Margaret Watkinson

There are so many ways that the ground work for learning to be a reader get’s laid from the earliest of ages. Today I will talk about one area that is essential and needs no books, letter knowledge or even a broad vocabulary. Phonemic Awareness!

What is phonemic awareness? Phonemes are the smallest unit of sound that holds meaning. In English, /s/ added to book means more than one book; /ing/ to go means in the process of go or move. (There is actually an International phonetic alphabet which is a way to represent the sounds of all languages, but for my purposes here, I am inserting substitutes for English phonemes such as “ing” so you get the idea.) This alphabet is used for for phonetic transcription of any language.

Two interesting points around this topic are:

1. All (hearing) infants are born with the ability to hear and create every phoneme (sound unit) of every language. The human brain is amazing! Click languages, the rolling /r/ of Spanish, the sounds that are made in the back of the throat in Russian or German- all of them. Over time, the phonemes that the child’s language does not utilize, are eliminated by the brain. Those sounds are no longer heard and the child, now getting older, can no longer make those sounds. This is why, as adults and teens, when we learn a new language, we have accents. This is also why, little ones who are learning to speak multiple languages do so without accents. A good way to illustrate this concept is that in Chinese, there is no /w/ sound. If I give my last name, Watkinson, to someone who is a native Chinese speaker, they will say Latkinson and insist that they are saying Watkinson. This is because they don’t hear the /w/ sound anymore.

Sound substitutions with young children are very common and normal. Over time most are corrected naturally. However, when a sound substitutions are in an unusual pattern or persist longer than expected, it’s important to get evaluated by a speech pathologist so that the sound is not eliminated causing issues later on.

2. The second interesting aspect of phonemes is that the English writing system has 26 letters to represent 44 (in most English dialects) phonemes – 24 consonant sounds and 20 vowel phonemes. This information is helpful to understand because to become a fluent reader, a child must map the sound to a letter, combine sounds with letters that represent the sounds and do it all in an instant. There is a lot of great research being done on this, but for our purposes here, we will focus on just the sounds and not the letters!

So that’s a little about phonemes.

Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, isolate and manipulate the sounds of language. Phonological awareness is a little big more expansive in that it included the ability to separate words into syllables or beats, blending sounds and other aspects of playing with language that includes phonemic awareness. Catchy songs such as “Hokey Pokey”, “Ten in the Bed” and “Going on a Bear Hunt” all incorporate beat, sound and fun!

Playing withe sounds of language and words with your little ones is building their phonemic awareness. Songs such as “Willabee Wallabee Woo”, “1,2 Buckle My shoe” and “Down by the Bay” are terrific examples of time-honored sound play songs. Have fun producing a sound, let’s say /z/ and put that sound in place of the /s/ in Samantha. Zamantha will produce lots of giggles for your little one (if her name happens to be Samantha!)

Playing with sounds is what we do with babies- blowing raspberries, repeating ma, da, and of course, Grampa. Nursery rhymes, poems, songs and words in general provide fodder for the entire early childhood years. When interest in letters starts developing, the sound system and idea that you can change them around will be well developed!