Phonological awareness is often misunderstood, leading to widespread myths that can hinder a child’s reading development. Whether you’re an elementary teacher, special education professional, parent, or school administrator, this blog is designed to clear up these misconceptions and provide evidence-based insights. By understanding the true nature of phonological awareness and its critical role in early literacy, you can better support your students and children, ensuring they have the strong foundation they need to succeed. Let’s debunk these myths together, so every child has the opportunity to thrive as a reader!
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Myth #1: Phonological awareness and phonemic awareness are the same thing.
I used to have the hardest time remembering the difference between these two concepts! I’ll let you in on my secret: once I knew what a phoneme was, I never again confused phonological and phonemic awareness.
A big idea to remember is that phonological awareness covers a broad set of skills that includes phonemic awareness under its umbrella. Phonological awareness is the ability to notice and manipulate speech sounds at the sentence, word, syllable (cac-tus), onset/rime (d-og), and phoneme levels (d-o-g). Examples of phonological awareness activities include counting words in a sentence, deleting a syllable from a compound word, changing the first sound (onset) in a word to come up with a list of rhyming words, and segmenting a word into its individual sounds.
Phonemic awareness is under the umbrella of phonological awareness. Here’s the key: A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound, so phonemic awareness is the ability to notice and manipulate these smallest units of sound. Examples of phonemic awareness activities include blending four individual sounds into a word, deleting a sound from a word, and changing the last sound in a word to make a new word.
Myth #2: Phonological awareness tasks are only for little kids.
Many phonological awareness resources are fun and cute because they are intended to be used with younger children. However, students of all ages may require instruction in this area. “Research has shown that older, struggling readers almost always have difficulties with phonemic awareness that were never addressed. Such individuals will continue to struggle with reading until this difficulty is corrected” (Kilpatrick, 2016).
Kilpatrick (2015) also reminds us that, “Every point in a child’s development of word-level reading is affected by phonological awareness skills.” This means that until our students have developed accuracy and fluency at a basic reading level, they will need sufficient phonological awareness skills to help them continue to progress. Even older and skilled readers, including yourself, must use their toolkit to pronounce unfamiliar words, such as content vocabulary they may encounter across subject areas. Without sufficient phonological awareness skills (in addition to some other skills), individuals would struggle to correctly read and spell words like osmosis, photosynthesis, and imperialism.
Myth #3: Phonological awareness skills cannot be improved.
Phonological awareness skills absolutely can be improved with direct instruction! Wendling and Mather (2012) state that “the relationship between phonological awareness and reading ability is reciprocal and bidirectional: as phonological awareness develops, reading improves and vice versa.” It’s a beautiful waterfall effect!
Kilpatrick (2016) shares that approximately 60-70% of children will naturally develop phoneme awareness without explicit instruction. The students who do not naturally develop it will need direct instruction. The good news is that improving phonological awareness requires a relatively modest investment of time.
Multiple researchers agree that short daily practice sessions (two to ten minutes per day of direct instruction, depending on which source you consult) have a positive impact. The National Reading Panel’s 2000 report Teaching Children to Read summarized the research by stating that effective phonemic awareness training takes anywhere from 5 to 18 total hours. That may sound like a long time but if you remember that improving phonemic awareness skills may be the key to unlocking a child’s reading success, then setting aside ten minutes a day for this key skill is 100% worth it.
Myth #4: Poor phonological awareness skills mean the student must have dyslexia.
Poor phonological awareness is a strong predictor (but not a guarantee) of early reading difficulty. Dyslexia is multifaceted, and a weakness in phonological awareness alone is not a sure sign of dyslexia. It is, however, an indicator that the student requires intervention.
We also need to remember that not all poor readers have dyslexia. There are various constellations of factors that can lead to reading difficulties, and not all reading difficulties stem from the presence of dyslexia. Reading difficulties can also be caused or exacerbated by an individual’s intellectual or oral language ability, attention problems, insufficient instruction, interruptions in schooling, and lack of opportunity.
Myth #5: Phonological awareness instruction should not include letters because then it becomes phonics instead.
To help differentiate between phonics and phonemic awareness, Kilpatrick said, “You can do phoneme awareness with your eyes closed, but you cannot do phonics with your eyes closed.” While this is true, it doesn’t mean that phonics and phonemic awareness are mutually exclusive, or that we should only teach phonemic awareness in a purely auditory way. While adding letters to a phonemic awareness task does make it also a phonics task, it does not remove phonemic awareness skills from the task. It only means that the student is working on phonics and phonemic awareness at the same time.
We have ample evidence from reputable sources, including the National Reading Panel and Dr. Lousia Moats, that supports the inclusion of letters in phonemic awareness tasks.
Myth #6: We should not use manipulatives in our phonological awareness instruction.
Emergent readers and spellers may benefit from using manipulatives to complete phonological awareness tasks. Manipulatives may include hands/fingers, blocks or other small objects, and pop-its. We can also use auditory supports, like knocking and clapping. Picture a student tapping out sounds to spell or clapping the syllables in a word.
Manipulatives can help emergent readers make letter/sound connections, but we want to make sure students don’t become reliant on them. For example, sometimes we feel like we need to require finger tapping because it’s part of our phonics program, but if a child is consistently spelling with accuracy, should they be forced to laboriously tap all words anyway? Maybe not. Using manipulatives can be a great tool for reading and spelling tricky words, but let’s teach our students how and when to use these effective strategies while also building the skills necessary to no longer need manipulatives.
Myth #7: Poor phonological awareness means low intelligence.
Students with any level of intelligence may demonstrate weaknesses in phonological awareness, even students who are considered gifted. We can’t assume that a child is “too smart” to have a weakness in this area.
Sometimes a student knows many words by sight, has well-developed background knowledge and vocabulary about many topics, and can use their strong oral language skills to help them comprehend what they’re reading even if they can’t decode some of the words. These students might appear to cruise along in their reading until sometime in second or third grade. Because they can already read at a second grade-ish level, we might think, “Gosh, Billy was doing so well in reading until this year! He’s too smart to have poor phonological awareness.” However, just because Billy is a great sight word reader with strong compensatory skills doesn’t mean he can’t have gaps in his foundational reading skills! Kilpatrick (2016) reminds us that “phonological awareness is… not meaningfully related to intelligence, so we cannot assume who will struggle with the skill.”
And that’s a wrap!
Understanding and addressing the myths surrounding phonological awareness is crucial for fostering strong reading skills in all students. By dispelling these common misconceptions, we can better equip our educators, parents, and administrators to support the development of early literacy skills. Whether you’re teaching in the classroom, guiding a child at home, or making decisions that impact educational practices, recognizing the truth about phonological awareness is a powerful step toward ensuring every child becomes a confident reader.
Ready to take your phonemic awareness instruction to the next level this school year?
Remember when we said that short, daily practice sessions of phonemic awareness skills lead to positive growth, and that the research tells us we should include letters? If you’re looking to amplify your phonemic awareness instruction this school year, I have the perfect solution for you: add Paws and Spell to your daily literacy block!
Paws and Spell is an online word chain activity that incorporates phonics and phonemic awareness into one high-impact, no-prep activity. Paws and Spell asks students to complete what are commonly called “word chains” or “word ladders.” Students drag letter tiles to change one sound in a given word to make a new word. Each word chain includes ten words.
Completing word chains requires students to practice several phonemic awareness skills in one activity: segmenting, blending, substituting, adding, and deleting. It also includes the phonics skills of decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling) because letters are involved. Lastly, word chains promote the orthographic mapping process because students make direct connections between the sounds in words and the letter(s) used to represent them.
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Sources:
Kilpatrick, David A. Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties. Hoboken, New Jersey, Wiley, 2015.
Kilpatrick, David A. Equipped for Reading Success: A Comprehensive, Step-By-Step Program for Developing Phoneme Awareness and Fluent Word Recognition. Syracuse, NY, Casey & Kirsch Publishers, 2016.
Mather, Nancy, and Barbara J. Wendling. Essentials of Dyslexia Assessment and Intervention. J. Wiley, 2012.
National Reading Panel (U.S.) and National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (U.S.). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction. U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000.
