2.

2 Word Awareness in Children

Judith A. Bowey and William E. Tunmer

To literate adults, the word appears as an obvious unit of language.

Howeve'r, to a large extent, this obviousness is more apparent than real, being
the result of years of seeing words in print separated by spaces. This
suggestion is well illustrated by the difficulties experienced even by
linguists in attempting to define the term ~opd [e.g., Lyons, 1968; Kramsky,
1969].
However, despite the fact that the word appears to resist both linguistic
and acoustic definition and the possibility that word awareness may be
enhanced by literacy, the ability to segment speech into word units does not
appear to be dependent upon the pri or abil ity to read. Sapi r [1921] reported
that he taught ill iterate Indi ans to wri te thei r own 1anguages us i ng hi s
phonetic system, and that they had no difficulty in determining the word units
of their language. This pre-literate awareness of words as units of language
would have been employed in the development of writing systems which use words
as the units in print [Gelb, 1963]. Words may thus be viewed as
"psychologically real" units of 1anguage, independent of 1iteracy.
Neverthel ess, the di ffi cul ti es i nvo 1ved in defi ni ng the word 1i ngui st i ca lly
suggest that word awareness may not be easily acquired.
A fully developed word awareness would involve the following three
components:
(1) awareness of the word as a unit of language.
(2) awareness of the word as an arbitrary phonological label
(the word-referent distinction).
(3) comprehension of the metalinguistic term ~oPd.

There is no reason to suppose that these three components of word

awareness emerge simultaneously. For instance, some workers have studied
children's comprehension of the term ~opd by asking them to define ~opd [e.g.,
Berthoud-Papandropoulou, 1978; Papandropoulou and Sinclair, 1974]. However,
the ability to define the term ~opd involves an extremely high level of

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W. E. Tunmer et al. (eds.), Metalinguistic Awareness in Children

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1984
linguistic awareness: the problems experienced by linguists in developing
criteria for segmenting speech sequences into words illustrate this point only
too well. In this sense, full word awareness may be virtually unattainable.
It is obvious, then, that we must differentiate degrees of word
awareness. Even within each of the three components of word awareness we must
recognize varying degrees of attainment. For instance, it seems highly likely
that most adults could provide adefinition of UJol"d that would correctly
differentiate a large proportion of words from other linguistic units, such as
phonemes and phrases.
The rate of development of the three aspects of word awareness is likely
to vary considerably. For example, the attainment of the "word unit" and the
word-referent distinction is 10gica11y prior to the abil ity to comprehend or
define the meaning of UJol"d. Even allowing for varying degrees of
comprehension of the term UJol"d, this argument still holds, since a minimal
understanding of the term UJol"d would involve the prior acquisition of the
"word unit" concept. This argument follows Lenneberg's [1967J conclusion that
the categorization of objects must precede the ability to name them. Objects
must be categorized (correctly or incorrectly) before they can be named: "the
abstractness underlying meanings in general •••• may best be understood by
considering concept-formation, the primary cognitive process, and naming (as
we 11 as acqul r1 ng a name) the sec on da ry cognit i ve process" [p. 333J.
Elsewhere, Nelson [1973J has found that children younger than 2 years old can
"sort or group objects according to a consistent principle be fore they have
adequate language to name the groups formed, to identify their basis of
classification, or to understand classifying instructions" [p.28J.
Thi s argument concerni ng the 1ogi ca 1 pri ority of word concept attai nment
relative to comprehension of the term UJol"d is an extremely important one. It
enables a crucial distinction to be made between the attainment of the concept
of word and the understanding of the metalinguistic label UJol"d. Thus, a child
might be able to segment a speech sequence into words, thereby demonstrating
an awareness of the "word unit" concept, without knowing what is meant by the
term UJol"d. A child might also use the term UJol"d without sharing the adult's
notion of what this term means (see below).
The need to distinguish between, for instance, children's word unit
concepts and their comprehension of the term UJol"d is clearly illustrated in a
series of experiments carried out by Bowey et al. [in pressJ. They asked pre-
school, first and second-grade children to distinguish words from sounds, and
single words from two-word noun phrases in aural discrimination tasks.
Children in an experimental group were introduced to these tasks by means of
12 pract i ce tri als i ncorporat i ng both feedback and si mp 1e verbal exp 1 anat ions

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