Becoming Literate: What Is Phonological Awareness?

This topic really does deserve it's own post! 

When I first heard about phonological awareness, I was confusing it with phonics, and believe me it's different. Phonological Awareness is also a CRITICAL step in child development and literacy development. In fact, many experts argue that it is the single most important factor in determining future school success.

My goal is to help you recognize phonological awareness problems to kick them in the butt, and also to give you ideas of how to foster great phonological awareness skills in your child/children.


Definition: Phonological Awareness is understanding and being able to break speech into smaller units of sound, including words, syllables, onsets & rimes, and phonemes. Phonological Awareness deals only with sounds. Though learning about printed letters may be happening at the same time, it's not necessary to combine the two processes very much before pre-school.


Example: I'll use the sentence: I love apples, and show you how each part of Phonological Awareness is applied to this sentence.

• Words: I / love / apples.  There are three words in this sentence, and most of us realize that, but a young child just learning to speak does not realize that each of those words coming from you mouth are individual. They hear it all together, and that's why many first words may actually be a string of words put together like my son's favorite, "all done."

• Syllables: I / love / ap • ples. We all practiced this a lot in elementary school. Clapping to the syllables, Elizabeth is a 4 syllable name so I got a bit confused sometimes! The importance of this lies in their ability to recognize more than one sound in a single word. We must take baby steps, but eventually we need to hear each individual sound in a word, this will make reading, decoding, and spelling that much easier. Syllables are just a step along the way.

• Onsets & Rimes: I / l-ove / -ap • p-les. Every syllable has at least a rime in it. The onset is any consonants preceding the vowel sound in a syllable. The rime begins with the vowel sound and then any following consonants in that syllable. This is a tricky one to learn, and I promise it's not extremely necessary to learn the details. Again, the whole purpose is to get to the point of hearing individual sounds, and this is just another baby step. 

• Phonemes: I / l u v / a p ə l s. Whoa! Where did I learn how to spell, right? But I'm not spelling, I'm showing you the sounds in each word. Phonemes are the individual sounds that make up a word. We all know that English, and any language for that matter, has many inconsistencies. They come from many different historical situations, but what matters is that we know how to hear each sound in our language. Then when the time comes to learn how to read, we will have a database of sounds to connect with individual letters and letter combinations.

Are you with me so far?

Common Problems: Now we'll discuss some common problems you might see in children and how it could effect them.

• R-Consonant Blends: The word train is a great example of this. When a child can't hear the difference between T and R it can sometimes sound like chain or chrain to them. This is the same with D and R as in drive, which can sound like jive or jrive to them. This becomes a major problem when they are learning how to decode (read) words. They may be looking for jive when the word drive doesn't have a J in it at all.

• Schwas: Were you wondering what that upside down e was doing up above in the word apple? This ə has nothing to do with e actually, this ə is a schwa. A schwa is simply the unaccented vowel sound in a word. It's always a very quick sound, sometimes almost unrecognizable. It's also often confused with the letter u, even though a schwa sound can be represented in spelling by any of the vowels. I like to use the example lion because it's pretty clear that you can hear an uh sound after the hard i sound. That uh sound is a schwa (ə). When you say the word lion, you don't actually hold out the ə for very long, and this is where young kids might not even hear it. You might see them spell lion like lin. Other common schwa mistakes are with the letters n, r or l:like these examples. tabl for table, ribn for ribbon, or bakr for baker.

• Other: I put other down because a child could have any number of phonological problems, including: only hearing the first sound in a word (du for dog), or omitting vowel sounds when they spell because they're only hearing the hard consonant sounds (ct for cat), having trouble rhyming because they can't separate all the ending sounds ( kick rhyming with duck), having a hard time telling how many syllables are in a given word, and getting confused with consonant blends (tr, st, mp, dr, sl, sm, etc.). These are some general problems that  kids can develop.

Don't freak out though! Many of these are common for young children and with some normal pre-school age activities and development they are well on their way past them by kindergarten. 

The general rule of thumb is to seriously nip these problems in the bud by age 8. If you wait longer than that, they start to get self-conscious when their peers are pulling ahead and they still can't decode small words. It's also harder for the teachers to focus on activities they need after 2nd grade because they have so many other student who need higher level phonics instruction. Often they end up being sent to special education classrooms when really they just need more one on one time with phonological awareness instruction. You can see how important it is for parents to know what to look for.

Activities and Ideas: So let me share some ideas that can help foster great Phonological Awareness! I'll give you some ideas for different ages, so that this becomes a enjoyable process that doesn't just start on their first day of kindergarten or pre-school.

• Word games and songs are a great place to start! They can do this from age 1 to well into elementary school. Have you ever played the Animal Alphabet Game? Just start with A and try to come up with an animal whose name starts with A, and go all the way to Zebra! Here are some sites to check out: PBS Kids, Nursery Rhymes

• Alphabet Song: Change it up and sing to a different tune, or sing it with the short vowel sounds instead!

• Word manipulation: What do I mean by that? Simply take words that they might be having trouble saying and have them say it without a the first letter, or any number of manipulations. Back to the example of train, have them play around with it like this: train, rain, tain, mane, cane, pain, trail, rail, tail, nail, etc. Remember that we aren't working with phonics at this point, only phonological awarness, so it's not necessary to introduce spelling patterns yet. Just play with the sounds so that they can begin to recognize each individual sound. This is a great site for word manipulation and many other reading topics: Reading Rockets

• Read-A-Loud games: When you read a book with your child (appropriate for about ages 2 1/2-6) try having them do an action every time they hear a certain sound. Example: Every time they hear the sound d have them stand up, turn around, and sit back down. Or, if you have a good rhyming book (gotta love Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham), have them clap every time they here a pair of rhyming words.

• Nonsense Words are great teaching tools! Choose a real word to start with then make up words that rhyme with it. This is actually a really common thing for children to start doing on their own when they begin to really talk. It's a great sign that they are becoming phonologically aware! Example: Apple, snapple, bapple, wapple, trapple, slapple, clapple, addle, aggle, abble, ammle, etc. ***Warning, bad words may slip! But I'm sure you can find your own way to tell them not to say those words. Or just smile and let the moment be.

• Most of all, have fun with words and sounds. The goal is for them to learn to recognize sounds, but also to enjoy the process!

YAY! You made it through this post! I know it's a long one, but just pin it to pinterest (here) or add it to your bookmarks, that way you can refer back to it when you need a refresher on this critical literacy skill. 

And as always, send your questions my way!

---Elizabeth

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Visit the rest of the Becoming Literate series here:

Introduction  |  Birth to 1 Year  |  Phonological Awareness