What Is Phonological Awareness In Children?

Phonological awareness is basically the ability to understand that words consist of syllables and phonemes. This is a set of letters and their respective pronunciations.

The importance of phonological awareness

Understanding that words are divided into syllables and letters with different sounds is extremely important for children who are going to learn to read.

The ability to read opens up incredible opportunities throughout life, such as studies, work, various forms of entertainment such as. literature and reading manuals, etc.

Of course, phonological awareness is also important for learning to write.

How phonological awareness develops

As with many other human skills, phonological awareness develops in several stages. In the beginning, the goal is to produce letters and divide words into syllables by singing and playing.

Then the activities go from listening and repeating to being able to make these separations yourself. It is now that one begins to become aware of the letters, their sounds and combinations. During this stage, after a period of adaptation, the phonological consciousness begins to take shape.

Activities that can help develop children’s phonological awareness

As with many other things, the best way for children to acquire this skill is from their surroundings.

If you offer them an environment where they can enjoy a lot of communication and reading, they will gradually acquire this awareness.

Here are some simple activities that can help:

• Play word games and play word games: Simply saying a word and asking the child to repeat it or asking the child to find rhymes can be beneficial.
• Songs that distinguish syllables and sounds and that help children focus their attention on these phenomena.
• At a more advanced level, you can create games where you have to add or remove sounds to create new words.
• Read to your children: Children who are used to coming into contact with words from a young age pick up new sounds more naturally.
• So in modern times, we can not ignore the technical resources available. There are mobile apps, internet videos and computer games that offer activities and challenges to promote phonological awareness.

How do I know if my child has difficulty with this skill?

Parents need to be very involved in their children’s educational process to be able to identify possible gaps in their maturity and correct them.

Phonological awareness can be one of the areas where some children have difficulties. To identify these deficiencies, one must be aware of the following behaviors:

• Difficulty learning rhymes and rhymes or not thinking it’s fun to listen to them because they do not understand.
• Problems identifying syllables and counting them.
• The child does not distinguish between sound repetitions in words.
• Inability to combine sounds to form words.
• Difficulty learning new words.

If a child has these problems, later difficulties in reading and writing arise. Therefore, this must be addressed from the beginning to avoid major complications in the future. In addition, these problems can have negative effects on a child’s self-esteem.

Although it is often an underestimated skill, phonological awareness is very important. In fact, the lack of this awareness can lead to problems, not only in education but also emotionally and socially. Spend a few minutes a day strengthening your children’s abilities.