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.