Toward a Common Terminology for Talking About Speech and Reading: A Glossary of the “Phon” Words and Some Related Terms

Pick up a recent article on reading and you are very likely to encounter terms like phonological, phoneme, phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, phoneme discrimination, phoneme identification, phonological processing, phonological decoding, phonemegrapheme correspondences, phonological dyslexia, phonics, or other phon words. The meanings of these many terms have much in common, but in no case are they identical. Some refer to constructs related to oral language and some to processes or practices specifically related to reading and writing. Some are terms for basic language processes and others for the ability to reflect on those processes. Some have their origins in linguistics, some in speech-language pathology, some in education, and some in psychological research on language and reading.