What is Phonological Awareness?

Being one of the core related skills under emergent literacy, phonological awareness is essential for the ability to respond and control the structure of a spoken word, statement, or vocal sound distinctive from its meaning. (Stackhouse & Wells, 1997)

Different types?

Yes, that are different types, namely syllable awareness, onset-rime awareness and phoneme awareness. Don't worry we will go through them one by one below.

Syllable awareness:

• knowing that 'big' words can be separated into smaller parts, identified as syllables.

• e.g 'computer' can be broken down as com + pu + ter

• 4 years olds: 50% of them can count syllables and 5 years old: 90% (Moat, 2000)

Onset-rime awareness

• knowing the onset and rime components of the word: onset--- the beginning sound, rime: the sounds followed by the beginning sound

• e.g 'hot', onset: h , rime: ot

• starts acquiring from 2 years old

Phoneme awareness

• knowing that different words and section of the word contains sounds

• e.g first sound of the word 'hot' is h

When should my child acquire phonological awareness skills??

According to Dodd and Gillion, 2001: in Australia....

How do I help my child with phonological awareness skills?

Based on the 3 types of phonological awareness, there are plenty of ideas, check out the free downloadable guide on ideas to boost your kid's language skills!

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Phonological awareness is essential to the development of reading, writing, and spelling. Targeting phonological awareness can immensely improve achievement in children susceptible to reading problems or reading. disorders -- Shanahan and Lonigan, 2013

Hope you all find this useful, leave a comment and tell me. I would love to hear all of them.

Have a great day and don't forget to smile!