Phonemic Awareness free essay sample

Phonemic awareness is not phonics. Phonemic awareness is an understanding about spoken language. Children who are phonemically aware can tell the teacher that bat is the word the teacher is representing by saying the three separate sounds in the word. They can tell you all the sounds in the spoken word dog. They can tell you that, if you take the last sound off cart you would have car. Phonics on the other hand, is knowing the relation between specific, printed letters (including combinations of letters) and specific, spoken sounds. You are asking children to show their phonics knowledge when you ask them which letter make the first sound in bat or dog or the last sound in car or cart. The phonemic awareness tasks that have predicted successful reading are tasks that demand that children attend to spoken language, not tasks that simply ask students to name letters or tell which letters make which sounds. We will write a custom essay sample on Phonemic Awareness or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Recent longitudinal studies of reading acquisition have demonstrated that the acquisition of phonemic awareness is highly predictive of success in learning to read in particular of successful reading acquisition. Programs for teaching phonics often emphasize rules rather than patterns and focus on separate sounds, called phonemes. In contrast, the most effective and efficient phonics instruction focuses childrens attention on noticing letter/sound patterns in the major components of syllables: that is, on noticing the letter/sound patterns in initial consonants and consonant clusters and in the rime, which consists of the vowel of a syllable plus any following consonants, such as -ake, -ent, -ish, -ook (Moustafa, 1996). Conventional blending and segmentation instruction improves the ability to manipulate phonemes. When instruction emphasizes phoneme manipulations, children learned what they were taught. In contrast, teaching beginners about phoneme identities does not seem to enhance phoneme manipulation skill. Kindergarten children with explicit instruction in phonemic awareness did better than a group of first graders who had no instruction, indicating that this crucial pre-skill for reading can be taught at least by five and is not developmental (Cunningham). Precursory phonological awareness skills such as rhyming and alliteration can emerge in informal contexts before school and are seen in young children who can neither read nor spell (Snow, 1991; van Kleeck, 1990). A general order for the emergence of phonological awareness abilities begins with rhyming and alliteration; segmenting sentences into words; followed by segmenting words into syllables; followed by segmenting words into phonemes. Fox Routh; Ehri, Holden MacGinities; Huttenlocher; Liberman; Liberman, Shankweiler, Fisher Carter) Phonemic awareness alone is not sufficient. Explicit, systematic instruction in common sound-spelling correspondences is also necessary for many children (Adams, 1988; Ball Blackman, 1991; Byrne Fielding-Barnsley, 1990; Foorman et al, in press; Mann, 1993; Rack, Snowling Olson, 1992; Snowling, 1991; Spector, 1995; Stanovich, 1986; Torgeson et al. in press; Vellutino, 1991; Vellutino Scanlon, 1987a; Foorman, Francis, Novy Liberman, 1991. ) Expl icit, systematic instruction in sound-spelling relationships in the classroom was more effective in reducing reading difficulties than a print-rich environment characterized by interesting stories, even with children who had benefited from phonemic awareness instruction in kindergarten. Foorman, Francis, Beerly, Winikates, and Fletcher, in press) Research has established a correlational, if not causal relation between phonological awareness and reading (Eric Sweet, 1991; Mason Allen, 1986; Sulzby Teal, 1991; van Kleeck, 1990) Young childrens awareness of onsets (the initial consonant of a word or syllable) and rimes (everything after the initial consonant in a one-syllable word or in syllables, traditionally referred to as phonograms or word families) is related to success in beginning reading. (Goswami, 1988, 1990; Goswami Bryant, 1994). Effective phonics instruction focuses childrens attention on noticing the letter/sound patterns in initial consonants and consonant clusters and in rimes (the vowel of a syllable, plus any consonants that might follow). Focusing on rimes rather than on vowels alone is particularly important in helping children learn to decode words. (Adams, 1990) Research shows that all proficient readers rely on deep and ready knowledge of spelling-sound correspondence while reading, whether this knowledge was specifically taught or simply inferred by students. Conversely, failure to learn to use spelling/sound correspondences to read and spell words is shown to be the most frequent and debilitating cause of reading difficulty. Many children learn to read without any direct classroom instruction in phonics. But many children, especially children from homes that are not language rich, do need more systematic instruction in word-attack strategies. Well-sequenced phonics instruction early in the first grade has been shown o reduce the incidence of reading difficulty even as it accelerates the growth of the class as a whole. Given this, it is probably better to start all children, most especially in high-poverty areas, with explicit phonics instruction. Such an approach does require continually monitoring childrens progress both to allow those who are progressing quickly to move ahead before they become bored and to ensure that those who are having difficulties get the assistance they need. Sulzby and Teale (1991) noted that while phonological awareness has long been tied to research and practice in the teaching of phonics and other decoding skills, it has been neglected in emergent literacy due to the tendency to view phonological awareness research as traditional and bottom-up theory. The dimensions of phonological awareness are represented by a range of difficulty. From easiest to hardest the range of difficulty is as follows: rhyme, auditory discrimination, phoneme blending, word-to-word matching, sound isolation, phoneme counting, phoneme segmentation, and phoneme deletion. Yopp, 1988) Young children are competent at analyzing spoken words into onsets and rimes but not into phonemes when onsets or rimes consist of more than one phoneme. (Calfee, 1977; Goswami Bryant, 1990; Liberman, et al. , 1974; Treiman, 1983, 1985) Young children who are beginning to read make analogies between familiar and unfamiliar print words to pronounce unfamiliar print words and that the y make these analogies at the onset-rime level rather than at the phonemic level. (Goswami, 1986, 1988) Classroom Implications One of the most important foundations of reading success is phonemic awareness. Phonemes are the basic speech sounds that are represented by the letters of the alphabet, and phonemic awareness is the understanding that words are sequences of phonemes. Phonemic awareness is demonstrated by the ability to identify and manipulate sounds within spoken words. Children can learn to assemble phonemes into words as well as break words into their phonemes even before they are writing letters or words. Giving children experience with rhyming words in the preschool years is an effective first step toward building phonemic awareness. Hearing rhymes, and then producing rhymes for given words, requires children to focus on the sounds inside words. Rhyming activities initiate phonemic awareness. The reading and rereading of books with clear, simple rhymes offer abundant and fun opportunities for direct instruction in rhyming and the beginnings of phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is an insight about oral language. There is evidence to suggest that the relation between phonemic awareness and learning to read is reciprocal: phonemic awareness supports reading acquisition, and reading instruction and experiences with print facilitate phonemic awareness development. Young childrens awareness of onsets (the initial consonant of a word or syllable) and rimes (everything after the initial consonant in a one-syllable word or in syllables, traditionally referred to as phonograms or word families) is related to success in beginning reading. Therefore children should be taught to identify and manipulate these sound units. Children in kindergarten should be introduced to common phonograms. In addition to building phonemic awareness, providing instruction with phonograms also prepares children for reading words by analogy. Instruction in both phoneme identity and phoneme manipulation are valuable. After the children have caught onto how letters cue the phonemes of spoken words, learning to manipulate phonemes by blending and segmentation manipulations will likely help beginners progress into sequential decoding. Instruction in phoneme identities is likely of greater value than manipulation instruction for children who have not yet demonstrated alphabetic insight. Activities focused on the identities of individual phonemes, which make these phonemes familiar and memorable, and which help children recognize their identities in words could well be incorporated into early literacy programs that contain other activities we know to be helpful in preparing children to read. Phonological awareness and letter recognition contribute to initial reading acquisition by helping children develop efficient word recognition strategies (e. g. , detecting pronunciations and storing associations in memory. ) Children need opportunities to understand and manipulate the building blocks of spoken language.