Reading skill is built on this awareness of spoken language. For example, they learn that words are separate units of spoken language, and this is related to their developing abilities to recognize and write words. The English language is an alphabetic system, meaning that our written symbols correspond to the separate sounds, or phonemes, in spoken language. This kind of system is more difficult to learn than a logographic language, such as Chinese, in which written symbols generally correspond to whole words, rather than parts of words. To learn to read well, children must be aware that spoken words can be divided into separate sounds.
Children learn about the different sounds in words through experiences with spoken language.
Activities that highlight sound categories in spoken language, such as listening to stories with rhyme and alliteration, singing rhyming songs, and playing word games, give children an awareness that words are made up of separate sounds. This provides them essential knowledge on which later reading acquisition is based. Experience with spoken language also provides children skills that support later reading comprehension. Contextualized language is tied to the immediate environment. This kind of language is simple, and it omits important features of language that are important in reading.