Phonemic Awareness and Word Recognition in Kindergarten Research Paper

Introduction

Background Study

Literacy ability of learners is a major concern for educators. It is commonly agreed that the literacy ability of an individual is highly influenced by early childhood learning. Kindergarten is the first educational institution where formal education is introduced and where education foundation of an individual is formed. Due to the importance of early childhood education, there have been a lot of researches aimed at improving this education. Reading and understanding the meaning of words is a major concern for education. As it is discovered in various researches, early failure in literacy leads to long term literacy problems. These observations suggest that building a good literacy foundation in children is the most important step toward ensuring literacy (Foorman, Chen, Carlson, Moats, Francis & Fletcher, 2003, p. 291). Research studies in the recent past have shown correlation between phonemic awareness and literacy. This research study wants to use quantitative method to find the relationship between phonic awareness and early word recognition in kindergarten children.

There is agreement that phonemic awareness plays a major role in success in reading. Phonemic awareness has also been associated with certain reading disability. Phonemic awareness is used synonymously with phonological awareness, phonetic awareness, acoustic awareness, phonemic categorization, auditory analysis, and phonemic segmentation (Al Otaiba & Fuchs, 2002, 302). These synonyms suggest the meaning of the term; however, some authors try to differentiate phonemic awareness from the other terms. Bryant and Goswami claim that phonemic awareness is the ability to recognize individual phonemes while phonological awareness constitute broad awareness including awareness of rhyme and syllables. Various scholars have differing definitions of phonemic awareness. Blachman and Ball define phonemic awareness as the awareness that spoken words are made up of individual sounds; the ability to identify the individual phonemes of a word (Ball & Blachman, 1991, p. 46). Stanovich prefers to use phonological awareness but emphasizes on the level or sensitivity of phonological awareness.

The role of phonics in learning how to read had drawn various opinions in the past. However, various researches in the recent past have supported the importance of phonics instructions in reading (Foorman, Chen, Carlson, Moats, Francis & Fletcher, 2003, p. 302). Inspired by the conclusive findings, there have been calls for phonic instructions to be included in educational policy and practice. In past twenty years there has been agreement on various aspects of reading success and failure. Mann and Hurford have observed that level of phonemic awareness determine whether an individual will be a good or a bad reader in the future (Hurford, Schauf, Bunce, Blaich & Moore, 1994, p. 378). They also suggest that phonemic awareness differentiates good reader from challenged readers. Stanovich claims that phonic instructions help to increase sensitivity to rhyme and alliteration (Ball & Blachman, 1991, p. 52). He see phonological awareness as a process that increases sensitivity from a word to syllables and then to individual phonemes. Besides, there have been various longitudinal studies that have shown correlation between phonemic awareness and reading progress.

Phonemic knowledge is more concerned with word structure rather than its meaning. In phonemic instruction, the sound of individual phonemes is emphasized rather than the meaning of words. The instructions try to make a reader aware of the correspondence between spelling and sound. Instead of viewing words as a compact sound stream, readers are made aware of individual sounds that make up the sound of a word. Many scholars agree that phonemic awareness is a process that starts from shallow to deep awareness.

Phonemic awareness is different from the ability to differentiate the sounds of two different words. Although they are different, the ability to differentiate the sounds of two words shows a level of phonemic awareness (Hurford, Schauf, Bunce, Blaich & Moore, 1994, p. 379). Audio discrimination constitutes the ability to hear the difference in the sounds of different words. On the other hands, phonemic awareness constitutes analysis of individual sounds that make up the sound of a word. In most reading instructions, the meaning on words is emphasized other than analysis of individuals sounds that make up the words.

Phonemic awareness can be very useful to reading and literacy. Phonemic awareness has been ignored in young children despite of the fact that ability to differentiate individuals sound can help in pronouncement and reading. Before children differentiate the different sound of sentences, they should be able to appreciate that sentence are made up of discrete word sounds (Al Otaiba & Fuchs, 2002, p. 311). In addition, they should be able to appreciate discrete sounds that constitute a word. Blachman warns that word awareness should not be assumed even in older children (Ball & Blachman, 1991, p.49). However, he feels that word consciousness could be taught easily at early age.

Research Questions

This research will try to answer the following questions:

1. What is phonemic awareness?
2. Why is phonemic awareness important to kindergarten children?
3. How can phonemic awareness instructions on kindergarten children influence their reading?

Aims and Objectives

The aim of this research is to assess phonemic awareness in kindergarten children and how it influences their reading ability. The aim will be achieved by the following objectives:

1. To find out the influence of individual child’s background to phonemic awareness.
2. To find out the influence of phonemic instruction to phonemic awareness in kindergarten children.
3. To Obtain the relationship between phonemic awareness and reading progress.

Purpose of the study

Many research studies show correlation between phonemic awareness and reading awareness. Some research studies have also showed a correlation between early phonemic awareness to future reading progress of an individual. Besides, there have been calls for phonemic awareness instructions to be included in educational policy and a practice. Despite of many research on phonemic awareness, there are limited research on phonemic awareness in kindergarten children. The current research attempts to contribute to this field by looking at phonemic awareness in kindergarten children.

As Blachman and Ball note, majority of early reading problems are contributed by low phonemic awareness. It is hoped that understanding relationship between phonemic awareness and early childhood education will help to maximize the importance of phonemic awareness in reading. Kindergarten education forms the foundation for further education, ability to establish good reading foundation at this level can help to overcome many reading challenges in the future. The findings of this research will provide useful data that can help in improving education policy. The findings will also be a good foundation for further research on phonemic awareness and other related issues.

Definition of terms

• Phonemic awareness: In this research phonemic awareness refers to the ability of an individual to identify and control the smallest unit of sound in a word.
• Kindergarten: In the paper, kindergarten refers to the first educational institution for young children before they join primary school.
• Word recognition: Refers to the ability of an individual to correctly distinguish a written word.
• Reading: A cognitive process where an individual identify and obtain the meaning of a word, sentence or paragraph.

Methodology

Participants

All participants will be kindergarten children with age between 4 and 6. Two hundred participants picked from various kindergartens in the country will be chosen. The participants will be divided into two groups: experimental group and control group. Phonemic awareness training will be provided to experimental groups while no training will be provided to control group. Pre-test and post-test will be conducted on participants from both groups at around the same time. Pre-test will be conducted at the beginning of the academic year while post-test will be conducted at the end of the same academic year. A one-on-one test will be used for every participant.

Data collection and analysis

All the data for the study will be picked from the 200 kindergarten children. Data will be recorded depending on the level of phonemic awareness of a participant. The test will include word reading, picture naming, syllable identification, rhyme detection and phoneme identification. The data collected will indicate how well a participant read a word, identify phoneme and other tests. T-test and ANOVA analysis will be conducted on the collected data in order to show the correlation between research variables.

Procedure

All participants will be assessed twice, at the beginnings and at the end of the academic year. Trained assessors will conduct a one-on-one test on the participants at their respective kindergarten. The assessors will record data from every participant.

Summary

There have been various research studies that show correlation between phonemic awareness and reading ability. As phonemic awareness influences reading ability, phonemic training can help to improve reading. Phonemic awareness in kindergarten children has limited studies. By understanding the level of phonemic awareness in kindergarten children and the effect of phonemic awareness training, useful conclusions can be made.

Reference

Al Otaiba, S. & Fuchs, D. (2002). Characteristics of children who are unresponsive to early literacy intervention: A review of the literature. Remedial and Special Education, 23, 300-316.

Ball, E. & Blachman, B. (1991). Does phoneme awareness training in kindergarten make a difference in early word recognition and developmental spelling. Reading Research Quarterly, 25, 49-66.

Foorman, B., Chen, D., Carlson, C., Moats, L., Francis, D., & Fletcher, M., (2003). The necessity of the alphabetic principle to phonemic awareness instruction. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 16, 289-324.

Hurford, D. Schauf, J., Bunce, L., Blaich, T., & Moore, K. (1994). Early identification of children at risk for reading disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 27, 371-382.