Phonological Awareness Essay

In order to develop a student’s phonological awareness I would use the following skills and activities to focus on: Sentence segmentation, syllable segmentation, followed by tither onset-rime blending as well as segmentation and finally working on phoneme segmentations themselves. The reason I focused on segmentation it that it teaches the student how to break apart words, as well as differentiate between syllables and phonemes.

The mastery of second language phonology refers to the acquisition of the second language (English) sound system, listening comprehension and speaking skills. The acquisition of the L2 phonology is an area of language that has not been thoroughly investigated like other parts of language such as syntax or grammar. In fact, it is only in the last quarter of the twentieth century that studies about this area of language have emerged. As such, research studies about this aspect of second language learning are quite small and recent.

Phonemic awareness is a vital role in literacy instruction. Many schools and districts adopt a commercially published basal reading program and it becomes the cornerstone of their instruction ( (David Chard, n.d.). We also know that through investigation and research it has shown us that word-recognition instruction and instruction in oral language skills related to word recognition were inadequately represented. (David Chard, n.d.) The same researchers have found that the reading passages that students are reading didn’t relate to the words they were learning. In order for students to read at grade level or above a supplemental program should be implemented. I have found that at my school we are lacking a phonics program that will reach different students abilities and make them successful in reading. My goal for this paper is to show my district that using a supplemental phonics program aside from our basal phonics program will prove beneficial to strategic readers who fall below grade level.

The contrasting perspectives of the two passages, “CliffsTestPrep” by Jerry Bobrow (2006) and “The Place of Phonics in Learning to Read and Write” by Marie Emmitt (2013), address the issue of the importance of phonemic awareness in reading and writing scores. Bobrow believes that phonemic awareness is important to understand since it affects reading scores. Emmitt however, argues that there is no evidence that phonemic awareness has a major impact on reading achievement.

We chose to assess phonological awareness because it is a crucial component in children’s development of writing, spelling, and reading skills (Paul & Norbury, 2012). Phonological awareness refers to an individual’s awareness of the sound structure or words; it can be characterized by words, syllables, onset/rime, phoneme manipulations, and the ability to rearrange these different levels into various patterns.

To begin, I did the phonological awareness assessments with my three students. Having gotten instruction from Professor Schwarzkopf in class, I felt prepared to conduct this assessment. I appreciated that each form within the phonological awareness section had directions and a practice section where I, as the administrator, could easily explain the directions to each student. The phonological awareness assessments in themselves do not take a long time; however, I noticed as I started to reach the seventh, eighth, and ninth assessment each student started to get bored and frustrated. I really liked how the majority of the assessments were given orally. This helped me to know what they understood phonologically rather than just what a letter

Big Ideas Phonological Awareness: Phonological awareness is made up of various skills that help students work with our spoken language by manipulating sounds and oral parts of words. There will be students who pick up on phonological awareness very quickly and others that may need a lot of instruction and time in gaining the understanding of our spoken language. It is a foundational skill needed to be able to read and teachers need to make sure they give students support who struggle with phonological awareness so they have the skills needed to manipulate sounds and oral parts of words to begin reading. Decoding Words: Using the skills gained in phonological awareness, manipulating sounds and spoken parts of words, students can start using their knowledge of letter-sound relationships and the oral parts in words to start reading.

After assessing Eduardo in his native language to determine his literacy proficiency in Spanish, strategies that can be used to develop Eduardo’s phonological awareness are rhyme, alliteration, segmentation and blending (Caldwell & Leslie, 2013, pg. 49). Assessment of Eduardo’s phonemic awareness should include sorting tasks, counting tasks, word building and using letters (Caldwell & Leslie, 2013, pg. 57-58). Eduardo’s teacher can use read-a-louds, small group activities, repetition, and ways of incorporating Eduard’s native language into classroom and

Dr. Elina Mainela-Arnold conducted a study which compared language differences as opposed to language disorders in speakers of African American English. Knowing the difference is important because children who speak African American English are frequently tested by someone who is more familiar with Standard American English. If the tester is not able to discern between a language difference and a language disorder, then there might be an inaccurate estimate of the child’s language abilities based on their dialect. A dialect is simply a variation in language, thus it can not be labeled as a disorder. Dr. Mainela-Arnold attempted to show the extent of variation between language difference and language disorder by testing six female individuals.

This article discusses the differences between a dialect, specifically African American English (AAE) and Standard American English (SAE) and a child with AAE who actually suffers from a language disorder. One of the strengths of the paper is the ability to mention the variety of issues and how to correctly take the steps to deal with them when working with a child or individual who has a dialect. One of the points being mentioned is the importance for choosing the correct type of standardized test or assessment that takes AAE dialect into consideration without giving a biased result that might lead one to think that the person has a disorder versus just having a dialect that does not follow the standards of SAE.

Phonology and phonological development are important to language acquisition. In researching Hebrew phonology and its development; we learned how it is perceived, interpreted.

“Phonological disorders in children can result from physical or organic causes or may be functional in nature ("Phonological disorders in," 2013)”. Children with a phonological disorder may experience a higher risk for reading and writing disabilities. “If left unresolved, phonological disorders have long-term consequences that may interfere with an individual's future social, academic, and vocational well-being, largely resulting from persistent, reduced intelligibility of speech ("Phonological disorders in," 2013).”

The language of African Americans is highlighted phonetically by using the words in their spoken form without using official phonetic transcription such as dat, lemme, mah, etc.

There is negative and positive connotation on speech communities based on what social media portrays for each group. This issue within society is that we see language as a system and right or wrong. An example is Slang, African American Vernacular language and also. When hearing slang people tend to assume that the person or group using it comes from a lower class. One misconception is that an individual that is using AAE is a product of a lower income community. Proper and non-proper speech is correlated to economic and social status of speaker. An example for African American Vernacular language was presented through the video “Who else done messed up? In this video the substitute was using African American Vernacular English when pronouncing the student’s names there was voice stops devoiced at the end of the names, consonant cluster deduction and vocalization in names but when giving instruction none of these features appeared. The negative connotation in this video is the substitute was speaking in commonly used English that would be considered AAVE but because it is believed that only African Americans use AAVE the video shows how there was only one person that understood the substitute enunciation and is was a young African American male. There is a misconception that each country has one language but in reality, this is a variety of dialects within each one. Another fallacy/ mistaken belief is that an individual that is using AAE is non-educated, that is not

There are many forms of language in today's world. In this paper I will examine and document my research on African American Vernacular English (AAVE). This form of language is commonly known as Ebonics, or "Geechie Gullah". The meaning of language is defined as the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them and used and understood by a community l , or audible, articulated sounds as produced by the actions of the vocal organs . What is African American Vernacular, or Black English? Black English is defined as a dialect of African English characterized by pronunciations, synaptic structures, and vocabulary associated with and used by some North American black people and exhibiting a wide variety and range of forms varying in the extent to which they differ from standard English3 . African American Vernacular is very common to standard English. This language does not have a vocabulary separate from any other language. It is simply the way words are pronounced by some African Americans.