Define Phonological Awareness and how it supports language development.
Phonological awareness is the oral language and a concrete understanding of the various ways the language can get broken down into various smaller sections (Gutiérrez-Palma et al., 2019). This concept supports language development by equipping critical skills to students in literacy development and also acts as a predictor of future reading and success in spelling words and vocabularies.
- Explain how students progress from simple to more complex phonological skills.
In most cases, phonological awareness develops when students move from working with large sound pieces to smaller pieces of sound (Soto, Olszewski & Goldstein, 2019). They can progress from significant recognizing the sounds to producing the sounds, matching to blending, and then segmenting the sounds, having the ability to hear and work with the initial sounds, the final, and the middle sounds. Students also may progress from extensive learning with an array of objects and pictures to learning through oral activities
- Explain both phonological and phonemic differences in language and their applications in written and oral discourse patterns.
Phonological awareness entails the development of various phonological components of the spoken language. This concept is applied to both written and discourse patterns by recognizing when words rhyme (Gutiérrez-Palma et al., 2019). Students develop the ability to notice the syllable and word patterns. Conversely, phonemic awareness refers to the phoneme knowledge and the students’ ability to detect, segment, blend, and manipulate all the individual sounds in word form. Even though a phoneme happens to be one word and the smallest level of speech production, it is regarded as the highest phonological ability level.
- Explain how similarities and differences in sound production between English and other languages affect English language learners’ reading development in English.
When the students are processing both spoken and the written language, their brain tends to employ a particular phonological code that represents the linguistic information (Soto, Olszewski & Goldstein, 2019). These codes are unique to every language because each language tends to have its own set of sounds and specific rules governing how the sounds can get combined into syllables and words. In most cases, learners find it difficult to inappropriately generalize their first language rules of spelling, syntax, pragmatics, and pragmatics to their second language, leading to an adverse effect on the acquisition of literature (Gutiérrez-Palma et al., 2019).
- Describe some types of formal and informal types of phonological awareness assessments.
Formal assessments mainly involve systematic and pre-planned database tests used to measure the level of understanding of the students (Gutiérrez-Palma et al., 2019). In other words, they are used to determine the proficiency of the content by the student. Notable examples include standardized tests. This test is essential as it is an effective method of assessing the academic achievement of various students. On the other hand, the informal assessment entails the spontaneous forms of assessment that quickly incorporate into the daily classroom activities (Soto, Olszewski & Goldstein, 2019). It is used to measure the student’s level of performance and progress. Notable examples include the checklist, which entails a schedule with layout tasks based on time of the day or other specified date.
References
Gutiérrez-Palma, N., Naranjo, N. V., Justicia-Galiano, M. J., & Fernández, M. D. L. V. C. (2019). Beyond phonological awareness: Stress awareness and learning word spelling. Learning and Individual Differences, 74, 101755.
Soto, X., Olszewski, A., & Goldstein, H. (2019). A Systematic Review of Phonological Awareness Interventions for Latino Children in Early and Primary Grades. Journal of Early Intervention, 41(4), 340-365.