Phonological Awareness and Learning to Read a First Language: Controversies and New Perspectives

Abstract

"There is a growing consensus among researchers that basic difficulties in learning to read and spell stem from weaknesses in alphabetic and phonological coding (Adams, 1990; Vellutino, Fletcher, Scanlon, & Snowling, 2004). For the purposes of learning to read an alphabetic script, the learner has to find a way to translate or decode the letters on the page into sounds, a skill that is referred to as alphabetic coding. This insight into the connection between print and speech obviously requires knowledge of the letter symbols and sensitivity to the organization of letters and written words – orthographic awareness, for instance that the script runs from left to right. However, someone who knows the letter but lacks the understanding that this letter both represents the first sound in pan and the last sound in lip, will still not be able to establish a precise connection between the grapheme and phoneme and vice versa. Research of more than two decades has documented that a crucial phonological skill for the beginning reader is the insight into how spoken words are structured and composed of individual sounds and combinations of sounds, i.e., phonological awareness. Orthographic awareness and phonological awareness crucially depend on each other and ultimately work in concert to help the learner break the code of an alphabetic writing system"