Phonological Awareness in Spanish

Abstract

In the United States, more than 2 million children in Grades pre-K through 6 speak Spanish as their primary language. Approximately 50% of these students receive academic instruction in Spanish. This tutorial provides research-based recommendations for presenting phonological awareness tasks to children who receive literacy instruction in Spanish. The authors also discuss how phonological awareness development may differ between monolingual children learning Spanish and monolingual children learning English, and the implications of these differences for choosing appropriate phonological awareness tasks for Spanish speakers.

Spanish phonological awareness: Dimensionality and sequence of development during the preschool and kindergarten years.

“…For example, monosyllabic words are relatively common in English with the bulk being content words. By contrast, polysyllabic words in Spanish are more frequently content words, with monosyllabic words generally denoting functions, articles, conjunctions, prepositions, and adverbs (Gorman & Gillam, 2003). Content words or nouns in Spanish, therefore, generally have more syllables and phonemes than their English counterparts (e.g., pants-pantalon, shirt-camisa).…”

“…For example, adult readers of Spanish focus more on the syllable unit than individual phonemes when reading (Gorman & Gillam, 2003). In the present study, test items involving sensitivity to or manipulation of syllables were generally quite informative for quantifying individual differences in underlying phonological awareness, regardless of method of assessment.…”

“…Gorman and Gillam (2003) identified key linguistic features in Spanish that could lead to different rates and patterns of phonological awareness development, including differences in syllable stress and structure, word shapes, sound systems, and the orthographic depth of each language. For example, monosyllabic words are relatively common in English with the bulk being content words.…”

“…Some evidence suggests that Spanish-speaking children master phonological awareness skills in a sequence similar to that of monolingual English speakers (Carrillo, 1994;Cisero & Royer, 1995;Dentón, Hasbrouck, Weaver, & Riccio, 2000;Durgunoglu et al, 1993;Goikoetxea, 2005;Gorman & Gillam, 2003;Jiménez González, 1992;Jiménez González & Haro García, 1995;Jiménez González & Ortiz, 1993). For example, Cisero and Royer (1995) found that, like English-speaking children, Spanish-speaking children could detect rhyme before they could detect initial or final phonemes.…”

“…Moreover, the research that has been conducted has been limited by small sample sizes, exploratory methods, and measures that confound linguistic complexity with task complexity. As such, more research is needed to investigate the nature and sequence of phonological awareness development in monolingual and bilingual Spanish speakers (Gorman & Gillam, 2003).…”