MKAS Early Literacy Development & Phonological Awareness 4 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which characteristic is most associated with children who are at risk for reading difficulties in the area of phonological processing?
- Large listening vocabulary
- Difficulty remembering nursery rhymes and tongue twisters (Correct answer)
- Strong interest in being read to
- Accurate letter formation
Correct answer: Difficulty remembering nursery rhymes and tongue twisters
Difficulty with rhymes and sound play is an early indicator of phonological processing weaknesses linked to reading risk.
Question 2: A student substitutes /w/ for /r/ saying 'wabbit' for 'rabbit.' For a 3-year-old, this is best described as:
- A phonological disorder requiring immediate intervention
- A developmentally typical phonological process (Correct answer)
- Evidence of a hearing impairment
- A sign of cognitive delay
Correct answer: A developmentally typical phonological process
W/r substitution is a common developmental phonological process that is typical in children around age 3.
Question 3: A teacher asks, 'What word do you have if you change the /p/ in 'pin' to /w/'?' This task assesses:
- Phoneme isolation
- Phoneme deletion
- Phoneme substitution (Correct answer)
- Phoneme segmentation
Correct answer: Phoneme substitution
Replacing one phoneme with another to create a new word is phoneme substitution.
Question 4: Which read-aloud strategy most directly supports phonological awareness development in preschoolers?
- Asking questions about story events after reading
- Pointing to each word while reading to show one-to-one correspondence
- Emphasizing alliteration and rhyme during reading and inviting repetition (Correct answer)
- Showing pictures before reading each page
Correct answer: Emphasizing alliteration and rhyme during reading and inviting repetition
Drawing attention to alliteration and rhyme through repetition during shared reading directly builds phonological awareness.
Question 5: Which term describes a reader's ability to recognize familiar words instantly without sounding them out?
- Phoneme blending
- Automaticity
- Orthographic mapping (Correct answer)
- Phonological recoding
Correct answer: Orthographic mapping
Orthographic mapping is the process by which words become stored as sight words in long-term memory through sound-letter connections.
Question 6: A second grader reads 'the' correctly every time. According to the Simple View of Reading, this best reflects growth in:
- Language comprehension only
- Decoding only (Correct answer)
- Both decoding and language comprehension
- Phonological awareness only
Correct answer: Decoding only
Accurate word recognition of irregular high-frequency words like 'the' reflects decoding/word recognition, one pillar of the Simple View.
Question 7: Which activity is an example of phoneme addition?
- Saying 'park' without the /p/
- Adding /s/ to the beginning of 'nail' to make 'snail' (Correct answer)
- Blending /f/ /r/ /o/ /g/ to say 'frog'
- Counting the sounds in 'ship'
Correct answer: Adding /s/ to the beginning of 'nail' to make 'snail'
Adding a phoneme to an existing word to form a new word is the phoneme addition task.
MKAS Early Literacy Development & Phonological Awareness 4
Which characteristic is most associated with children who are at risk for reading difficulties in the area of phonological processing?