Phonemic Awareness Research Paper

Teaching Phonemic Awareness

Children learn spoken language by hearing the sounds that are being spoken. This process is known as phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, to think about, and to work with the individual sounds in spoken words. The understanding of phonemic awareness is that the sounds of spoken language work together to make words (Reading Rocket, 2015). Phonemic awareness is very important for children because it is essential for them to learn to read in an alphabetic writing system. Children need to learn and understand that letters represent sounds or phonemes. Phonemic awareness is used to help prime readers for print and give readers a way to approach sounding out and reading new words. It helps readers understand that the letters in words are systematically represented by sounds (Shaywitz, 2003). Phonemic awareness also helps children learn to spell. Research shows the

Children need to be aware that words are made up of small unit of sounds or letter sounds. Instruction should focus on only one or two rather than several types of phoneme manipulation. Phonemic awareness instruction is generally taught in Kindergarten or First Grade (WriteExpress, 2015). Some Pre-K program introduce the concept of phonemic awareness, but they usually focus more on teaching the children letters and letter sounds. Instruction in phonemic awareness involves teaching children to focus and manipulate phonemes in spoken syllables and words. The effect of phonemic awareness instruction helps children improve their phonemic awareness abilities and their reading skills. Phonemic awareness instruction also helps normally achieving children learn to spell (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2015). Evidence-based research highlights several phonemic awareness instructions, which are considered