PHONEMIC AWARENESS

Phonemic Awareness and Phonemic Awareness Instruction



Phonemic Awareness and Phonemic Awareness Instruction

Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness can be defined as the capability to identify and operate sounds that make up speech. Phonemic awareness refers to the consideration that speech is a collection of a variety of individual sounds (phonemes), and the ability to manipulate these sounds. Research has shown that phonemic awareness plays an essential role in the early stages of beginning reading in many languages. Numerous studies have found that phonemic awareness is one of the best predictors of reading ability in beginning hearing readers. It has even been proposed that phonemic awareness is a "necessary but not sufficient" skill for the acquisition of reading.

Many researches support the early instruction in phonemic awareness and other implications regarding the teaching of reading, which include emphasis on the auditory arrangement of words and the relationship of speech to print. However, individuals who are deaf cannot hear the sounds that make up speech in order to recognize and manipulate them. Yet there are many skilled readers who are deaf. Considering this, it is essential to understand the relations amid phonemic awareness and the ability to read in readers who cannot hear (Beaver, J. 1997).

The effects of Phonemic awareness

Phonemic awareness affects the reading development of early readers. Research with hearing participants often includes preschool and kindergarten children that help in the identification and manipulation of phonemes is foreign and abstract for individuals who cannot hear them. In addition, for individuals who are deaf, these tasks involve two modalities and possibly two languages. Studies involve measuring phonemic awareness prior to the start of formal reading instruction in order to assess the level of phonemic awareness before reading instruction exerted any influence. This procedure allows investigation of the possibility that phonemic awareness is a cause of enhanced development of reading skill when children subsequently enter school, and are taught to read and it rules out the alternative possibility that reading ability accounts for the observed differences in phonemic awareness (Moog J. S. 1983).

Attention placed on Phonemic awareness

All of the attention that has been placed on phonemic awareness is helpful in coming to a better understanding of the graph phonics piece of the learning-to-read puzzle. We must never lose sight, however, of the need to teach phonics within the context of reading and writing continuous texts; texts that are enjoyable and interesting to children. Knowledge about sounds in words is only meaningful to children if they can use that knowledge to read and write something that matters to them. It is possible that letter and articulation training may each make a separate contribution to the development of phonemic awareness, reading and spelling development.

Phonemic Awareness Instruction

One approach to phonemic awareness training which has been found effective in increasing phonemic awareness, reading and spelling skill, involves the use of letters in order to mark the phonemes in words. According to the National Reading Panel's meta-analysis (Ehri, 2001), phonemic segmentation, training that includes letters results in greater increases in phonemic segmentation, ...