About phonological awareness

The term phonological awareness is a general term and means awareness of the sound structure of words. Children with phonological awareness are aware of the sounds in speech. They have the ability to hear and discriminate the sounds around them. They can hear rhythm, rhyme and alliteration and understand that spoken words have parts.

It has been shown repeatedly that children who have good phonological awareness at school entry have better reading outcomes than children who do not. UK researchers Lynette Bradley and Peter Bryant found that a pre-schooler’s phonological aptitude predicts his or her reading three years later. So early phonological awareness is the strongest indicator of later reading success. As US researcher Marilyn Adams was aware in 1994, pre-schoolers given training in phonological awareness show enhanced success in their later reading acquisition. Also, a child’s future ability to spell is greatly enhanced by phonological awareness because, as US educator Wiley Blevins notes: “Whereas phonics is characterised by putting together sounds to form words that are printed, spelling involves breaking down spoken words into sounds in order to write them.” So learning to read through phonics also helps a child with their spelling in the future.

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