Why Is Phonemic Awareness Important When Learning to Read?
Phonemes are the smallest units that comprise speech and are the basis of phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness addresses the learner's ability to perform certain tasks in oral language such as segmenting speech sounds. By such actions, the learner can manipulate the sounds. The concept gained popularity as an attempt was made to understand reading disabilities and early language development.
Other People Are Reading
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Success
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Research indicates that phonemic awareness in students will help to predict future success in reading. This is related to the reader's ability to decode words. Research evidence supports the position that phonemic awareness in kindergarten age children is the single greatest indicator of future reading success.
Reading
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The relationship between phonemic awareness and reading acquisition is the subject of debate between scholars. The possible impact of phonemic skills upon reading instruction is another subject of contention among experts.
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Tasks
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Phonemic awareness consists of skills separate from phonics. A child being able to understand and explain aspects of spoken language is a part of phonemic awareness. The learner can tell how many distinct sounds comprise a word. Phonemic awareness requires the learner to attend to spoken language. This can be compared to phonics that requires learning the relationship between written letters and spoken sounds.
Aquisition
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By the time a child begins school, he or she has probably been exposed to oral language and print in various forms. Such experiences may have included being read to, listening to rhymes, and being taught sight words. The child may or may not have been taught how to break words into phonemes and manipulate these sounds. Literacy teachers have found that phonemic awareness is an essential component of reading acquisition along with vocabulary, comprehension, fluency and phonics. The duel instruction in phonics and phonemic awareness has been shown to enhance both skills.
Balance
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A reading program cannot be composed completely of phonemic awareness. Emphasis must be placed upon the five essential components of reading. Daily practice of phonemic awareness should be approximately 15 to 20 minutes long. Skills to be mastered would include segmenting and blending phonemes. Isolating, deleting, and categorizing sounds can enhance these skills.
Print
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While phonemic awareness is primarily related to oral language development, research indicates a relationship with the ability to read written material. Some research shows that the ability of readers to isolate and blend sounds supports reading acquisition. At the same time, the learner's skills at deleting sounds in oral speech are supported by learning to read. There appears to be a reciprocal relationship between the two skills. Research still continues in an attempt to gain insight to this relationship.
Disabilities
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Students do not appear to naturally acquire phonemic awareness. Researchers found that approximately 20 percent of students have not acquired phonemic awareness by the middle of first grade. The probability of succeeding as readers is reduced by the lack of this skill. Identification of students falling outside of the norm for acquisition of phonemic awareness could guide reading instruction. Learning disabilities such as dyslexia may affect the acquisition of phonemic awareness. Further research into causal relationships is needed.
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References
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