Research of more than two decades has affirmed the importance of phonological awareness and its relation to reading acquisition. Thus, recent reviews of the literature (Hurford, Darrow, Edwards, Howerton, Mote, Schauf, & Coffey, 1993; Mann, 1993) have indicated that the presence of phonological awareness is a hallmark of good readers while its absence is a consistent characteristic of poor readers. In considering the relation between phonological awareness and reading, we identified five areas of converging evidence in the research:
Our research synthesis (Smith, Simmons, & Kameenui, 1995) revealed moderate support for the notion that phonological awareness is a general ability which has multiple dimensions of varying complexity. A commonly recognized definition of phonological awareness is sensitivity to the sound structure of language and a conscious ability to detect, combine, and manipulate different sizes of sound units. Although research has not definitely concluded which dimensions are obligatory for beginning reading, the converging evidence suggests the preeminent lasting effects of a delay in phonological awareness. Thus, the research convergence points to a priority of early identification of students with low phonological awareness.
Further underscoring the research convergence, none of the primary or secondary sources reviewed in the research synthesis (Smith et al., 1995) disputed the hypothesis that phonological awareness plays a central role in reading acquisition. Since phonological awareness has been established as one of the prerequisites for reading acquisition, phonological awareness instruction, therefore, is obligatory, not optional. In this respect, the training studies reviewed in the research synthesis (Smith et al., 1995) converged to provide strong support for the importance of phonological awareness instruction prior to reading instruction across abilities. Moreover, for diverse learners, strong effects of phonological awareness training on subsequent reading and spelling achievement underscored the critical importance of early identification and intervention for phonological awareness development.
In the following section, we discuss the big idea of phonological awareness in relation to a framework of curriculum design principles. Specifically, we use the principles of conspicuous strategies , mediated scaffolding , strategic integration , primed background knowledge , and judicious review to render the implications more explicit and employable. When applied to phonological awareness, these procedural principles illustrate how to translate research into practice.
In our review, we did not find similar level of procedural details for each design principle despite strong support for the underlying big idea of phonological awareness. For example, research indicated many procedural details for scaffolding, but few for judicious review. The following section should not be viewed as a prescription, but rather as an application of principles that can be used to make tangible the details of instruction required for students with diverse learning needs.
In this section, we focus on five curriculum design principles: (a) conspicuous strategies, (b) mediated scaffolding, (c) strategic integration, (d) primed background knowledge, and (e) judicious review, while addressing the question: For the instructional priorities of phonological awareness, what is the existing research evidence regarding curriculum design?
Conspicuous strategies are sequences of teaching events and teacher actions that make explicit the steps required to hear and manipulate sounds (Dixon, Carnine, & Kameenui, 1992). Research findings recommend that phonological awareness instruction be explicit, not left to either natural development in the absence of instruction or inference by the learner during instruction. A characteristic feature of explicit instruction is the use of conspicuous strategies that offer a plan of action, in this context, for learning new phonological awareness skills. Phonological awareness strategies need to be obvious and salient to the learner for two reasons.
First, phonemes are not easy to isolate because we seldom hear pure phonemes. Rather, phonemes are coarticulated (i.e., merged and not pronounced as discrete sounds) and subject to distortion (addition of vowels; e.g., /duh/ instead of /d/) when produced orally (Ball & Blachman, 1991; Spector, 1995). Therefore, researchers suggest that detection of phonemes requires an artificial analysis rather than discrimination of a naturally perceived acoustical unit (Ball & Blachman, 1991). Similarly, developmental work in phonological awareness suggests that detection of phonemes is neither natural nor acquired in the absence of instruction for many children (Liberman & Shankweiler, 1985).
Second, in normal speech development, infants articulate single phonemes and small groups of phonemes (e.g., eee, eee, eee; ba, ba, ba). Over time, children learn to pay attention to meaning, not individual sounds. In contrast, reading acquisition involves moving from translating letters to sounds and combing those sounds to form words that, in turn, lead to word meanings in the child's listening vocabulary. In short, acoustical properties and hierarchical development in language obscure perception of individual phonemes. Thus, conspicuous strategies are necessary to make phonemes prominent in children's attention and perception.
Features of conspicuous strategies common across studies in which students consistently achieved positive and durable improvement in phonological awareness, reading, and spelling included direct teaching of phonological detection and manipulation, which involves: (a) teacher modeling of specific sounds, and (b) student producing specific sounds.
Direct teaching of phonological detection and manipulation may include using concrete representation of sounds to make the mental manipulations of phonemes overt for the learner and teacher. (See Figure 1 for an illustration of a template used with concrete representations; e.g., blank tiles). Concrete representation involves using a neutral object to stand for a sound. For example, in a segmentation strategy, students hear the teacher model a sound, then say the phoneme while simultaneously moving a blank tile that represents the phoneme (Ball & Blachman, 1991; O'Connor, Jenkins, & Slocum, 1993. In contrast, a strategy for detecting phonemes that does not include concrete representation might ask students to pull the first sound away from the rest of the word in their mind and then say the sound pulled away.
Figure 1. Template for concrete representation instruction. Example for 3-phoneme word.
Letter-sound correspondences are a type of concrete representation of sound. That is, letters represent sounds via visual symbols. Several studies incorporated letter-sound correspondence and phonological awareness activities. Findings suggested that this combination facilitated students' understanding of the relation between sounds and written symbols. Research has not established the optimal sequence of instruction for all learners. For example, it is unclear whether all learners would benefit more from auditory instruction (i.e., phonological awareness without letter-sound correspondences) followed by the addition of letter-sound correspondence, or from simply beginning instruction by combining the teaching of letter-sound correspondence and phonological awareness.
The following sequence summarizes a typical research-based strategy for teaching segmenting: (a) teacher models segmentation (word meaning often prompted with a picture), (b) children touch or move a concrete representation of a sound and vocally produce segmented phonemes, (c) children repeat the word. In addition, after letter-sound correspondences are learned, letter tiles are used as concrete representations.
Mediated scaffolding is external support provided by the teacher, tasks, and materials during initial learning of sounds and strategies for consciously hearing and manipulating sounds. The amount and type of mediated scaffolding used is determined by the needs of individual students in relation to the task. Therefore, scaffolding is variable, determined by the interaction between the materials and the learners. Such variation refers not only to the teacher support provided during initial learning, but also the gradual reduction of support as children become more fluent in phonological awareness skills. As illustrated below, the support can take the form of task adjustment, materials variations, or teacher support.
While our research synthesis (Smith et al., 1995) indicated that a common characteristic of effective phonological interventions was attention to a continuum of difficulty for each of the features, of the five factors, the phonological properties of words have received the most significant empirical attention. For example, across studies continuant sounds were typically introduced before stop sounds, because stop sounds are more difficult to elongate and, therefore, more difficult to isolate, detect, and manipulate. Stop sounds were often introduced later because of the articulatory distortion that often occurs when a stop sound is produced in isolation. For example, it is difficult for many children to detach the vowel sound /u/ when voicing the /t/. Similarly, consonant clusters often are more difficult than continuants (e.g., /f/ in fish can become /ffffish / in contrast to /st/ in star which is impossible to elongate and difficult to analyze because /t/ is a stop sound).
The importance of attending to factors and their continua of difficulty supports the theory that perception and coding of linguistic material explains many differences in children's ease of reading acquisition. Moreover, attention to the relative difficulty of factors aligns with empirical evidence. Thus, research consistently documents that the problematic aspect of language for many children is the phonological component. When instruction is scaffolded (e.g., graduating difficulty of task), the problematic aspect of reading (i.e., phonological features of language) is mediated and systematically lessened. Empirical evidence strongly indicates that scaffolding phonological complexity meets the needs of all learners and the specific needs of diverse learners.
Figure 2 presents an overview of phonological dimensions and the continuum of difficulty for each. However, Figure 2 does not show the complex interrelations that can occur among the dimensions. For example, a short word (few phonemes), trip , which contains an initial consonant cluster, /tr,/ (difficult phonologically because initial sound cannot be elongated--the /r/ is difficult for some young children to pronounce, and clusters are more difficult than single phonemes) can be used for segmenting, which is a more difficult task. In beginning instruction, the teacher should present the simplest features of instructional examples to ensure that diverse learners are successful initially with beginning reading tasks.
| Dimension | Simple | Example | Difficult | Example |
| Word Length | 1-3 phonemes. Length reduces memory load. | at, sat | More than 3. Length increase memory load. | class, swing, pumpkin |
| Size of Phonological Unit | Compound words
syllables, onset-rimes | carwash kitt-y am, Sam, pan | Phonemes | Individual sounds of letters. E.g., /m/ |
| Position of Phonemes in Words | Initial then last | First and last sound in sit, kit, mit | Medial | Identify medial phoneme in "school" |
| Phonological Properties of Phonemes and Clusters in Words | Continuants (sounds that can be extended) | Say mmmmman. | Consonant clusters, later developing phonemes | What sounds does the beginning of "school" say? /r/, /l/ |
Figure 2. Dimensions that contribute to phonological difficulty.
Use of the template in research typically progressed according to the following sequence (e.g., Ball & Blachman, 1991; O'Connor et al., 1993). First, children moved blank tiles to a square for each sound during segmentation activities. After the children had mastered some letter-sound correspondences, one of the blank tiles was replaced by a letter tile. Typically, when letter tiles were introduced, the letter tile would represent the initial phoneme because it was the easiest. In addition, only one letter tile would be used initially to lessen the difficulty of the task.
The following research-based sequence summarizes mediated scaffolding (Ball & Blachman, 1991; Bryne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1989; Cunningham, 1990; Lie, 1991; O'Connor et al., 1993):
The following sequence, derived from the research, characterizes the strategic integration of phonological awareness, alphabetic understanding and reading instruction (Ball &1990; O'Connor et al., 1993): Blachman, 1991; Bryne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1989; Cunningham,
Priming background knowledge was not an obvious or common feature of the training studies reviewed in the research synthesis (Smith et al., 1995), because of a relatively narrow focus and length of time for most of these studies. In a yearlong phonological awareness intervention however, Lundberg, Frost, and Petersen, (1988) noted that the progression through the tasks was designed to be slow to ensure mastery, even for children who were low in phonological awareness ability. Nevertheless, Lundberg et al., (1988) did not report any methods used to prime background knowledge as students moved through the yearlong sequence of phonological skills acquisition.
Guided practice is a type of scaffolding that includes varying amounts of assistance. For example, students may be told when to use a specific strategy that had been previously taught, followed by the teacher modeling the strategy, and concluding with students using the strategy with immediate teacher feedback. This amount of assistance in the same lesson could be reduced to a verbal prompt of the strategy (e.g., the metacognitive strategy to "cut up" unfamiliar words in their minds (Cunningham, 1990).
Daily review links previous to current lessons, thereby helping to prime background knowledge and skills. Thus, a carefully planned system of review interwoven with the presentation of new material enhances the development of automaticity, or fluency, that enables short-term memory to process increasing amounts of information. To get beyond the starting point in reading acquisition, attention to the design principle of judicious review is pivotal.
The purpose of this discussion was to relate research and practice by responding to two focal questions: (a) What are the research-based instructional priorities, or big ideas? and (b) For the instructional priority of phonological awareness, what is the existing research evidence regarding curriculum design?
An overwhelming convergence of multiple lines of research has firmly established the importance of phonological awareness in reading acquisition. The existence of both causal and reciprocal relations between phonological awareness and reading acquisition fixes phonological awareness as an instructional priority. Moreover, research indicates that deficits in processing the phonological features of language explain a significant proportion of beginning reading problems and correlated difficulties in reading comprehension, background knowledge, memory, and vocabulary differences. Thus, for diverse learners, early identification of phonological awareness deficits combined with early intervention is pivotal in ensuring success in learning to read.
From the research, we concluded that the use of the design principles (i.e., conspicuous strategies, mediated scaffolding, strategic integration, primed background knowledge, and judicious review) facilitates perception of, quality of representation and, therefore, retrieval of phonologically coded material. This conclusion is particularly significant for beginning readers, especially diverse learners, who have difficulty becoming aware of the abstract, phonological features of words to which we do not consciously attend (Adams, 1990).
In our review, we did not find similar levels of procedural details for each design principle, despite strong support for the underlying big idea of phonological awareness. For example, more procedural details were found for conspicuous strategies, scaffolding, and strategic integration than for primed background knowledge and judicious review. The purpose of conspicuous strategy instruction is to make explicit the phonological dimensions, particularly phonemes, to which we do not typically attend (Adams, 1990). Moreover, mastery of one strategy does not guarantee mastery of a subsequent strategy without instruction. Results from the research suggested that the curriculum design principle, scaffolding, makes a significant difference in learner outcomes, particularly for diverse learners. It follows then that, if all materials and tasks are scaffolded, all strategies necessary for reading acquisition are strategically integrated and, given sufficient judicious review, diverse learners would learn to read with greater likelihood of success.
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