Development of Phonological Awareness

Phonological awareness is critical for learning to read in alphabetic languages like English. This report summarizes normal development of phonological awareness as it has been revealed through recent multidisciplinary and cross-cultural research. We argue that a consensus on the definition of phonological awareness has emerged, that research has identified a general sequence of phonological awareness development that is universal across languages, and that certain characteristics of spoken and written languages influence the rate of normal development and levels of phonological awareness that are normally achieved. KEYWORDS—literacy; phonological awareness Dyslexia is a brain-based disorder that causes individuals to struggle with learning to read, despite having normal intelligence, adequate schooling, and intact sensory abilities. Prevalence rates for dyslexia range from 5% to 10%, depending on the primary language spoken in a population and the criteria used to identify the disorder. The underlying cause of dyslexia is difficulty processing the sounds in one’s language, or phonological processing. Research has identified three phonological processing abilities. Phonological memory refers to coding information in a sound-based representation system for temporary storage. Phonological access to lexical storage refers to the efficiency of retrieving phonological codes from memory. Phonological awareness refers to one’s degree of sensitivity to the sound structure of oral language. These abilities are highly interrelated, are strongly related to reading acquisition, and are highly stable individual differences from late preschool on. Phonological awareness is the phonological processing ability most strongly related to literacy. It encompasses phoneme awareness, the ability to manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in words, and rudimentary phonological skills, such as judging whether two words rhyme. Basically, individuals who have difficulty detecting or manipulating sounds in words will struggle with learning to read. Four decades of research have established this relation, and it is evident in all alphabetic languages studied to date. Moreover, randomized intervention studies demonstrate that there is a causal relationship, as intensive instruction in phonological awareness improves literacy. For example, the National Reading Panel’s 2000 report to the U.S. Congress, which described a meta-analysis of 52 controlled experimental studies published in peer-reviewed journals, concluded that phonological awareness instruction has moderate and statistically significant effects on reading and spelling abilities and that explicit instruction is beneficial for typically developing children, for young children at risk for reading difficulties, and for poor