Phonological Awareness Development

This entry discusses Chapter 3 of Phonological Awareness by Gillon (2004), entitled Phonological Awareness Development.

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Children learning English as their second language are able to demonstrate phonological awareness skills in English after a relatively short period of study (Chiappe & Siegel, 1999), suggesting that the development of phonological awareness skills in one alphabetic language transfer to understanding phonological awareness in a second alphabetic language (pg 40).

Language experience can influence
1) performance on specific phonological awareness tasks;
2) the rate at which phonological awareness increases;
3) the use of phonological awareness knowledge in the reading and spelling process.

The researchers suggested that adequate exposure to an alphabetic scripts appears necessary for the use of phonological knowledge.

Variables Contributing to the Development of PA
1) Influence of Reading and Spelling Experiences
A reciprocal relationship exists between PA and litearcy development. Exposure to formal reading and spelling instruction seems to more fully develop phoneme awareness knowledge (Perfetti et al., 1987). Cognitive maturation alone cannot easily account for later developing competency at phoneme level.

2) Alphabet Knowledge
Learning the names of the alphabetic letters and their associated common phonemes may help children understand the sound structure of words. Studies demonstrated stronger effects on enhancing reading when PA training is combined with letter-sound knowledge training.

Personally, I think that the most important section of PA is that we make prints availabe for the students. This is related to what Krashen mentioned (as in my arlier entries). At the very basic level, it is important to introduce the sound of each alphabet to the students. I remember when I was in Year One, our tasks was to write the letters over and again, and to say it in the class. When we have finished the letters book, we would proceed to the next book- words book. Our teacher would write words in the book, and we need to copy the words like 30 times each. That was the way I learn my vocabs. Now I can say I am proud of my vocabs, though it may not covers engineering fields, or medicine, but at least I know that my vocabs are more than sufficient for my daily conversations, and to deliver my ideas across.

Regarding what Krashen mentioned in one of his writtings, we must make prints available for the students. But not just available, but interesting prints. Library should be equipped with interesting books, suitable for the students' levels. It is important to make the students interested in reading first, before we can make them read the boring History texts, or the complicated Biology notes.

How would this help in my research proposal?
As I have mentioned in my earlier entry on the revised proposal outline, phonological awareness would come in in the Literature Review. It is important to define the elements in MBI as to understand what's happening in the classroom. Are the teachers teaches all these? Or at least include parts of it? Do they take these into consideration when they plan their lessons?

Yes, I can deny that there is less connection of PA development for SBPs students, as many of them have no problem in decoding the prints, but again, how about their BICS? PA is somewhat important in ensuring the development of BICS.

Phonological Awareness

Gillon, G.T. (2004) Phonological Awareness. NY: The Guilford Press.

The book opens with the definition of the terms used in the field. According to Gillon (2004), phonological awareness refers to an individual's awareness of the sound structure, or the phonological structure, of a spoken word (pg 2).

It is important to gain a perspective of phonological awareness within the broader context of phonology abd linguistics theory. Long before children become explicitly aware of the phonological structure of words, they have developed implict phonological knowledge that allows them to gain mastery of speaking and listening to their native language. Implicit phonological knowledge for example, enables children to make judgment about whether a word is part of their  native language, allows for the self-correction of speech errors, and enables children to discriminate betwee acceptable and unacceptable variations of a spoken  word (Yavas, 1998).

Phonology is the area of linguistics that focuses on understanding the speech-sound system and the sound patterns of spoken language.

Explicit awareness of the phonological structure of a word helps children draw connections between the spoken form of a word and its written representation.

Before I go deep into this book, I guess it is not wrong for me to say that the government decision to introduce MBMMBI, and specifically Phonics into MBI, is indeed a very wise one. Children who comes to school has the knowledge of the language at home. But what they maybe lacking of is the connection between the sound, and its written form.

The issue that has been brought up by some concern citizens regarding Phonics teaching in schools is- are we teaching our children to speak like matsalleh? This issue is related to the fact that the MoE is bringing in some language experts from the UK. But what these concern citizens failed to realise is that these experts are for for teaching the children in schools, but to equipped teacher trainees to teach phonics when they go to school.

As stated above, phonological awareness is crucial in teaching reading. Students need to know the connection between the written form and its sound. I have to admit here that it is not easy to teach English, even to smart kids. There are so much rules to remember, yet so much exceptions to it. And the influence of the mother tongue as well- not that the kids speak like Makcik Minah from Felda New Zealand (no offence to any Makcik Minah from Felda NZ!), but the simplest things such as mud /mAd/ becomes /mUd/. They say it as it's spelled. This actually reminds me of some bus conductors in Bus Terminal in Jalan Hang Tuah in Melaka when I was in school. All of them would shout "Melaka Pa-ra-dey!! Adik, naik..gi Pa-ra-dey". English is not Malay, and most of the words are not spelled as its said.

If the utterance is a problem at the beginning of a student's learning, how would he/she learn more complex words?    

If you remember my entry related to BICS/CALP by Cummins, I think that our students are (almost) perfect in writng form. They can replicate and produce a good essay, so much so from the novels they read, but when we ask them to speak (even just to read), they  stuttering and mumbling. Are we producing mute English speakers?  

So I guess there is nothing wrong in teaching the students phonics, where at the end, we can correct the simplest utterance mistakes they (and perhaps us, too) always do.

Personally, I think it is a huge mistake to Malaynised English technical terms. Why can't we just teach the students the terms in English, because at the end, when they go to university (hopefully!!), they will have to learn it in English. What's the point of changing carbon dioxide to karbon dioksida? My students over and again would pronunce the word as karbon dioksida, though its spelled carbon dioxide in the English workbook!! Its /kArbern/ for God's sake! And please, its /Kenneck/ not /konek/ though its spelled with an O in the middle.