Why Learning to Listen Comes Before Learning to Read

 “The best predictor of reading difficulty in kindergarten or first grade is the inability to segment words and syllables into constituent sound units (phonemic awareness).”  (Famous NIH researcher, Reed Lyon)

If reading is your child’s door to the future, phonemic awareness is the key to unlocking that door. If your child is struggling to sound out words, reading is exhausting and reading comprehension will be challenging. Phonemic awareness is the key.

Let’s start with two key terms: phonological awareness (the broader umbrella term) and phonemic awareness (relating specifically to word sounds).

What Exactly Is Phonological Awareness?

Phonological awareness describes awareness of the phonetic, or sound, structure of words. Some call this phonics or phonetic awareness. There are three lengths of sound bites:  (a) syllables, such as /mit/ in permit, (b) onsets (consonant or syllable sound at the beginning of words) and rimes (vowel and consonant blends at the end of words, such as /it/ in permit) and (c) phonemes (each individual sound, such as /p/ in permit).

Phonological awareness is needed to learn the language – vocabulary, syntax, and nuances – from birth simply by listening. If your child has phonological awareness, they can listen to language and manipulate it, i.e., think about it, observe verb tenses, put words in categories, and organize the language in their word memory.

The strongest indicator of sound phonological awareness skills in a young child is rhyming. Not being able to rhyme at 3-4 years of age shows an inability to identify the sounds —  the rime — at the end of words. It shows a lack of phonological awareness.

What Exactly Is Phonemic Awareness?

The phonemic awareness definition is narrower. It describes the ability to pick out phonemes in spoken words. By picking out, we mean hearing and processing each unique phoneme.

If your child struggles to sound out words, their phonemic awareness may not be strong enough to fully process the phonemes in the words they hear each day.

Crucially, phonemic awareness is much more challenging than listening to whole words. It requires more pixels of sound clarity, which is determined by your child’s language processing skills.

Why Phonemic Awareness Matters

We build our vocabulary and semantics (meaning) through listening and oral language from birth. The brain identifies every phoneme in every word, stores it in oral word memory, and assigns it a meaning.

When we read, we translate the text symbols on the page into phonemes, connect them to words, and understand them in our oral word memory. For instance, if your child’s word memory stores “dog” as having the phonemes/d/ /o/ /g/, she will immediately recognize d-o-g as text.

Phonemes connect text symbols back to our oral language. Phonemic awareness is the connection skill.

How Weak Phonemic Awareness Undermines Reading Comprehension

If your child’s oral word memory is muddy, the text will not always be instantly recognizable, and written English will look like a whole new language. If your child does not hear the phonemes in “dog,” the text d-o-g makes no sense. It’s a word your child doesn’t know.

This is the case for millions of 4 to 7-year-olds. When the brain’s recognition of phonemes is muddy and unclear, learning to read is much harder.  If your child is having an unusually hard time with phonemic awareness, you should consider a phonics intervention for struggling readers right away. 

In later grades, as language processing skills mature, phonemic awareness skills improve. But often, that improvement is only incremental. Sounding out is accurate, but it still requires concentration. It is not automatic or effortless. This lack of automaticity, and the need to concentrate when decoding and sounding out unfamiliar words, slows reading and interferes with comprehension.

The general lack of reading proficiency in 8th grade, as measured by the NAEP test, reflects the nation’s reading comprehension problems. These reading delays affect millions due to a lack of automaticity in decoding and phonemic awareness.

If you are unsure of your child’s phonemic awareness and early reading skills, request a free online reading assessment.

Why Can’t My Child Sound Out Words?

Processing language is one of the brain’s most challenging functions, since natural language is lightning-fast. Processing words as whole sounds for listening and speech is not so hard. The additional processing-clarity skills—think auditory pixels—needed for phonemic awareness are challenging. Many children do not fully develop so-called natural language processing skills until after the age at which they are expected to read.

So, many children’s inability to master phonics because they are not biologically and cognitively ready to read from the outset puts them behind. In today’s standardized system, with annual reading milestones, this creates stress for parents, teachers, and children.

Furthermore, many English language learners struggle with English because its so-called orthographic depth (how closely the spelling system matches pronunciation) makes it a hard language to read, with a higher incidence of dyslexia than most other languages.

• Phonemic awareness skills require language processing at 25 sounds a second
• Sounds are represented in 250 different spellings (e.g., /f/ as in ph, f, gh, ff)
• Some sound units (phonemes) overlap, i.e., they are not distinctly different – e.g., /ph/ and /f/

Most Struggling Readers Have Phonemic Awareness Issues

Unsurprisingly, 69% of 4th graders read below grade level in the NAEP reading test, the nation’s report card. Many, if not most, struggling readers, per Reid Lyons (NIH), share one common problem: weak phonemic awareness.

Lyons cites numerous National Reading Panel studies that identify phonological awareness as a reliable predictor of reading fluency and comprehension. These studies also identify phonics and phonological awareness training as the most powerful way to improve reading.

As children age, language processing improves, which in turn improves phonemic awareness, and reading improves naturally. But to the extent that phonemic awareness is not automatic, decoding is not automatic.

This becomes the impediment to the ultimate reading proficiency goal: reading with comprehension. The distraction and concentration on the mechanics of decoding take away from and compromise reading comprehension. This means reading at grade level will always be a challenge, which helps explain the poor NAEP results.

Helping Your Child Develop Phonemic Awareness

Because phonological awareness does not fully mature in many children until age 7, many countries delay reading instruction until then. Unfortunately, that is not an option in North America.

If your young child is off to a slow start with reading, remember that the natural cognitive skills required for phonological awareness may still be developing. And so it is probably wise not to exert too much pressure, as it could turn your child off reading until these skills develop.

When to Choose an Intervention

For early elementary age, there is still a chance that your child’s language processing skills will kick in. However, you should consider an intervention if your child is:

• Well behind and making limited progress, or
• Has an overly emotional reaction to letter-sound games or reading.

An emotional reaction is often a cry for help. Your child may see these as too hard and do their best to avoid them. 

Gemm Learning provides phonics training, pre-reading, and reading interventions for children ages 5 and older.

Don’t worry if you are not sure. Gemm Learning always starts with a 1-on-1 consult to help you distinguish between a gap that will not resolve on its own and 6-year-old-itis.

Our online reading programs with professional oversight use adaptive Fast ForWord software to build processing skills, making phonics and phonemic awareness a focal point in our learn-to-read process for children aged 5 and older.

Signs of Weak Phonological Awareness

The most reliable sign of a lack of phonological awareness is a lack of rhyming skills at age 3. If your just-turned-4-year-old child can’t rhyme, you should start looking for ways to accelerate language processing skill growth.

Once your child is 5 or older and reading a little, here are some other signs of difficulty to look for. Your child may have a language processing delay (weak phonological awareness) if he has difficulties such as:

• Identifying rhyming words
• Perceiving the difference between similar sounds (for example, m and n)
• Identifying the first sound in a word
• Remembering the sequence of sounds in a word
• Breaking words down into a sequence of phonemes (e.g., dash has three phonemes: /d/ /a/ /sh/)
• Manipulating sounds within words (change r in rush to b)

The speech delay and dyslexia link shares a common thread: weak phonological awareness. Weak language processing slows language acquisition and speech and weakens phonemic awareness. The most common reading problems stem from delays in language processing.

Children with auditory processing problems tend to have reading problems at the decoding stage or later in reading comprehension. While many reading programs address this issue by adding more reading practice and word drills, our reading programs use a better approach – first strengthening language-processing skills and developing phonemic awareness.

Summary of Phonological Awareness Terminology

Phoneme:
A phoneme is a speech sound — it has no inherent meaning.

Phonemic Awareness:
The ability to hear language at the phoneme level, i.e., to hear the individual sounds that make up words.

Auditory Processing:
Auditory processing is a cognitive skill for detecting and manipulating sound and language. Most phonological awareness deficits stem from weak auditory processing.

Phonics:
Using text to break down and recognize words.

Phonological Awareness: 
This broad term covers processing language sounds at the word, syllable, and phoneme level.

Onset-Rime:
The onset is the consonant or syllable sound that starts a word, before the vowel; not all words have onsets. The rime is the part of the word including the vowel and what follows it.