Is rhyme an important phonological skill? What is the evidence on its impact on reading acquisition?

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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Is rhyme an important phonological skill? What is the evidence on its impact on reading acquisition?

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

I find the questions below are very commonly asked and indeed this notion of time spent on teaching/emphasising rhyming before teaching phonemic awareness or phonics (which introduces letter shapes and involves phonemic awareness) has just been put forward in one of the networks I follow, thus:
Is rhyme an important phonological skill? What is the evidence on its impact on reading acquisition?
As always, the very dependable, knowledgeable Dr Kerry Hempenstall was able to point people to information and research information about rhyming, this time calling upon the blog post of the very knowledgeable Professor Tim Shanahan.

Kerry commented:
Probably not worth spending a significant amount of time on rhyming activities in a school curriculum. A case might be made in preschool for engaging children in oral word games prior to the presentation of letter-sounds – simply as an introduction to gross level word parts. In a school curriculum, the opportunity cost of spending time in rhyming activities does not justify it being a curriculum item. Better to focus on those activities known to be causal in reading development.

Rhyming had its time in the sun largely due to the logical error of assuming prediction/correlation implies causation: Capacity to rhyme in young children is a reasonable predictor of subsequent progress in reading. Therefore, it must be causal, so we should teach it. And so, teaching rhyming was introduced enthusiastically without the evidence of a clear causal relationship. The continued evidential absence appears not to have reduced the enthusiasm, as any Google search will attest.

Shanahan covers it pretty well.
http://www.readingrockets.org/blogs/sha ... nt-reading
Blogs About Reading

Shanahan on Literacy


Literacy expert Timothy Shanahan shares best practices for teaching reading and writing. Dr. Shanahan is an internationally recognized professor of urban education and reading researcher who has extensive experience with children in inner-city schools and children with special needs. All posts are reprinted with permission from Shanahan on Literacy.

Is Rhyming Ability Important in Reading?
April 16, 2015

Our district is wrestling with how much emphasis to give rhyming as an early literacy skill. We had previously downplayed rhyming as a necessary focus but the new CA ELA/ELD Framework and CCSS where rhyming is specifically called out has resurfaced old questions.

Our struggle is this .... with our very high (87%) English Learner population, rhyming is one of the later skills acquired for these students in preschool through grade 1. Reading research seems to support the idea of rhyming as a prerequisite to reading; exposure to this kind of play with words and "word families" gives children another pathway to reading. However, students who are not native to English miss this early exposure and much of their cognitive energy seems to be taken up with meaning-making. Often in our classrooms it seems we are successful at teaching the students to decode and then have to go back and teach them to identify and produce rhyming words. Doesn't this defeat the purpose for using rhyming as a building block for reading?

This is not to say that our teachers aren't talking about rhyming words as they are encountered in text or pointing out word families but our question is — as we decide where to put our educational dollar — will an emphasis on rhyming give us a reading payout?

When I was a young reading specialist (a very long time ago), I wondered about this myself — though I certainly wasn’t aware of any research on it. I noticed that some of my low readers were surprisingly thick when it came to rhyme. Rhyme had always seemed automatic to me, and it made me wonder about its role in reading. As a result, I started to check out the rhyming ability of my students (grade 2-6). Just as I suspected, poor rhyming appeared to be an important marker of low reading ability.

What I had informally noticed as a teacher, the research community noticed as well. In the 1980s (and especially the 1990s — though it continues today), rhyming as a precursor to reading became a big issue. It made sense: many low readers struggled with rhyming, the research community was increasingly interested in how kids perceive language sounds, and phonological awareness (PA) became a big deal. It is rare that one sees a list of those early PA skills that doesn’t include rhyming.

There was so much research on this that the National Early Literacy Panel (2008) was able to meta-analyze it. Here is what we concluded:

Rhyming ability is predictive of later reading achievement, but it had the weakest correlation of any of the phonemic awareness skills. Being able to segment words into single phonemes or to blend phonemes together into words, were significantly better predictors of decoding. (There were no significant differences in these predictors with regard to later reading comprehension growth).

With regard to the teaching of PA, it was concluded that there were few instructional interventions that used rhyming activities as a primary teaching approach, but that the teaching of letters and sounds had a significant impact on student learning.

What do I conclude from this? First, rhyming ability is a predictor of later reading development, but it isn’t as accurate or sensitive as other skills (like letter naming or phonemic awareness — children’s ability to distinguish or segment single sounds in words). If I noticed a youngster was having trouble with rhymes, I would pay attention to it, but if I was setting up a screening program to identify potential problems, rhyming wouldn’t be the way that I would go.

Given that there are no studies showing that teaching rhyming improves reading achievement (or even makes kids more amenable to and successful with phonemic awareness instruction), I wouldn’t want to spend much time teaching it. There are some recent studies that suggest that as students learn to read, their ability to rhyme improves (McNorgan, Awati, Desroches, & Booth, 2014). Thus, instead of better rhyming leading to better reading, the knowledge of words and letters and sounds allows students to gain access to this somewhat separate skill.

That may be why your second language students do better with rhyming once they can read; they would have greater knowledge of vocabulary and the language in general once they were reading — and these skills are evidently important in rhyming. That is also probably why rhyming has a more similar relationship to reading comprehension as the other phonological skills: These skills have little or no functional relationship in reading comprehension, but they do serve as markers of language proficiency or sophistication. The better one is with language, the better one will be with comprehension. But since rhyming plays little or no functional role in decoding, it is less predictive of decoding skills.

There is no question that all of these various phonological awareness skills — awareness of the sound separation between words, the ability to separate syllables within words, the ability to segment onsets (first sounds) from rimes (b/ig), the ability to rhyme, the ability to segment or blend phonemes are all correlated with each other. But it is the segmenting and blending of phonemes that has functional value in reading.

I would not put a lot of emphasis on the teaching of rhyme. It sounds to me like your teachers are approaching this appropriately and the policy is, perhaps unintentionally, steering them in the wrong direction.
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: Is rhyme an important phonological skill? What is the evidence on its impact on reading acquisition?

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

Further, Kerry supplied the following quotes from research findings:
“Studies which have measured pre-literate rhyming skills have reported a predictive relationship with later reading (Lundberg et al., 1980; Bradley and Bryant, 1983; MacLean et al., 1987). Bryant et al. (1990) employed rigorous controls in a stepwise regression analysis, including mother’s educational level, intelligence, receptive vocabulary and phoneme awareness. They were able to demonstrate a significant residual relationship between pre-school onset and rhyme oddity judgements and reading 2 years later.” (p.176)
Duncan, L.G., Seymour, P.H. & Hill, S. (1997). How important are rhyme and analogy in beginning reading? Cognition, 63(2), 171–208.
“Results showed that the rhyming abilities of children who received explicit instruction improved significantly more than did the rhyming abilities of children who did not receive this instruction. (p.41). … {However} … will young children, both with and without language impairment, who are first taught rhyming skills … acquire reading and spelling skills more easily upon school entry than will children who have not explicitly been taught phonological awareness skills? (p.45)
Reynolds, M.E., Callihan, K., & Browning, E. (2003). Effect of instruction on the development of rhyming skills in young children. Contemporary issues in communication science and disorders, 30, 41–46.
“Comaskey et al. (2009) found that analytic phonics taught children were better at articulating shared rimes within words, whereas synthetic phonics taught children were better at phoneme blending. The results of the present study also indicate that children can develop phoneme awareness indirectly as a product of their reading instruction, as children received no explicit phoneme awareness training but rather learnt about phonemes only in the context of printed words. The results are also consistent with research suggesting that rhyme awareness typically develops prior to an awareness of phonemes (Carroll, Snowling, Hulme, & Stevenson, 2003; Hulme et al., 2002). Nevertheless, phoneme level instruction did appear to be effective for this group of young readers, despite suggestions that rhyme level teaching may be developmentally more appropriate (Goswami, 1999).” (p.604)
McGeown, S.P., & Medford, E. (2014). Using method of instruction to predict the skills supporting initial reading development: Insight from a synthetic phonics approach. Reading & Writing, 27, 591–608.
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: Is rhyme an important phonological skill? What is the evidence on its impact on reading acquisition?

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

I'm cross-referencing this topic with Dr Kerry Hempenstall's articles 'Phonemic awareness: Yea and nay?' as these are related topics. Anyone interested in the role of 'rhyming' would benefit from reading Kerry's articles published in the Learning Difficulties Australia bulletins, see here:

http://www.iferi.org/iferi_forum/viewto ... ?f=4&t=831
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: Is rhyme an important phonological skill? What is the evidence on its impact on reading acquisition?

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

I have just contributed a message to one of my networks about my thoughts and experiences on this topic which I have slightly modified to share here:

I’m frequently asked the question about the role of 'rhyming and alliteration' both through face to face teacher-training and via emails.

When Letters and Sounds was first published (DfES, 2007), there was some disquiet amongst a few people regarding the notion of ‘Phase One’ which focuses on pre-school (commonly considered to be the three to four year olds continuing into Reception – the four to five year olds) as to whether the various activities focused on different aspects of sound are pre-requisites to starting a formally planned systematic synthetic phonics programme.

When I attended one of the roll-out presentations for Letters and Sounds, the presenter made the point that Phase One did not consist of “pre-requisites” but of course this message gets lost when the structure of L & S is around ‘phases’ – therefore suggesting that one phase comes before another.

The way that I refer to Phase One is that the ‘aspects’ of practice all linked to sound-awareness are all good nursery practice, and always have been, but they are not pre-requisites to starting a phonics programme. In other words, children do not have to be ‘good’ at the various aspects prior to phonics introduction.

I think I'd like to say a bit more about the 'rhyme' question because of my personal experience of how often this question pops up in my wider work.

You may think the role of rhyming in the early years is common sense and does not need saying but, believe me, I have been approached by teachers saying they have 'done rhyming and alliteration to death but still Johnny doesn’t get it – so will he ever be ready for phonics?’ – that type of comment. This is very worrying. Teachers might be doing rhyming and alliteration with Johnny for much longer but, meanwhile, if not exposed to the same teaching of phonics as his peers, he will get further and further behind.

Rhyming and alliteration are clearly fun things to do, and associated with many traditional pre-school activities, and with poetry lessons/activities, singing, literature – and so on – and shouldn’t begin and end as a phase or just associated with pre-school activities – but this dips into the discussion, too, about ‘developmental readiness’ and the mindset of many adults that they are led to through training, wider reading, or their own ideas, that children can only do things in a certain order, when they are ready.

I see over and over and over again, under-expectations of children and weak provision based on such a mindset.

All too often people just don't appreciate what children can do with exposure and experience - neither do they appreciate what children will thoroughly enjoy. All too often activities associated as 'formal' or 'too soon, too young' are extremely enjoyable and empowering for children.

This is why I have now obtained Kerry’s permission to publicise and provide electronic links for his two articles that were flagged up recently – and have started a thread via IFERI on ‘Phonemic awareness: Yea or nay?’ – which links to the question about rhyming.

Please do read Kerry’s articles. They are actually very similar and I was very pleased to refer to them, and I have already used the first one for some face-to-face training. This generated great interest amongst attendees and I am very grateful to Kerry for all his work to inform us and to summarise the vast body of research into the various categories. I cannot say this strongly enough.

See here:

http://www.iferi.org/iferi_forum/viewto ... ?f=4&t=831

As I gather all the information shared by others, I do hope that people will recommend the IFERI site widely as a one-stop shop to link to research, information and developments in the field of reading instruction.

Of course I encourage others to generate or contribute to threads on the forum, and to give us ideas for further content on IFERI. People may also wish to submit a guest blog posting.

Like every one else, I’m extremely busy in my life and doing my utmost to pass on good information for the greater good (that’s actually the role I see myself as fulfilling in the world – simply a passer-on of information of the work of others) – but it would be great if more people were prepared to contribute to IFERI ‘direct’ please.
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gracevilar
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Re: Is rhyme an important phonological skill? What is the evidence on its impact on reading acquisition?

Post by gracevilar »

So happy you have opened up this issue of rhyming and alliteration as I personally disagree with it. My experience in the bilingual literacy field, I have seen no gain at all in making children practise rhymes and alliteration, as the result is: the children who were not able to rhyme were perfectly good at blending and segmenting, and the children who were good at rhyming were not better at blending and segmenting, in both languages: Spanish and English, so...for me, it is a waste of time spending time rhyming, and what is worse, delaying children to start with phonics/sounding out and blending and segmenting when they cannot rhyme!

Rhyming is an old habit, and as we know, habits die hard, However, we should be professional enough as teachers to see what is best for our learners and make the necessary changes to help the process: meaning, if you see that a child can sound out a word, blend, and segment but not be able to rhyme, then move on with the process of phonics!

Rhyming is good for poetry, songs...so this can be tackled as a skill in Literature time.
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Susan Godsland
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Re: Is rhyme an important phonological skill? What is the evidence on its impact on reading acquisition?

Post by Susan Godsland »

Here are the results of Usha Goswami's GraphoGame_Rime study, part funded by the EEF

https://educationendowmentfoundation.or ... e_Rime.pdf
''The evidence from our impact evaluation suggests the GraphoGame Rime intervention had no impact on pupils’ reading attainment over a business-as-usual control''
I expressed reservations about this study back in 2014 on the RRF forum:

http://www.rrf.org.uk/messageforum/view ... f=1&t=2995
Hmmm, I wonder if the Wellcome Trust and the EEF examined the research on onset-rhyme before funding this project?

http://www.psychol.cam.ac.uk/news/wellc ... graphogame

''The multimillion pound investigation, which is jointly funded by the Wellcome Trust and Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), comprises six studies, one of which is the GraphoGame Rime project, led by Professor Usha Goswami, who is Director of the Centre for Neuroscience in Education, and Professor of Cognitive Developmental Neuroscience in the Department.
The GraphoGame Rime project will test how the GraphoGame Rime computer game can affect how children learn to read. The GraphoGame Rime game was created with the aim of helping children learn to read by developing their phonological awareness through rhyme analogy''

http://educationendowmentfoundation.org ... game-rime/

''The English version of GraphoGame Rime was developed by the lead grantee, the educational neuroscientist Usha Goswami, building on research into “rhyme analogy”. This is the notion that pupils learning to read in English learn not just through phonemes (“a”,”t”) but also rimes (“at”). Pupils sit at a computer, laptop or tablet with headphones on, and play the game for around 10 minutes a day. Instruction is focused on helping children to match auditory patterns with groups of letters (e.g. rimes) displayed on the screen. The game first focuses on rimes that are most common in English. But each child has a personal log-in, and the game offers increasingly challenging levels as they improve their skills''
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