Questions &AnswersAuthor(s): John J. PikulskiSource: The Reading Teacher, Vol. 42, No. 8, Empowerment through Literacy (Apr., 1989), p.637Published by: Wiley on behalf of the International Reading AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20200250 .
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QUESTIONS & ANSWERS_
John J. Pikulski_
\? I have been hearing and seeing
references to the terms "phonemic seg mentation1'and "phonemic awareness" in
discussions of reading and reading read iness. Are these the same as the old term
"auditory discrimination," or are they something that kindergarten and 1st
grade teachers should know more
about? I find the terms confusing. Can
you give some examples of how to build
phonemic awareness or segmentation, if they are worth teaching?
J\.% The term phonemic segmenta tion is part of a larger area of research and instruction called phonemic aware
ness, which is part of a still larger area
called metalinguistic awareness. I think some recent research and thinking in these areas go well beyond older notions of readiness and auditory chscrimination and have important instructional impli cations.
Virtually all children enter kindergar ten with well developed auditory dis
crimination, that is, the ability to
perceive subtle phonemic differences that are part of speech. Actually there is some evidence that as early as 1 month infants begin to make phonemic distinc
tions, even among very similar sounds such as Ibl and /p/. By several months of
age children begin to manipulate pho nemes so that by the time they produce speech sounds as part of words, an enor
mous amount of consistent ability to use
auditory chscrimination is demonstrated.
However, because phonemes are such a critical part of speech, they are learned so well their use sinks below the level of consciousness. This automaticity is ex
cellent for speech because no attention to
the phonemes is required, freeing chil dren to concentrate on interpreting what
they hear and on composing their own
messages. Thus auditory chscrimination,
per se, is not an area that needs instruc tion. It's very well learned.
One critical thing children must learn as they begin to read Western languages, however, is the alphabetic principle, where letters represent phonemes. Meta
linguistic awareness refers to con
sciously thinking about language, not
just using it. It involves becoming aware
of some elements of language and how
they operate. As strange as it may seem, young chil
dren don't even realize that speech is
composed of words?the spaces and
pauses of speech are not at word bounda ries. Perhaps one of the easier tasks of
metalinguistic awareness is realizing that flow of speech separates into words.
This may be the beginning of phonemic awareness. Then awareness must spread to the individual sounds that compose
words. The word cat has both 3 letters and 3 phonemes, but young children cer
tainly don't know that automatically. Some of the most famous research on
phonemic awareness has focused on the
ability to segment words into their indi vidual phonemes. For example, in a
classic study by Isabelle Liberman and her colleagues, the examiner spoke a
word or syllable composed of 1-3 pho nemes and the child tapped with a ham
mer for each phoneme. Children are sometimes asked to put out a marker for each phoneme in a word or syllable. These segmentation tasks correlate well with reading achievement at the end of
1st grade. While tapping out the num ber of phonemes may seem distantly re lated to learning to read, it may be a
way to build some prerequisites for
learning phonics. There are also phone mic awareness tasks in which children
manipulate phonemes. In one, children are asked to split off a word's initial
consonant. For example, they may be
given cat and asked what word would be left if the Ikl were removed. More
difficult are tasks that ask them to delete sounds from within a word (e.g., what
would be left if you took the M from
truck?)
Perhaps a less demanding task is one
where children are given 3 words; they are asked to say which is different from the other 2 in its beginning or ending sound. For example, of ball, run, and
boy, which begins with a sound that is different from the others?
This type of task was frequently rec
ommended for auditory discrimination, but it requires more than discrimina
tion; it requires active comparison of
the beginning phonemic element and a conscious awareness of how the words differ. A child who would never con
fuse ball, run, and boy in listening or
speech might still have difficulty re
porting which word has a different be
ginning sound. The exact relationship between pho
nemic awareness and learning to read has been debated. Some researchers maintain that it develops as a result of
learning to read. However, in a recent
Reading Research Quarterly article
(Summer, 1988), Lundberg and others
report an impressive study wherein a
preschool program that developed pho nological awareness had a demonstra ble effect on not only 1st but 2nd grade reading achievement. While some may find the article rather technical, the de
scription of the program is easy to un
derstand and has immediate suggestions for instruction (pp. 268-69). And many of the activities sounded like they could be fun!
If you have questions about the teaching or learning of reading, send them to John J. Pikulski, Department of Educational Development, University of Delaware, Newark DE 19711, USA.
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