The foundations of good reading skills

sound speak

A child’s early years are considered most crucial for physical, intellectual, and emotional developments.

This is the time when children learn elementary concepts that lay the foundations for their academic success. Hence, both parents and teachers should give immense attention to building a solid grounding for children in their formative years.

It is also the time when kids pick up language skills from their parents and learn to communicate. However, without proper guidance, it becomes difficult for them to grasp a particular language.

For holistic understanding, it is imperative that toddlers are made aware of the concept of phonology and its importance in learning the art of reading and writing correctly.

Phonology

Phonology refers to a branch of linguistics related to the systematic organisation of sounds in a particular language. It mainly focuses on the study of the systems of phonemes in languages and covers a linguistic analysis.

People usually get confused between phonology and phonetics. While the former refers to the study of sound pertaining to the system of a language, the latter is the study of sound pertaining to the act of speech. Sounds of a language can be grouped into distinctive units and these units are called phonemes.

These are the smallest units of a spoken language. The combination of phonemes creates syllables and words. For instance, the word ‘cat’ has three phonemes, namely, /c/ /a/ /t/. There are a total of 44 phonemes in the English language. This also includes sounds of letter combinations like /th/ or /ph/.

Phonological awareness

The term ‘phonological awareness’ refers to the ability of a child to use ‘sounds’ and ‘words’ appropriately. This means that a child with a good grasp on phonology is able to break down a word into separate sounds. Once a child gets familiar with the concept, it augments his/her reading skills significantly.

Decent phonological knowledge aids kids to link sounds with symbols and recognise various words, which thus enhances their reading skills. It helps them in identifying rhyming words like ‘cat’ and ‘mat,’ adding extra sounds to a particular word or changing the sounds in a word. Also, it enables them to segment, mix and delete syllables.
 
Phonological awareness builds the base of various skills, which keep on developing in primary classes at school through direct training and exposure. This awareness acquaints children  with rhymes and sounds in a language. Besides, it also helps them combine separate sounds into words.

Benefits

Phonological awareness provides an appropriate platform for developing reading skills significantly. In addition to reading or learning, it enables children to use alphabetic codes. They learn the art of reading from their parents and teachers, which then assists them in recognising sounds, forming a word and identifying the words that they use often.

In early years, children should be encouraged to participate in word-playing games and activities, which will further help them in identifying patterns in a particular word. It will also enable them to comprehend how to divide words into phonemes and how to bring phonemes together to form words.

This letter-sound knowledge facilitates them at the time of reading, writing and learning. Phonological awareness improves the accuracy of kids while learning and writing spellings. Apart from this, it also enhances their vocabulary.

Therefore, parents and teachers are advised to help their kindergartners develop phonological awareness. It will ensure that children gain proficiency in reading as they grow up.

Developing skills

Parents and teachers play a key role in developing phonological awareness in kids. Parents can read out rhyming words aloud to their children and then ask them about the words they remember.

They can instill effective understanding of words and sentences in their wards by reading a particular sentence and clapping for the individual words in it. For example, while reading the sentence, ‘Have a nice day’, they can clap four times to clarify the number of words forming the sentence. Besides this, they can ask their children to recognise rhymes from a group of words.

In order to assess the phonological abilities of students or to teach them the basics of phonology, teachers need to have a good insight of the subject and acute observational skills to determine which students need more focus.

Teachers should concentrate on evaluating students’ aptitude to play with various parts of words by segmenting, blending, deleting and substituting. This word play can be practised at different levels like words, syllables, rhymes and sounds (phonemes). Teachers can also create interesting activities for the little ones in order to make learning and understanding fun for them.

Early intervention

Children who possess a basic understanding of phonology are more likely to be competent in reading as well as writing. On the contrary, those kids who don’t have the required level of understanding of the subject have to struggle hard to understand words through sounds and syllables.

Teachers must be aware that phonological awareness doesn’t develop in a day; instead it takes time to gain expertise in the subject.  Proper observation of the various activities of students will give them a clear idea as to which students require overall training and those who need to be taught phonology only in some situations.

Phonological awareness embodies the act of recognising and manipulating units of language like words, syllables, rhymes and sounds. It helps children gain better understanding of the language, which thus assists them in being adept at reading, writing, as well as speaking.

 Children with superior levels of phonological awareness learn to read quickly, whereas those with weak phonological skills often turn out to be poor readers. Hence, it’s of paramount importance that parents and teachers understand the value of this essential skill by tracing out the child’s reading problem at an initial stage itself.

Making kids aware of the crucial subject of phonology will enhance their skills immensely and help them rise ahead of others, right from their formative years.