Page 96 - Reading Nest - The Supportive Literacy Environment Handbook

In reality the learning, writing and reading of letters, sounds and words occurs

simultaneously, it is not even reasonable to make a distinction between such skills formally.

It is essential, though, to remember that the development of overall language competence
and reading skills are closely connected, a child with a rich vocabulary is better able to

comprehend and enjoy written text.

The more functions of literacy the child can perceive, the greater the motivation to become

literate. Technical skills should be viewed together with reading motivation, otherwise the
child learns to read but also develops the view that reading is unpleasant, complicated and

boring. When there is the environment where reading and other literacy activities appear
with positive feelings and success, these would gradually help the acquisition of technical

skills too.

Supporting phonemic awareness

Awareness of phonemes means understanding sounds of a language and an ability to

distinguish them in words. This ability can be fostered by playing and communicating with

the child since birth.

Evolution of the skills is not hierarchical, some children develop sense for rhyming sooner,
others can distinguish sounds in the word. Acquisition of each skill is also gradual, e.g. in

the beginning it is simpler to distinguish the vowel at the beginning of the word. Identifying

sounds in the sound combinations may be difficult whether they occur at the beginning,
middle or end of the word, in the case of foreign words even older pupils and adults may get

them wrong.

One must bear in mind that literacy develops holistically. On the one hand spelling skills

precede those of reading and writing, on the other hand written texts foster the development
of enunciation. For instance a child knows the letters of their name for writing it and learns

spelling through these letters.