages was more complex for pre-school children. Additionally, Liberman et al (1977) found that for children, counting syllables was simpler in comparison with counting phonemes levels. As an outcome of these findings, researchers suggested that the main unit of articulation is syllable in view of its having higher level of perceptual salience, which makes it easy to sense in speech. At the same time, phonemes are more complex for the child as they tend to be co articulated in the words. Despite strong evidence to the contrary, many researchers uphold the viewpoint that reading is an almost innate, natural process. They believe that plainteaching in phoneme awareness, phonics, structural analysis, and reading comprehension strategies are not a prerequisite for a child to develop literacy skills. Since oral language provides young readers with an adequate meaning-based structure that is sufficient for decoding unfamiliar words.(Edelsky et al. 1991, Goodman 1996). However there is a multitude of scientific research, which does not support the claim that context,is truly a substitution for a child’s decoding skills. For a child to guess the pronunciation of words from context, the child must be able to understand how the context would predict the words. Gough’s research data showed that content words arekey for comprehending the text and can only be predicted from surrounding context 10 to 20 percent of the time (Gough et al. 1981). In comparison Foorman believes that it is better for beginning readers to teach them to decode letters to sounds in anaccurate manner (Foorman et al. 1998). Phonological Awareness and Alphabetic Code Learning relative to literacy in alphabetic orthography requires a great deal of meta-linguistic efforts, primarily because these systems reflect the phonological units relative to speech. Because these units are abstract, children have to learn manipulate phonological codes as well as find the relationship with other forms of graphemes. Some researchers feel that phonological awareness is a precondition (MaClean, Bryant and Bradley, 1987) because it is believed that skills of early reading is dependent upon the relation amongst phonemes and graphemes. Some researchers believe that phonological awareness is a consequence whereby phonemic segments become outcomes relative to reading and writing alphabetic orthographies. In this context, most researchers are in agreement that there are four hypotheses that can be used in resolving the given controversies: • Phonemic awareness is characterized with having a causal association with acquiring the alphabetic code. • Phonemic awareness is the outcome of learning efforts towards reading, which means that phonemic awareness can be found only in readers. • Phonemic awareness can be said to be a prerequisite and an outcome of learning to read. In this context it can be said that beginners that attempt to read, must achieve at least some level of capability for phonemic segmentation so that basic skills are acquired. • A reciprocal association is required amongst learning to read and phonemic awareness after the child acquires the alphabetic code. Researchers supporting this perception have suggested that reading instructions allow accessibility towards more complex stages of phonemic awareness that enables further development towards literacy learning. Conclusion The research so far in regard to phonological awareness and literacy development has found that varied phonological awareness levels exist before the beginning of literacy learning efforts can begin. A progressive growth has been found to exist from varied levels of syllabic awareness towards intra-syllabic awareness of the different units, which then result in phonemic awareness. Research shows that phonemic knowledge is directly related to syllabic awareness.Phonics requires a reader to match letters with sounds and apply it to decode (read) and encode (write) words. However, research established that phonological awareness relates first of all to speech sounds, meaning spoken words. The alphabet letters or sound-spellings are, however also necessary in order to develop a basic phonological awareness of language. The outcome of many research studies shows that phonemic units as well as intra-syllabic units are associated directly with the acquisition of reading. Research evaluated what role these units might play in learning to read and spell, by reviewing intra-syllabic units and their effects on how children learn to read and spell. Scientific data suggests that children's awareness of onset and rhyme units helps in the acquisition of reading and spelling. Hulme et al. (2002) have argued that it is best to emphasize phoneme awareness from the beginning reading stages. As is often the case, when several expert opinions are at hand there is not enough research evidence available to clearly support one or the other. There are still a number of issues that need to be addressed, such as why children that are able to read are described with high intra-syllabic and phonemic awareness levels. Another issue is why disabled readers and typical developing readers are not different in terms of levels of phonological awareness. It is not sufficient to just have a minimum level of phonological awareness to succeed in acquiring reading abilities. It may be possible that a minimum level of access to phonological units is essential while beginning with literacy learning. After acquiring the basic attributes, reciprocal relationships emerge amongst intra-syllabic and phonemic awareness and literacy learning, in keeping with the research outcomes of Perfetti et al (1987). The results depicted in this paper have a direct bearing on phonological awareness and literacy development. They refer to activities related with analyzing syllables in the context of rhymes and onsets that are to be made part of all phonological training programs. It can be said that the usage of the alphabetic code can be considered a support factor for learning relative to correspondence amongst phonemes and graphemes. List of References Bourassa, D., &Treiman, R. (2001). Spelling development and disability: The importance of linguistic factors. Language, Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 32, 172-181. Bryant,P.E.M. MacLean, L. L. Bradley, and J. 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Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools. 31:126-141 Gillon, G. (2004). Phonological awareness: from research to practice. New York: Guilford Press. Goodman, K.S. (1996). Ken Goodman on Reading: A Common Sense Look at the Nature of Language and the Science of Reading. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann. Gough, P.B., J.A. Alford, and P. Holley-Wilcox.(1981). "Words and Contexts." In Perception of Print: Reading Research in Experimental Psychology, edited by O.J. Tzeng and H. Singer. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum Hulme, C., Hatcher, P. J., Nation, K., Brown, A., Adams, J., & Stuart, G. (2002). Phoneme awareness is a better predictor of early reading skill than onset-rime awareness. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 82 , 2-28. Liberman, A. M. (1983). Some differences between phonetic and auditory modes of perception. Cognition, 14, 211 235. Liberman et al. (1974).Explicit syllable and phoneme segmentation in the young child. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 14, pp. 204-212. 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Phonological awareness in reading.The evolution of current perspective.pp.182-201. Perfetti, C. A. et al. (1987). Phonemic knowledge and learning to read are reciprocal: A longitudinal study of first grade children. Merryl-Palmer Quarterly, pp. 284-318. Ramirez, J. and Mann, V. A. (2005). Using auditory-visual integration to probe the basis of noise-impaired speech perception in reading disability and auditory neuropathy J. Acoust. Soc. of America.pp.118, 122-133. Rispens J; Been P; (2007). International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 42 (3): 293-305 (journal article - equations & formulas, research, tables/charts) ISSN: 1368- 2822 PMID: 17514543 Stanovich, K. E. et al. (1986). Assessing phonological awareness in Kindergarten children: issues of task comparability. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 36, pp. 176- 190. Tunmer, W.E. and Rohl.(1991). Phonemic segmentation skill and spelling acquisition. Applied Psycholinguistics, 9, pp. 335-350. Smith AB; Lambrecht Smith S; Locke JL; Bennett J; (2008). Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research, 2008 51 (5): 1300-14 (journal article - research, tables/charts) ISSN: 1092-4388 PMID: 18812490 Read More