ACQ Vol 11 no 2 2009

Literacy

Phonological awareness Effective practices in assessment and intervention Gail Gillon and Brigid McNeill

Understanding the importance of phonological awareness development to reading and spelling performance has led to a rapid increase in phonological awareness interventions. Such practices are particularly important for children with speech and language impairment as these children are at increased risk for persistent literacy difficulties. There is, however, a wide range of assessment and intervention practices under the umbrella of “phonological awareness”. Emerging research has demonstrated that differing types of phonological awareness interventions are likely to produce varying levels of success in enhancing reading or spelling ability. This article summarizes the literature regarding phonological awareness assessment and intervention for children with speech and language impairment and provides a research-based checklist to guide practitioners in supporting literacy development for children at risk. E xciting initiatives to raise reading achievement in all children are being implemented at an international level. Many governments are committing significant resources to national literacy strategies and to research that advances our understanding of reading development and reading pedagogy. Yet despite our current best efforts, there are clearly identified groups of children throughout the developed world who continue to underachieve in written language acquisition. Children from minority ethnic groups, indigenous populations, lower socioeconomic backgrounds, and children with spoken language difficulties in their native language continue to demonstrate poor reading achievement in comparison to majority populations. It is critical, therefore, that we continue to work within an evidence based framework to ensure our instructional methods and interventions are effective in enhancing reading development for all learners. One area of reading research that has attracted much attention in recent years is phonological awareness (i.e., an individual’s awareness of the sound structure of spoken words). Understanding the critical role of phonological awareness in reading acquisition has been described as one

of the most significant scientific findings in education of the 20th century (Stanovich, 2000). Phonological awareness is a powerful predictor of early reading development and a deficit in this domain is considered a causative factor in severe and persistent reading disorders such as dyslexia. Speech pathologists’ expertise in normal and disordered phonology places them in a unique position within the educational team in addressing children’s phonological awareness development. They are able to assess children’s phonological awareness abilities, identify children at high risk for persistent reading failure, and facilitate children’s phonological awareness skills to enhance both reading and spelling development. This article provides an overview of research evidence related to effective practices in phonological awareness assessment and intervention for children with speech and language impairment. Assessment Phonological awareness development should be routinely evaluated within a comprehensive assessment battery for children with speech and language impairment (Boudreau & Hedberg, 1999). Measures of phonological awareness ability, together with letter name knowledge, are powerful predictors of early reading success (Hogan, Catts, & Little, 2005; Lonigan, Burgess, & Anthony, 2000). The phonological awareness performance of preschool children can predict early reading and spelling development more accurately than variables such as intelligence scores, age, and socioeconomic status (Bryant, MacLean, Bradley, & Crossland, 1990). The ability to use phonological information in the reading process (such as measured by non-word reading tasks and word decoding ability) become more powerful predictors of later reading success as children mature (Hogan et al., 2005). The phonological awareness tasks administered in the assessment battery should reflect the hierarchy of difficulty of phonological awareness established in the literature (Gillon, 2004). More challenging tasks that require awareness at the phoneme level (e.g., phoneme segmentation) are appropriate for children 5 years and older. Early developing tasks of phoneme identity and rhyme would be appropriate to administer to children aged 4 and 5 years (Lonigan et al., 2000). In addition, tasks to assess phonological memory and rapid naming ability (retrieval of phonological information) are important to include in the phonological evaluation (Lovett, Steinbach, & Frijters, 2000; Wolf, Bowers, & Biddle, 2000), particularly for older children and when identifying children with dyslexia.

This article has been peer- reviewed Keywords assessment intervention phonological awareness

Gail Gillon (top) and Brigid McNeill

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ACQ Volume 11, Number 2 2009

ACQ uiring knowledge in speech, language and hearing