What is Phonemic
Awareness?
Phonemic
awareness is defined as the ability to differentiate
between phonemes and to manipulate them. Remedial instruction for dyslexia
requires extensive training in phonemic awareness.
The English language has 44
phonemes. Children with dyslexia essentially lack the ability to isolate, blend
and use these essential language sounds while they are engaged in the task of
reading. This key reading skill is not related to a child’s knowledge of
spelling or his awareness about letter-sound correspondence.
The Phonological Representation Theory states that dyslexic children suffer from phonological deficits and as a result their ability to clearly represent the smallest unit of speech sounds is hindered. The smallest unit of speech sounds that carry meanings are called phonemes. Phonological representation allows us to break down a word into its constituent sound units (phonemes) and use these units to build back the word again.
Why is Phonemic Awareness important?
The English language is particularly perplexing because there is a lot of irregularity in letter- sound correspondence as a direct result of which many words have irregular spellings.
For
example:
The
word ‘cat’ can be broken down into three phonemes.
The
word ‘read’ also has three phonemes but it is a four letter word as opposed to ‘cat’
which has three phonemes and is also a three letter word.
This
creates a lot of confusion for dyslexics because their phonological representations
are less precise as compared to average children. Simply put, dyslexics have
problems in understanding, remembering and reproducing the smallest units of
speech sounds.
The U.S National Reading Panel found
that "teaching children
to manipulate phonemes in words was highly effective under a variety of
teaching conditions with a variety of learners across a range of grade and age
levels and that teaching phonemic awareness (PA) to children significantly
improves their reading more than instruction that lacks any attention to PA."
According
to Gillon (2004), “Phoneme awareness performance is a strong predictor of
long-term reading and spelling success and can predict literacy performance
more accurately than variables such as intelligence, vocabulary knowledge, and
socioeconomic status”
The National Center for Learning Disabilities, NCLD in an important article on reading states
Great progress has been made during the past 15 years in the area of reading, and particularly, in our understanding of the underlying skills needed to be an efficient reader. Beginning readers must master a set of phonemic awareness and phonics skills that allow for new words to be "unlocked." Research has demonstrated that:
Great progress has been made during the past 15 years in the area of reading, and particularly, in our understanding of the underlying skills needed to be an efficient reader. Beginning readers must master a set of phonemic awareness and phonics skills that allow for new words to be "unlocked." Research has demonstrated that:
- children are more likely to have trouble reading in the later grades if they lack phonemic awareness (as early as in kindergarten)
- simple tests of children's skill at working with phonemes could predict later reading problems and failure; and
- children's reading can be improved using simple techniques to show them how to identify the phonemes in words.
Research has also
demonstrated that phonemic awareness and phonics, while necessary to learn to
read, are not sufficient, especially when we think about reading as a way to
extract meaning from printed text. Good readers must also be able to apply
these skills quickly, understand the words they read, and to relate what they
read to their own lives and experiences.
What is the difference between phonemic awareness and phonics?
Phonemic awareness is
the awareness of sounds of a language whereas phonics is the ability to
understand the relationship between letters and sounds or letter- sound correspondence.
For example:
Answering the
questions given below would be a test of the child’s phonemic awareness;
a)
Do ‘pen’ and ‘pipe’ begin with the same sound?
b)
What word do we get if we put these sounds together: ‘s’; ‘a’; ‘t’?
c)
What is the first sound in ‘rose’?
To test a child’s phonics, he or she would be asked to look at
the words ‘pen’, ‘pipe’, ‘sat’ and ‘rose’ in a printed text and then sound them
out aloud.
Research has shown that there are many probable causes of dyslexia, though the picture is still not very clear, the phonological representation theory remains the most likely explanation for dyslexia. This is due to the finding that phonological deficits form the core of the problems related to dyslexia and more than 75% of children with dyslexia were found to have phonological processing problems.
