Phonetics and Phonemic Awareness - Lecture Notes

d Materials

  • Some materials may be delayed due to snow.

  • Foundations book is used for phonological awareness (white book with red and blue writing).

  • Assignment for the book is due in four weeks.

Class Schedule and AsFoundations Book ansignments

  • Class continues through May.

  • Group observations can start at the end of the class (May or summer).

  • Information on therapy groups will be provided later.

  • Two modules posted for this session; module three will be covered in the next class.

Phonetics and Speech Sounds

  • Focus on phonetics and the 44 speech sounds, especially for students with dyslexia.

  • Explicit instruction in these sounds is essential.

  • 26 letters in the alphabet but 44 speech sounds.

Symbol Recognition

  • Symbols are used to represent familiar concepts.

  • Examples: hospital (H), hurricane evacuation route (blue circle), pie (3.143.14), recycling, Olympic rings, stop sign, Apple (technology company).

  • Symbols evoke different memories and associations.

Unfamiliar Symbols

  • Examples: sharp instrument hazard, eye and face hazard, laser radiation hazard.

  • These symbols are harder to recognize without specific training.

Written Language and Symbols

  • Mastering written language requires mapping printed symbols onto sounds.

  • Context is crucial for understanding symbols.

  • Bilingual individuals may find that different languages do not have similar graphic systems.

Alphabetic Principle

  • Understanding that sounds and spoken words are represented by letters.

  • Alphabet is a series of symbols; their arrangement creates different sounds.

  • Students with dyslexia may struggle with the alphabetic principle and require explicit instruction.

  • Consider different type fonts, as certain fonts may be easier for some individuals to read.

  • Brains of individuals with dyslexia work differently; focus on getting symbols into their brain and holding memories for the sounds.

Phonetics

  • Study of speech sounds, helps build foundational knowledge for therapy.

  • Alphabet activities are used to introduce the alphabetic principle and phonetics.

Graphemes versus Phonemes

  • Grapheme: printed letter or letter cluster.

  • Phoneme: sound that links to the grapheme.

  • Digraph: two graphemes that make one sound.

  • Example: the word "that" has four graphemes (t, h, a, t) but three sounds (\th, a, t).

  • Vital skill for students to understand the relationship between graphemes and phonemes.

Definitions

  • Grapheme: letter or letter cluster representing a single speech sound.

  • Phoneme: smallest unit of speech or a single speech sound.

  • Welded sounds/diphthongs: blending two sounds together.

Graphemes, Letters, and Phonemes: Examples

  • Word “snap”: four letters, four graphemes, four phonemes.

  • Word “check”: five letters, graphemes are diagraph ch, vowel e, diagraph ck, and three phonemes.

Language Systems

  • Logographic: symbolic pictures representing words (e.g., Chinese, hieroglyphics, cuneiform).

  • Syllabary: written symbols representing syllables (e.g., Japanese, Korean, Cherokee).

  • Phonetic: alphabetic letters represent speech sounds/phonemes (e.g., English, Polish, Spanish).

Phonetics Goal

  • Study characteristics of individual speech sounds in all languages.

  • Categorize and pronounce sounds.

  • Use phonetics to discover sounds and pronunciations of phonemes.

  • Connect sounds to symbols/letters.

  • Teach pronunciations based on placement (initial, medial, final).

  • Build a phonetic foundation to understand sounds and categorize them.

  • Teach the six main syllable types (open, closed, vowel pair, vowel consonant e, vowel r, final stable syllable).

Categorizing Sounds

  • Consonants and vowels.

  • Students should say the sound and feel the place of articulation, airflow, and vocal cord activity.

Consonants - Place of Articulation

  • Consider the oral cavity: are both lips involved? Are teeth biting the lips? Where is the ridge behind the teeth?

Consonants - Flow of Air Stream

  • Is the consonant sound blocked or partially blocked?

  • Is it continuous or clipped?

  • Continuous sounds keep going until breath runs out (e.g., /s/).

  • Clipped sounds are short bursts of air (e.g., /b/, /d/, /g/).

Consonants - Activity of Vocal Cords

  • Is the sound voiced or unvoiced?

  • Voiced: vocal cords vibrate.

  • Unvoiced: no vibration.

  • Voiced/voiceless cognates: phonemes produced in the same place of the mouth, in the same manner, but differ in voicing characteristics (e.g., /p/ and /b/).

Vowel Sounds

  • Open speech sounds produced by easy passage of air through an open vocal tract.

  • Vowels are open and voiced.

  • Strong understanding of short and long vowels is important.

  • Students should listen for the vowel sound and repeat it.

Phonetics and Pronunciation of Sounds

  • 44 speech sounds in English with some variants.

  • Allophones: slight variation in the production of vowels or consonants (e.g., sack vs. sank).

  • Vowel sound changes slightly when near consonants that make nasal sounds.

Language systems

  • logographic: symbolic

  • syllabary system: set of written symbols

  • phonetic system: uses alphabetic letters

Assignment: Phoneme Inventory

  • Record a video of yourself saying the sounds in the phoneme inventory.

  • Example: a, apron, ā; e, equal, ē; i, iris, ī.

  • Common mistakes to watch out for:

    • w sound

  • Qu combination- sounds like coo

  • y sound - y yarn ye

Phonological and Phonemic Awareness

Why Teach Phonological Awareness?

  • Essential for breaking the reading code.

  • Helps students link sounds and words to printed letters (alphabetic principle).

  • Enables manipulation of phonemes for positive literacy outcomes.

  • Explicit instruction on one to two skills at a time is more effective.

  • Breaks down large concepts into smaller, manageable parts.

Effective Instruction

  • Manipulate phonemes with letters (encoding and decoding).

  • Advance through skills to build on prior knowledge.

When to Teach

  • In therapy, incorporate phonological awareness daily.

  • First year of therapy (bucket one): alphabetic awareness, phonological activities, handwriting.

Assessments

  • Use tests like the CTOPP to assess phonemic awareness.

  • Shaywitz is screener has phonological awareness in it.

Reviewing Scores

  • Look for pattern when CTOPP phonological awareness in poor

  • See if there are areas that have high scores like sight word and identify the outlying factor

Key Terms

Phoneme

  • Smallest unit of speech that can change meaning (e.g., bat vs. mat).

Phonemic Awareness

  • Ability to hear and manipulate sounds.

Hierarchy of Skill

  1. Drawing attention to the sounds in words matching words.

  2. Working with words (partial phoneme segmentation).

  3. Full phoneme segmentation.

  4. Manipulating sounds.

Phonological Awareness Umbrella Term

  • Has all the elements that leads to phonemic awareness.