Importance Of Phonological Awareness And Phonics

Phonological awareness and phonics a logical starting point when teaching emergent ELLs. Essentially, phonology is a language’s sound system and the way of combining those sounds into a spoken language. Each language has its own sounds and distinct set of rules for how those sounds can be combined. As Yule (2010) explains,

Phonology is about the underling design, the blueprint of each sound type, which serves as the constant basis of all the variations in physical articulations of that sound type in different contexts. (p. 42)

When a person has a strong phonological awareness of a language that person is able to speak, read, and hear that language. It is through an understanding of phonology that a person is able to make sense of the

In addition, children learn that they can blend the sounds to read words and segment words into sounds to spell. (p. 8)

While phonological awareness and phonics instruction are typically considered bottom-up processes, I believe that they do tie in with top-down processes such as LEA. In fact, I believe that effective language teaching must include both processes. When using a top-down process such as LEA, a learner will use his/her background knowledge to infer the meaning of the text. However, when the knowledge proves to be insufficient, bottom-up processes come into

If the teacher notices any difficulties for a learner, a bottom-up strategy such as the grammar-translation method or the audiolingual method could be implemented. Say a teacher notices a German ELL struggling to pronounce the /th/ sound. The teacher could model the proper mouth position while producing the sound. This could be followed by a brief explanation that it is a dental sound so it is produced when the tip of the tongue is placed behind the front teeth. It can be voiced like it is in the word they, or it can be voiceless like it is in the word thin. The learner could be told to hold his/her hand on his/her throat while saying they and thin. This would allow the learner to feel if any vibrations are produced when saying each word. The audiolingual method could be implemented by having the learners record themselves while reading their stories and producing the different sounds. The top-down and bottom-up processes are most effective when used hand in hand. This is because

…learning to read and write in a second language includes several interrelated skills and use of diverse kinds of knowledge (cultural and real world) at the same time. Some of the component skills involved in reading and writing (like phonological awareness, decoding, and spelling) are building blocks for other skills, such as reading comprehension and complex writing. (Cloud, Genesee, and