Before children in grade 3 can start learning to read and write, they need to master certain basic skills, such as auditory skills. This is therefore also known as beginning literacy.

For example, children need to be able to listen to language: recognise sentences, words and sounds(phonological awareness). If a child does not yet master these skills well, he or she may later have difficulties learning to read. So a child with strong phonological awareness has a good foundation for learning to read fluently.

Phonological awareness later grows into phonemic awareness. This means that a child learns to listen to individual sounds in words. For example: hearing which sounds are in the word "cat": /k/ - /a/ - /t/. A child learns to hear sounds separately, join, separate and change them.

Both skills are first done through listening only. No letters are used yet. So it is not yet about reading, but about hearing and recognising sounds. Hence they are called auditory skills.

So children who did not master these basic skills (well) may have difficulty learning to read/write in grade 3. A speech therapist can help with this.

The various auditory skills are:

• Phoneme deletion
  phoneme deletion is the skill with which children can omit phonemes (sounds) in words and do so in the indicated position. For example: 'Here we have "mat" and if I omit the first sound, I get "at".

• Rhyming
  Rhyming helps the child to recognise words and sounds, which has a positive impact on the development of speech, language and reading skills.

• Alliteration (initial rhyme)
  Alliteration is using the same initial sound in 2 or more words. This skill therefore requires the child to be able to give 2 or more words with the same initial sound.

• Word discrimination
  In this skill, the child is aware that a sentence consists of separate words and can discriminate the number of words in a sentence. The child also listens to the meaning of words and can identify a word with a different meaning.

• Sound discrimination
  The child hears errors in a word, specifically a wrong sound in a word. The child also hears the difference between auditory related sounds.

• Auditory synthesis and syllable (syllable) analysis
  Syllable synthesis is being able to put together word pieces/ syllables into 1 word, for example: 'greenhouse + teel' = 'castle'.
  Syllable analysis is the skill of being able to break down a given word into syllables, for example: 'rocket' = 'ra + ket'. An additional skill here is that you can also identify the number of syllables, e.g. 'ra & ket' = 2 syllables/word parts.

• Onset-rime
  Onset-rime is a skill that helps children divide words into smaller parts. Onset refers to the first sound(s) in a word (which is before the vowel) and 'rime' refers to the vowel and subsequent sounds following the 'onset'.
  For example The word /cat/ → the onset = /k/ and the rime = /at/.
  This skill helps children recognise patterns in words.

• Auditory identification
  Auditory identification is the skill of identifying a sound within a word and doing so in the indicated position (beginning sound, middle sound, ending sound).

• Auditory synthesis
  Auditory synthesis is the merging (= synthesis) of heard sounds into one word, also called "pasting". For example: s + p + e + l = game.

• Auditory analysis
  Auditory analysis is the segmentation (= analysis) of one word into separate sounds, also called "chopping". For example: game = s + p + e + l.

• Manipulating syllables
  Manipulating syllables requires the child to be able to 'play' with the syllables of a word. The child should be able to omit or replace a requested syllable.

• Phoneme deletion
  phoneme deletion is the skill with which children can omit phonemes (sounds) in words and do so in the indicated position. For example: 'Here we have "mat" and if I omit the first sound, I get "at".

• Phoneme addition
  Phoneme addition is the skill of adding an indicated sound to a word to obtain a new word. For example: 'What word will you get if you put /r/ in front of monkey?'

• Manipulating phonemes
  Manipulating phonemes (sounds) is the skill of replacing a sound with another indicated sound so that a new word is formed. So the child is given a word and it is indicated at which position a sound changes (initial, final or medial) and with which sound the original sound is replaced.

• Spoonerism
  Bi spoonerism mix up the initial sounds of both words. For example: catch ball à trap bangen.