Phonological Awareness for Children with Hearing Loss

Phonological Awareness is the ability to detect, identify, and manipulate sounds and syllables in words.

Phonological Awareness skills are CRUCIAL predictors of a child’s reading success.

Children with hearing loss CAN develop phonological skills through listening.

• RHYMES

  • Determine whether a pair of words rhyme

    • “Do these words rhyme: hat, bat?”

  • Determine which word in a set of three does not rhyme

    • “Which one does not rhyme: bee, see, boat?”

  • Generate a rhyme

    • “Can you tell me a word that rhymes with ball?”

• SYLLABLES

  • Counting syllables

    • “How many syllables do you hear in the word paper?”

  • Segmenting syllables

    • “Can you tell me the syllables in telephone?”

  • Blending syllables

    • “Which word sounds like this: to ma to?”

  • Deleting syllables

    • “Can you say piano without the /pi/?”

• PHONEMES (Speech Sounds)

  • Initial/medial/final sound identification

    • “What is the first/middle/last sound in the word bed?”

  • Counting phonemes

    • “How many sounds do you hear in the word red?”

  • Phoneme blending

    • “Which word sounds like this: g r ee n?”

  • Phoneme deletion

    • “Say blue without the /b/?”

  • Phoneme substitution

    • “Say go.  Now say it with a /b/ instead of /g/?”

Ways to work on Phonological Awareness skills at home include:

• Sing songs and nursery rhymes.
• Read and point out rhymes in the text, alliterations (words that have the same starting sound).
• Count or clap syllables in family members’ names.
• Play secret word guessing games with syllable or sound segmentation.