Why phonics does not come first

baby undergoing brain wave testing

Researchers from the University of Cambridge and Trinity College of Dublin assert that babies acquire oral language skills through syllabic awareness and not (as it was previously thought) through phonemic awareness. And, as importantly, syllabic awareness (or the lack thereof) can predict potential language-based difficulties such as dyslexia.

Dr. Usha Goswami, who led the study, summarized the team's findings in a series of remarkable statements:

"Our research shows that the individual sounds of speech are not processed reliably until around seven months, even though most infants can recognize familiar words like 'bottle' by this point," "From then individual speech sounds are still added in very slowly – too slowly to form the basis of language."

Goswami continued:

"We believe that speech rhythm information (or syllabic structure) is the hidden glue underpinning the development of a well-functioning language system. Infants can use rhythmic information like a scaffold or skeleton to add phonetic information on to. For example, they might learn that the rhythm pattern of English words is typically strong-weak, as in 'daddy' or 'mummy', with the stress on the first syllable. They can use this rhythm pattern to guess where one word ends and another begins when listening to natural speech."

In other words, babies acquire spoken language skills by focusing on syllabic rhythms. Syllables are chunks of sounds that contain "beats or rhythms" because of their internal vowel structure. Every alphabetic language has rhythm because every language has vowels. That's why vowels can be sung, but consonants can only be hummed.

Research has shown that syllabic awareness is not only important to infants but also crucial to preschoolers. These findings help explain why nursery rhymes and songs are essential for cultivating phonological awareness.

Goswami concludes: "In all language that babies are exposed to there is a strong beat structure with a strong syllable twice a second. We're biologically programmed to emphasize this when speaking to babies."

SO WHAT? WHAT'S THE BIG TAKEAWAY?

Goswami advises parents to speak and sing rhythmically to their kids. But obviously--and especially--for kids who don't come from language-rich homes, formal and exciting instruction in syllabic awareness should occupy the primary portion of any preschool curriculum.

Goswami believes that though experts have been trying to explain dyslexia and other language-based difficulties by focusing on phonemic awareness deficits, the real culprit may be a lack of syllabic awareness. And what exactly is syllabic awareness? Syllabic awareness is the ability of children to recognize that spoken words consist of rhythmic syllable sounds. Goswami believes that speech and language processing difficulties begin with syllabic or rhythmic deficits, which can be detected in infants as early as two months old.

With such cutting-edge research to guide us, we should give equal (if not more) attention to teaching and reinforcing syllabic and rhyming structures in the earliest stages of literacy instead of focusing exclusively on phonics.