Semantic Knowledge
What is Semantic Knowledge?
Semantic Knowledge is the aspect of language knowledge that involves word meanings and vocabulary. Semantic knowledge involves the meaning found in the actual text, symbols and signs themselves. Characteristics of normal development relating to the aspect include, different kinds of cries, fast mapping (rapid word learning), acquisition of categories, over and under-extensions, and direct naming.
Semantic Knowledge in Infants/Toddlers:
Early interactions between parents and infants are often in response to the infant's cries. Young infants' crying and fussing occurs as an expression of their physiological and emotional status. There are three different cries: 1.) a basic cry 2.) an anger cry, and 3.) a pain cry. These types of cries are distinguished by pitch, rhythm, and intensity. Semantic development begins here with the topic of infants' cries because their cries elicit a parental or caregiver response that nearly always involves language and the assumption that the cries "mean" something. This assumption of meaning leads to the inclusion of children in interactive dyads, which promotes communication. Two types of experiences facilitate concept and semantic development: direct and vicarious. Direct experiences occur from birth on, as infants experience objects and events in their world as a direct participation (touching, tasting, smelling, seeing, and hearing). Vicarious experiences occur when children interact with concepts through visual representations (such as pictures or print). In infancy, many of children's experiences are essentially all firsthand or direct. While direct experiences have a greater impact on concept development, both direct and vicarious experiences make valuable contributions to concept development. At about the age of 1 year, children may, with some degree of consistency, begin to use distinct vocal units to refer to specific objects or actions. It is important to keep in mind that some children will begin several months later and will eventually acquire language competency the same as the early talkers. The development of semantic knowledge related to emergent literacy occurs as infants and adults participate in picture book interactions. During this activity, adults typically use gesture and finger pointing to establish a shared reference before labeling the character or object pictured. Children who have been included in storybook sharing events since early infancy, beginning at about 4 to 5 months, often show that they are predicting the meaning of upcoming text by their verbal and nonverbal behavior.
Between 1 and 2 years of age, a child has 20 to 170 words in his productive vocabulary but understands many more. There is considerable variation among individual children because their vocabulary will reflect their individual family contexts and experiences. While idiomorphs will still be part of a young toddler's expressive vocabulary, there is gradual transition to conventional words. As objects and events in children's environments are repeatedly labeled, both the receptive and expressive vocabularies increase; however, the listening vocabulary is still larger than the productive vocabulary. The productive vocabulary of older toddlers may range from 200 to 300 words, with a much more extensive listening vocabulary. A toddler usually maintains only one word pre referent in his or her productive vocabulary. A child may experiment with a specific word and switch to another if the first word is not successful in referring to the desired object, action or event. One aspect of semantic development involves children's acquisition of categories, which organize phenomena into groups of shared characteristics. These generalizations may be evident in toddlers' semantic over-extensions and under-extensions as they develop schemata with general and specific concepts. Semantic knowledge related to emergent literacy continues to expand during the toddler years, as children develop an awareness of environmental print and meanings, such as stop signs, McDonalds logos, and labels on food packaging. Throughout infancy and toddlerhood, children are active learners in building their concept knowledge and vocabulary. Daily interactions with people, objects, and actions in their environment provide direct and vicarious experiences that enhance children's development of semantic knowledge. When children have opportunities to observe parents and teachers interacting with written language and to participate in those interactions, semantic knowledge related to written language is also enhanced.
Semantic Knowledge in Pre-Schoolers:
Children's vocabulary expands and becomes more refined or precise during the preschool years as children begin to develop more complex concepts. When children encounter new experiences, they have opportunities to expand their language as they refer to and respond to these new experiences. Receptive and expressive vocabulary grows rapidly. A preschool child's expressive vocabulary has been estimated to range from 800 to 1,000 words. Semantic knowledge develops through the process of assimilation and accommodation. Semantic knowledge also develops as children communicate with adults and other children who expose them to new words within contextually rich settings. The context in which new words are introduced influences children's acquisition of vocabulary. Upon hearing a new word, some children will ask what it means or relate it to a word they already know. As young preschoolers are acquiring semantic knowledge, over-extensions and under-extensions in using vocabulary may occur. Over-extensions occur when children use the same word to apply to referents that may resemble the actual, appropriate referent in some way. Under-extension, in contrast, occurs when a label or word is inappropriately restricted (ex: the word cat is used only to refer to the neighbor's cat and not to other cats the child sees in the neighborhood). Throughout the preschool years, children's verbal interactions with adults and other children gradually refine the use of words, reducing instances of over-extension and under-extension.
Conceptual development and vocabulary are also increased through book sharing with fiction and nonfiction texts. The written language of storybooks exposes children to more precise and varied vocabulary than they may experience in daily conversations. For many children, the appeal of storybooks and nonfiction books is in the variety of ways language is used to communicate a story or real-world information. Pre-school children begin to understand figurative language. Examples of figurative language, such as similes and metaphors, may occur in daily conversations and may also be found in children's storybooks. They also may also encounter idiomatic expressions and be puzzled when they try to comprehend the literal meaning of the expression. Stories created by children provide evidence of their development of semantic knowledge. Children may incorporate specific phrases or vocabulary in their own stories that most likely come from their experiences with storybooks, such as "beautiful, handsome prince, going to the parlor for dinner, buried treasure." In these instances, the impact of storybook experiences on children's developing semantic knowledge is evident. The development of semantic knowledge is closely related to the development of syntactic knowledge. Children's understanding of how words convey meaning is closely to their knowledge of how to interpret or comprehend speech directed to them and how to arrange words in creating the messages they want to communicate.
Semantic Knowledge in Kindergarteners:
Kindergarten children typically have a speaking vocabulary of 1,500 or more words and understand more more words. It is estimated that a child's listening vocabulary is four times larger than his speaking vocabulary. In most classrooms, teachers will note there are wide variations between children in the size of their listening and speaking vocabularies. Vocabulary development is a major goal of language arts curricula in kindergarten as well as in the primary grades because vocabulary strength is associated with later reading comprehension and success in school. Expansion of children's semantic knowledge during the kindergarten year must involve not only adding new words and concepts but also further developing networks of vocabulary or schemata. For kindergarteners, vocabulary is acquired through direct and indirect experiences. Some vocabulary is learned through direct naming, or ostensive naming. Vocabulary is also learned through conversational context as well as through literacy events where books are shared with children. Both conversational contexts and book sharing contexts provide supportive mediation, which is critical to vocabulary acquisition.
Children's understanding and use of figurative language, such as similes and metaphors, also provide evidence of semantic knowledge. When storybooks containing figurative language are shared and discussed, children are able to develop an understanding of the similes and metaphors. Their sense of humor is also an indication of their semantic knowledge development. The riddles and jokes they create are often based in semantic comparisons or words that have multiple meanings. Knock-knock jokes are often popular among kindergarten children, though some children do not fully appreciate such jokes until they are in the primary grades. This reflects their awareness of language patterns as well as their ability to manipulate words to create a humorous idea. Because the increases in children's semantic knowledge during the kindergarten year are represented in words from many syntactic categories, the increase in semantic knowledge occurs concurrently with an increase in syntactic knowledge.
Semantic Knowledge in Primary Age Children:
During primary school years, elaboration and differentiation of concepts occur, along with the acquisition of labels attached to concepts. Semantic development continues to occur informally as children interact in conversations with family and friends and through exposure to various media as well as new experiences, such as family trips and vacations. Semantic development also occurs more formally in literacy-related instruction where children are introduced to specific words and encouraged to participate in discussing what those words mean. Such discussions of words and word meaning are metalinguistic in the sense that children are asked to focus consciously on meaning as an aspect of words. Comprehending and using figurative language requires a special understanding of semantic knowledge because the meaning of a word is used to create a comparison between two objects or settings. Similes are more explicit in their comparison than are metaphors, which create an implied comparison. In creating a metaphor, a child must be able to see the ways two objects or settings are similar on a more abstract or symbolic level.
Semantic development is evident in primary-age children's appreciation of puns and riddles. The appreciation comes from children's ability to realize that words may have double meanings or may have a similar phonological knowledge sequence to other words. The riddles created by first and second graders tend to be completely nonsensical or too realistic and thus are not really riddles but "pre-riddles." During third grade, most children are able to grasp the double meanings of riddles simultaneously. Throughout the primary years, children become more aware of possible double meanings and incorporate puns and riddles into their linguistic play. Hobbies and special interests of primary children may provide opportunity to develop specialized vocabulary. For example, an 8-year-old who is an avid baseball fan would develop vocabulary related to this interest. This vocabulary might include such phrases as "hit a triple, pitch, stuck out, pop-up, tagged up, grounder, line-drive out, inning, foul ball, or home run." This vocabulary knowledge probably would not develop in a classroom simply because it is so specialized. Yet it is important to recognize that children's hobbies and special interests outside the classroom can have an impact on concept and vocabulary development. Teachers can recognize and acknowledge children's specialized vocabulary by providing opportunities for children to talk about and write their home and community activities during language and literacy based activities in the classroom.
Tips for Parents:
1. Label and elaborate on new words during shared reading. For instance, make comments and ask questions to draw your child's attention to new vocabulary words and new ideas during shared reading.
2. Label and elaborate on new words throughout the day. Make comments and ask questions about the things you see or people and situations you encounter during shared activities such as driving in the car, watching television, or looking at a billboard.
3. Another great tip is to select themed books. Choose a book with a theme (for example, a day at the beach, or a visit to the zoo), which will help your child learn many words that fall into a particular category.
Sunday, December 6, 2015
Friday, December 4, 2015
Phonetic Knowledge
What is Phonetic Knowledge?
Phonetic Knowledge is the knowledge of sound-symbol relations and sound patterns represented in a language. It is when a child is learning to talk/communicate and they develop phonemic awareness, which is a awareness of distinctive speech sounds, and they use phonemes (smallest unit of sound) to create words. Characteristics of normal development related to this aspect include, cooing, babbling, sound play, matching speech sounds to print, early spelling attempts, and the variations in spelling attempts.
Phonetic Knowledge in Infants/Toddlers:
Research with very young infants has concluded that they can distinguish nearly all the phonemic contrasts represented in natural language. Children can distinguish specific phonemes as early as 1 month of age. In addition, at 5 months, infants recognize and categorize the same phonemes, regardless of changes in speakers and intonation. Babies can also distinguish between sequences of syllables. In addition, infants are able to categorize utterances from different languages, based on the rhythmic patterns of utterances. Between 8 and 10 months, infants begin to pay more attention to phoneme-sound contrasts that exist in their home language, while they pay little or no attention to phoneme-sound contrasts found in other languages.
Although infants perceive a wide range of phonemes and environmental sounds, their production of speech sounds is limited by their immature physiology. Early infant vocalizations are initially reflexive and later on non-reflexive vocalizations develop. Reflexive vocalizations come from the infants physical state and include, crying, coughing, hiccupping, and burping. Between 6 and 8 weeks, many infants spontaneously produce cooing sounds. Cooing, and later on, babbling are non-reflexive vocalizations. The cooing stage is important because during this time, infants begin to manipulate their tongues and mouths in producing sounds. These actions are precursors to actions required for later speech production. At about 4 to 6 months, babbling appears which is essentially reduplicated sounds, such as ba-ba-ba-ba. At about 11 to 12 months, infants may begin to produce word-like units that have relatively consistent sound patterns. A small number of conventional words may also be produced, such as "no." In literate cultures, awareness of phonological distinctions may develop as infants engage in picture book sharing activities with parents or caregivers. Parents may engage their infants in looking at the pictures by using wide variations in sounds and intonation. For example, animal sounds, rhyming text, songs, and environmental sounds. In this way, picture book sharing stimulates auditory perception and phonological awareness related to spoken and written language.
Children's perception and production of phonemes becomes especially evident during toddler years, as they begin to speak a range of words. Initially, pronunciation of a child's first words is not stable, varying from day to day or even more often. Toddlers are aware of speech sounds they cannot make and may avoid or refuse to pronounce words containing those sounds. Adults may engage in imitating sounds made by toddlers to initiate a turn-taking, game-like interaction. Evidence of toddlers' awareness of sound similarities and patterns also occurs when toddlers express delight, respond nonverbally with body movement, or both when poetry or rhythmic prose is read or when action songs or finger plays are performed. During the toddler years, children may also begin to explore letter and sound connections by manipulating magnetic letters displayed on their family's refrigerator or in their early childhood classroom. For example, a child might place the letters D and B on the refrigerator and say, "Daddy, bee" as well as naming the letters as they use them.
Phonetic Knowledge in Pre-Schoolers:
During the preschool years, children's growing awareness of phonemes is often evident in how they use language. This metalinguistic awareness that words are composed of separate sounds that can be manipulated is termed phonemic awareness. When speaking, preschool children may begin to focus on and manipulate specific phonemes. Although they may not be able to name the different sounds in words or explain why the words rhyme, preschool children are developing an awareness that they can create words that have similar sounds and that sound manipulation is fun. One of the types of language play is sound play, which consists of children's manipulating the phonemic elements and prosodic features of pitch, stress, and juncture. As preschoolers, children focus on the sound similarities between words and consciously manipulating the sound elements in a word. Spontaneous rhyming is a type of phonemic sound play. As children play, rhyming chants may be expressed, as in "cat, fat, bat, mat, sat." When children listen to stories or to poetry readings, they may also indicate their awareness of sound patterns and phonemic relations by anticipating upcoming text or contributing additional rhyming words. Children may also verbally comment on words that rhyme. For example, saying, "bat and cat sound the same. They rhyme."
As preschool children interact more with written language when adults read stories, and with environmental print, such as road signs and restaurant or store signs, they being to associate initial letters with specific sounds. Some preschool children begin to try to match speech to print and to explore way of sharing ideas on paper. As preschoolers attempt to figure out which letters to use for their names and messages and how to "say" what they have written or what someone else has written, their developing awareness of connections between sounds and print becomes evident. Initially, preschoolers typically use scribbling, letter-like forms, or strings of letters when writing and assign meaning to what they have written when "reading" it to a peer or adult. Gradually, children begin to associate specific sounds with letters and may use just one letter to represent a word; for example, using the letter D to represent the word "Daddy."
Phonetic Knowledge in Kindergarteners:
The acquisition of phonological knowledge is evident in kindergarten children's ability to distinguish similarities in beginning and ending sounds. Children's awareness of alliteration and rhyme contribute to the acquisition of reading in two ways, 1.) perception of rhyme and alliteration are the forerunners of being able to distinguish phonemes, and 2.) perception of rhyme helps children see similarities in spelling patterns. Kindergarten children may also become aware of others' different pronunciations and may tease children who speak differently. Likewise, children who are experiencing difficulty may become less verbal, not risking failure or embarrassment. Teachers must be aware of these situations and encourage acceptance and communication among all children.
Significant evidence of children's acquisition of phonological knowledge of written language may occur during the kindergarten year. Knowledge of the names of letters in the alphabet is related to the development of phonological awareness. When kindergarten children create their own stories, they may comment on their process and their expectations for using print. Kindergarteners may show evidence of phonological knowledge in their attempts to read when they begin to focus on letter-sound connections. When asked to "read" a familiar storybook, some children attempt an effortful "sounding out," focusing on the print. When they encounter difficulty, some children then refuse to read, indicating that although they know the print is the source of the message, they cannot decode it: "I don't know what that word says," or "I don't know this word." These print-related refusals are thought to indicate an awareness of the importance of decoding to "real" reading. Other children, while unsuccessfully attempting to decode print, frequently look to an adult researcher for confirmation that their attempts are "right." Kindergarten children exhibit a wide variety of emergent writing behaviors that indicate that they are beginning to focus on the way print represents specific speech sounds. Children's early spelling attempts provide rich evidence of their acquisition of phonological knowledge about written language. Children's conscious awareness of the sounds in words and how the sounds can be separated orally during language play or when attempting to create a written message are evidence of phonological awareness. This awareness is significantly related to learning to read and write. Literacy-related instruction also influences the continued development of phonological awareness due to the focus of that instruction on letter-sound connections, phoneme segmentation of words, and spelling patterns.
Phonetic Knowledge in Primary Age Children:
The primary years are a time during which children achieve mastery over phoneme production. In addition, during this time, children's phonological knowledge is increasingly influenced by their experience with reading and writing. During children's sixth and seventh years, they continue to increase in their ability to produce a full range of specific language sounds. By age 8, most children have complete phoneme production. The acquisition of consonant clusters may not occur until children are 8 years old. While some children may have acquired these articulations earlier than the ages cited here, it is important for teachers to hold off on referring slower-achieving children for speech remediation until they are well past those target ages for the respective sounds. Primary age children also increase in their rhyming abilities and awareness of other sound patterns, such as onset and rime. Onset refers to the initial consonant of a syllable that precedes the first vowel of a syllable; rime refers to the vowel and any remaining consonants of a syllable.
Primary children vary in their approaches to spelling. Some are just beginning to figure out the orthographic system. Other children are more sophisticated in their representations of phonemes. Thus, it is important for primary teachers to be aware of the developmental progression of orthographic-phonemic knowledge in young children. Prior to acquiring conventional spelling, primary grade children may go through one or more stages of phonemic spelling, as representations of phonemes become more consistent and complete. Primary-age children also become aware of the ways in which words are spelled differently in academic English than when represented in dialect. In addition, as children begin to read a wider variety of texts, they come across unusual spelling patterns that do not follow previously learned letter-sound associations. Children's experiences that contribute to their oral and written vocabularies and the ways they are encouraged to use and examine those words will influence their acquisition of spelling knowledge. A key factor in this process appears to be opportunities children have to apply what they are learning about word spelling patterns to their reading and writing activities.
Tips for Parents:
1. Focus on one sound at at time. For instance, certain sounds, such as /s/, /m/, /f/ are great sounds to start with. The sound is distinct, and can be exaggerated easily. "Please pass the mmmmmmmmilk." "Look! There's a ssssssssssnake!" "You have fffffffive markers on the table." It's also easy to describe how to make the sound with your mouth. "Close your mouth and lips to make the sound. Now put your hand on your throat. Do you feel the vibration?" Once your child learns a few phonemes, it will be easier to keep talking about letters and sounds.
2. Help your child listen for the sounds. One part of learning letters and sounds is being able to figure out if a word contains a particular sound. "Do we hear /mmmmmmm/ in the word mmmmmmoon? Do we hear /mmmmmmm/ in the word cake?" These sorts of activities, done orally with your child, can help him begin to listen for and hear sounds within words.
3. Apply letter-sound skills to reading. Putting these skills to work within a book is a powerful way to help your child see the connection between letters, sounds, and words. As you're reading together, find places in the book to point out the letters and sounds you've been working on together. "Look! This page says 'Red fish, blue fish." There's the /fffffff/ sound we've been having fun with! It's at the beginning of the word fish."
What is Phonetic Knowledge?
Phonetic Knowledge is the knowledge of sound-symbol relations and sound patterns represented in a language. It is when a child is learning to talk/communicate and they develop phonemic awareness, which is a awareness of distinctive speech sounds, and they use phonemes (smallest unit of sound) to create words. Characteristics of normal development related to this aspect include, cooing, babbling, sound play, matching speech sounds to print, early spelling attempts, and the variations in spelling attempts.
Phonetic Knowledge in Infants/Toddlers:
Research with very young infants has concluded that they can distinguish nearly all the phonemic contrasts represented in natural language. Children can distinguish specific phonemes as early as 1 month of age. In addition, at 5 months, infants recognize and categorize the same phonemes, regardless of changes in speakers and intonation. Babies can also distinguish between sequences of syllables. In addition, infants are able to categorize utterances from different languages, based on the rhythmic patterns of utterances. Between 8 and 10 months, infants begin to pay more attention to phoneme-sound contrasts that exist in their home language, while they pay little or no attention to phoneme-sound contrasts found in other languages.
Although infants perceive a wide range of phonemes and environmental sounds, their production of speech sounds is limited by their immature physiology. Early infant vocalizations are initially reflexive and later on non-reflexive vocalizations develop. Reflexive vocalizations come from the infants physical state and include, crying, coughing, hiccupping, and burping. Between 6 and 8 weeks, many infants spontaneously produce cooing sounds. Cooing, and later on, babbling are non-reflexive vocalizations. The cooing stage is important because during this time, infants begin to manipulate their tongues and mouths in producing sounds. These actions are precursors to actions required for later speech production. At about 4 to 6 months, babbling appears which is essentially reduplicated sounds, such as ba-ba-ba-ba. At about 11 to 12 months, infants may begin to produce word-like units that have relatively consistent sound patterns. A small number of conventional words may also be produced, such as "no." In literate cultures, awareness of phonological distinctions may develop as infants engage in picture book sharing activities with parents or caregivers. Parents may engage their infants in looking at the pictures by using wide variations in sounds and intonation. For example, animal sounds, rhyming text, songs, and environmental sounds. In this way, picture book sharing stimulates auditory perception and phonological awareness related to spoken and written language.
Children's perception and production of phonemes becomes especially evident during toddler years, as they begin to speak a range of words. Initially, pronunciation of a child's first words is not stable, varying from day to day or even more often. Toddlers are aware of speech sounds they cannot make and may avoid or refuse to pronounce words containing those sounds. Adults may engage in imitating sounds made by toddlers to initiate a turn-taking, game-like interaction. Evidence of toddlers' awareness of sound similarities and patterns also occurs when toddlers express delight, respond nonverbally with body movement, or both when poetry or rhythmic prose is read or when action songs or finger plays are performed. During the toddler years, children may also begin to explore letter and sound connections by manipulating magnetic letters displayed on their family's refrigerator or in their early childhood classroom. For example, a child might place the letters D and B on the refrigerator and say, "Daddy, bee" as well as naming the letters as they use them.
Phonetic Knowledge in Pre-Schoolers:
During the preschool years, children's growing awareness of phonemes is often evident in how they use language. This metalinguistic awareness that words are composed of separate sounds that can be manipulated is termed phonemic awareness. When speaking, preschool children may begin to focus on and manipulate specific phonemes. Although they may not be able to name the different sounds in words or explain why the words rhyme, preschool children are developing an awareness that they can create words that have similar sounds and that sound manipulation is fun. One of the types of language play is sound play, which consists of children's manipulating the phonemic elements and prosodic features of pitch, stress, and juncture. As preschoolers, children focus on the sound similarities between words and consciously manipulating the sound elements in a word. Spontaneous rhyming is a type of phonemic sound play. As children play, rhyming chants may be expressed, as in "cat, fat, bat, mat, sat." When children listen to stories or to poetry readings, they may also indicate their awareness of sound patterns and phonemic relations by anticipating upcoming text or contributing additional rhyming words. Children may also verbally comment on words that rhyme. For example, saying, "bat and cat sound the same. They rhyme."
As preschool children interact more with written language when adults read stories, and with environmental print, such as road signs and restaurant or store signs, they being to associate initial letters with specific sounds. Some preschool children begin to try to match speech to print and to explore way of sharing ideas on paper. As preschoolers attempt to figure out which letters to use for their names and messages and how to "say" what they have written or what someone else has written, their developing awareness of connections between sounds and print becomes evident. Initially, preschoolers typically use scribbling, letter-like forms, or strings of letters when writing and assign meaning to what they have written when "reading" it to a peer or adult. Gradually, children begin to associate specific sounds with letters and may use just one letter to represent a word; for example, using the letter D to represent the word "Daddy."
Phonetic Knowledge in Kindergarteners:
The acquisition of phonological knowledge is evident in kindergarten children's ability to distinguish similarities in beginning and ending sounds. Children's awareness of alliteration and rhyme contribute to the acquisition of reading in two ways, 1.) perception of rhyme and alliteration are the forerunners of being able to distinguish phonemes, and 2.) perception of rhyme helps children see similarities in spelling patterns. Kindergarten children may also become aware of others' different pronunciations and may tease children who speak differently. Likewise, children who are experiencing difficulty may become less verbal, not risking failure or embarrassment. Teachers must be aware of these situations and encourage acceptance and communication among all children.
Significant evidence of children's acquisition of phonological knowledge of written language may occur during the kindergarten year. Knowledge of the names of letters in the alphabet is related to the development of phonological awareness. When kindergarten children create their own stories, they may comment on their process and their expectations for using print. Kindergarteners may show evidence of phonological knowledge in their attempts to read when they begin to focus on letter-sound connections. When asked to "read" a familiar storybook, some children attempt an effortful "sounding out," focusing on the print. When they encounter difficulty, some children then refuse to read, indicating that although they know the print is the source of the message, they cannot decode it: "I don't know what that word says," or "I don't know this word." These print-related refusals are thought to indicate an awareness of the importance of decoding to "real" reading. Other children, while unsuccessfully attempting to decode print, frequently look to an adult researcher for confirmation that their attempts are "right." Kindergarten children exhibit a wide variety of emergent writing behaviors that indicate that they are beginning to focus on the way print represents specific speech sounds. Children's early spelling attempts provide rich evidence of their acquisition of phonological knowledge about written language. Children's conscious awareness of the sounds in words and how the sounds can be separated orally during language play or when attempting to create a written message are evidence of phonological awareness. This awareness is significantly related to learning to read and write. Literacy-related instruction also influences the continued development of phonological awareness due to the focus of that instruction on letter-sound connections, phoneme segmentation of words, and spelling patterns.
Phonetic Knowledge in Primary Age Children:
The primary years are a time during which children achieve mastery over phoneme production. In addition, during this time, children's phonological knowledge is increasingly influenced by their experience with reading and writing. During children's sixth and seventh years, they continue to increase in their ability to produce a full range of specific language sounds. By age 8, most children have complete phoneme production. The acquisition of consonant clusters may not occur until children are 8 years old. While some children may have acquired these articulations earlier than the ages cited here, it is important for teachers to hold off on referring slower-achieving children for speech remediation until they are well past those target ages for the respective sounds. Primary age children also increase in their rhyming abilities and awareness of other sound patterns, such as onset and rime. Onset refers to the initial consonant of a syllable that precedes the first vowel of a syllable; rime refers to the vowel and any remaining consonants of a syllable.
Primary children vary in their approaches to spelling. Some are just beginning to figure out the orthographic system. Other children are more sophisticated in their representations of phonemes. Thus, it is important for primary teachers to be aware of the developmental progression of orthographic-phonemic knowledge in young children. Prior to acquiring conventional spelling, primary grade children may go through one or more stages of phonemic spelling, as representations of phonemes become more consistent and complete. Primary-age children also become aware of the ways in which words are spelled differently in academic English than when represented in dialect. In addition, as children begin to read a wider variety of texts, they come across unusual spelling patterns that do not follow previously learned letter-sound associations. Children's experiences that contribute to their oral and written vocabularies and the ways they are encouraged to use and examine those words will influence their acquisition of spelling knowledge. A key factor in this process appears to be opportunities children have to apply what they are learning about word spelling patterns to their reading and writing activities.
Tips for Parents:
1. Focus on one sound at at time. For instance, certain sounds, such as /s/, /m/, /f/ are great sounds to start with. The sound is distinct, and can be exaggerated easily. "Please pass the mmmmmmmmilk." "Look! There's a ssssssssssnake!" "You have fffffffive markers on the table." It's also easy to describe how to make the sound with your mouth. "Close your mouth and lips to make the sound. Now put your hand on your throat. Do you feel the vibration?" Once your child learns a few phonemes, it will be easier to keep talking about letters and sounds.
2. Help your child listen for the sounds. One part of learning letters and sounds is being able to figure out if a word contains a particular sound. "Do we hear /mmmmmmm/ in the word mmmmmmoon? Do we hear /mmmmmmm/ in the word cake?" These sorts of activities, done orally with your child, can help him begin to listen for and hear sounds within words.
3. Apply letter-sound skills to reading. Putting these skills to work within a book is a powerful way to help your child see the connection between letters, sounds, and words. As you're reading together, find places in the book to point out the letters and sounds you've been working on together. "Look! This page says 'Red fish, blue fish." There's the /fffffff/ sound we've been having fun with! It's at the beginning of the word fish."
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