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Published: 23 March 2017

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Dr Kerry Hempenstall, Senior Industry Fellow, School of Education, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.

My blogs can be viewed on-line or downloaded as a Word file or PDF at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/olxpifutwcgvg8j/AABU8YNr4ZxiXPXzvHrrirR8a?dl=0

 New Addtion - March 2025

This new titled at the top goes along with the original documents topics, which can be found at the end of this new section, – except it’s to present material that’s more recent. It’s considering solely the years 2020 to 2025. Maybe we can see any differences that have taken place from those early years that occurred from years 1970 to 2010 in the old resource.

For this document we are looking at the effects of morphological awareness, naming speed, and phonological awareness on reading skills.

Literacy involves reading and writing skills, including decoding, comprehension, and fluency, while speed of naming, or rapid automatized naming (RAN), assesses the ability to quickly name familiar items like colors, letters, or objects, which is a predictor of reading fluency and can be a sign of reading difficulties.

Phonological processes, beyond phonemic awareness, encompass broader sound structures and patterns in speech, including syllable structure, alliteration, and rhyme, which are crucial for early literacy and speech development. Generative AI

Here's a more detailed explanation:

Phonological Awareness vs. Phonemic Awareness:

While phonemic awareness focuses on the smallest units of sound (phonemes), phonological awareness is a broader concept that encompasses the understanding of all aspects of speech sounds, including syllables, onset-rime, alliteration, and rhyme.

• Importance for Literacy:

Phonological awareness skills are strong predictors of later reading and spelling success.

• Phonological Processes and Early Development:

Children naturally simplify speech sounds as they learn to talk, using patterns of sound errors known as phonological processes.

• Examples of Phonological Processes:
• Final Consonant Deletion: Leaving off the last sound of a word (e.g., "boat" becomes "boe").
• Initial Consonant Deletion: Omitting the first sound of a word (e.g., "rice" becomes "ice").
• Assimilation: Changing a sound to be similar to another nearby sound (e.g., "bug" sounds like "bub").

Role in Speech Development:

Phonological processes help children learn to coordinate their speech organs (lips, tongue, teeth, palate, and jaw) for clear speech.

Intervention:

Understanding phonological processes is important for speech-language pathologists who work with children who have difficulty with speech sounds.

“This article investigates how well kindergarten phonological awareness (PA) and naming speed (NS) account for reading development to Grade 5. The authors use regression analyses to predict reading development, with mental ability and prior achievement controlled, and follow the reading development of children having combinations of adequate or inadequate PA and NS. PA was most strongly related to reading in the first 2 years of school, and NS's initially weaker relationship increased with grade level. Children with weak PA and slow NS were most likely to develop reading difficulties by Grade 5, followed by children with slow NS alone. The authors discuss the roles of NS and PA in reading development and the need to clarify the constructs underlying NS.”

Kirby, John & Parrila, Rauno & Pfeiffer, S.L.. (2003). Naming Speed and Phonological Awareness as Predictors of Reading Development. Journal of Educational Psychology. 95. 453-464. 10.1037/0022-0663.95.3.452.

“Our purpose in this study was to examine the development of reading skills (word identification, reading speed, and reading comprehension) and of key predictors of those skills over a 2-year time span in the upper elementary grades. The predictor constructs that we investigated are phonological awareness, naming speed, and morphological awareness, all of which have been included in models of reading (e.g., Castles et al., 2018, Kim, 2020, Levesque et al., 2021, Richards et al., 2006, Stafura and Perfetti, 2017, Wolf and Bowers, 1999). These constructs collaborate in and underlie successful reading.

Abstract:

This study examined the effects of phonological awareness, naming speed, and morphological awareness on reading achievement in 126 English-speaking Canadian children followed from Grade 3 to Grade 5. Reading measures included word reading accuracy, word reading speed, and passage comprehension in both grades as well as multi-morphemic word reading and text reading speed in Grade 5.

After controlling for verbal and nonverbal ability, hierarchical regression analyses indicated that (a) all predictors contributed significantly to most reading measures in Grades 3 and 5 and longitudinally from Grade 3 to Grade 5; (b) changes in the trajectories of the three predictors across time contributed significantly to each of the reading outcomes; and (c) the three predictors contributed significantly to change in the trajectories of each of the reading measures.

These results indicate continuing and pervasive roles for phonological awareness, naming speed, and morphological awareness over the later elementary school years, especially for morphological awareness in reading comprehension. We suggest that assessment and instruction include these underlying skills in the upper elementary grades to support students’ further reading development.

Conclusion

The current study provides a comprehensive view of the development of reading skills in the later elementary grades and demonstrates the continuing importance of the basic word identification processes of phonological awareness, naming speed, and morphological awareness. Morphological awareness and its growth had some of the strongest effects, contributing to both word identification and comprehension. These results suggest that instruction should continue to address these basic processes, especially morphological awareness.”

John R. Kirby, S. Hélène Deacon, George Georgiou, Kelly Geier, Jessica Chan, Rauno Parrila. (2025). Effects of morphological awareness, naming speed, and phonological awareness on reading skills from Grade 3 to Grade 5, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Volume 253, 2025, 106188, ISSN 0022-0965, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2024.106188

(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002209652400328X)

“This study had two overriding goals, (1) examine the stability of rapid automatized naming (RAN) in predicting reading achievement while taking into account two other frequently studied constructs, phonological awareness and fluid intelligence (Gf) and (2) examine the predictive power of RAN measured at age 4 on reading ability. The stable pattern of RAN development found in a previously reported growth model was challenged by relating phonological awareness and Gf to the model.”

Wolff, Ulrika & Åvall, Malena & Gustafsson, Jan-Eric. (2023). Challenging the stability of RAN development: Acknowledging PA and Gf in relation to reading. Dyslexia (Chichester, England). 29. 10.1002/dys.1745.

“Rapid automatized naming (RAN) has surged in popularity recently as an important indicator of reading difficulties, including dyslexia. Despite an extensive history of research on RAN, including recent meta-analyses indicating a unique contribution of RAN to reading above and beyond phonemic awareness, questions remain regarding RAN’s relationship to reading.

Specific questions exist regarding how PA mediates that relationship and how best to use data from RAN measures to identify risk for reading failure. Through multiple studies, we demonstrate that RAN is not merely subsumed by skills typically assessed when conducting universal screening for reading difficulties (i.e., phonemic segmentation fluency and letter naming fluency), but contributes unique information above and beyond these measures.

Additionally, we discuss the process for the development of cut points for risk for Acadience RAN, along with guidance regarding how educators can interpret RAN scores as an indicator of risk for future reading difficulties. The results presented here support the idea that difficulties associated with RAN are not merely reflections of difficulties with other early literacy skills typically assessed during universal screening, but constitute separate and distinct difficulties that may precipitate later reading problems. … Given what we know thus far, we recommend that educators consider what renders a skill to be considered a critical early literacy skill that should be prioritized for instruction. To be one of those critical early literacy skills, the skill must meet three criteria. First, it must be a skill that is predictive of future reading outcomes. Second, the skill must be one we can teach. Third, and critically, it must be a skill that if taught results in improved student outcomes.”

Gray, Jacob & Powell-Smith, Kelly. (2024). Rapid automatized naming: what it is, what it is not, and why it matters. Annals of Dyslexia. 10.1007/s11881-024-00312-z.

Phonemic awareness is still important!

“Phonemic awareness comes under the broader umbrella of Phonological Awareness. Phonological awareness activities encompass other speech sounds like syllables, alliteration, and rhyme.

Phonemic awareness is the beginning of phonics. In phonics, children need to match speech sounds (phonemes) to alphabet letters (graphemes). Phonemic awareness is all about the sounds in oral language, and phonics is all about the sounds in print.

Phonemic awareness is only one stepping stone on the path to reading and writing success, but it is a crucial one. It is a critical pre-reading skill that allows individuals to recognise and work with the smallest units of sound in our language.

Phonemic awareness goes way beyond simply hearing and using individual phonemes. Most children have these basic phonemic awareness skills when they start school. They can talk and understand when others talk to them.

At school, phonemic awareness focuses specifically on the sounds that make up words. For example, being phonemically aware means understanding that the word cat consists of three distinct sounds: /k/a/t/. And that substituting the initial sound, for example, to /b/, will give you a new word, bat. It involves being able to hear, isolate, blend, segment, and manipulate phonemes in various word contexts.

“The recognition that words have constituent sounds. Constituents of a word (e.g., book) may be distinguished in three ways: by syllables (/book/), by onsets and rimes (/b/ and /ook/), or by phonemes (/b/ and /oo/ and /k/)" (Massachusetts 2017 English Language Arts and Literacy Framework ).

Phonological awareness, or the awareness of and ability to work with sounds in spoken language, sets the stage for decoding, blending, and, ultimately, word reading. Phonological awareness begins developing before the beginning of formal schooling and continues through third grade and beyond.”

ASHA Skills for Early Reading: Phonological Awareness. (2025). American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.

https://www.doe.mass.edu/massliteracy/skilled-reading/fluent-word-reading/phonological-awareness.html#:~:text=Phonological%20awareness%2C%20or%20the%20awareness,and%2C%20ultimately%2C%20word%20reading

Complicated isn’t it!

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This next segment is the original, broader document and includes earlier periods.

Education is frequently criticised for remaining insufficiently attentive to the results of scientific research into teaching and learning (Bair & Enomoto, 2013; Carnine, 1995, 2000; Cook et al., 2014; Hempenstall, 1996; National Research Council, 2002: Stanovich & Stanovich, 2003). A defence, raised by some in the profession, has been that it is not immediately evident how the results of experimental studies can be transposed successfully to the classroom, or indeed whether empirical research is even helpful (Fister & Kemp, 1993; Spencer, Detrich, & Slocum, 2012; Weaver, Patterson, Ellis, Zinke, Eastman, & Moustafa, 1997; Zemelman, Daniels, & Bizar, 1999). Besides, the argument continues, there are rarely definitive answers supplied in such research papers. Seemingly, for every study that points one way is another indicating the opposite. However, in recent decades, several high status committees were established in the literacy field by the National Research Council (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998), and by the USA Congress (National Reading Panel, 2000). Recommendations were explicit, based upon a confluence of research findings. Systematically and explicitly teach children to break apart and manipulate the sounds in words (phonemic awareness). These sounds are represented by alphabet letters which can be blended together to form words (phonics). Practise what is learned by reading aloud with feedback (guided oral reading for fluency). Teach reading comprehension strategies (including vocabulary) to guide and improve reading comprehension. This was not an approach strongly evident during the previous period dominated by the Whole Language movement (Hempenstall, 1996; Lyon, 2005).

 Subsequent reviews produced similar findings. For example: USA: National Early Literacy Panel (2008) - Developing early literacy; Australia: Teaching reading: National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy (2005); Great Britain: Rose report Independent review of the teaching of early reading (2006); NZ: Literacy Learning Progressions (2007). Some other similarities include the assumptions: All children can learn - neither biology nor SES determines destiny; the effects of teaching vary from powerful to negligible depending on their features; low progress students are more dependent on effective teaching to achieve benchmarks than are other students; and early detection and intervention is possible, morally imperative, and cheaper.