Reading Instruction Portfolio: Phonemic Awareness
Description
Phoneme awareness is more highly related to learning to read than general intelligence, reading readiness, or listening comprehension; it is a necessary but not sufficient condition for learning to read. Phoneme awareness can be directly taught. When novice or poor readers learn that words are composed of phonemes or speech sounds, they are much more likely to learn to read.
What It Is. Phonemic awareness is the knowledge that speech is built from sounds. For example, the word bed consists of three speech sounds or phonemes: b, short e, and d. The word sleep consists of four phonemes: s, l, long e, and p, even though it has five letters; the ee combination makes only one sound. Consonants can also combine to make one sound; the word sheep, which is five letters, consists of three phonemes; sh, long e and p. (Richeck, Caldwell, Jennings & Lerner, 1996)
Knowledge Needed for Reading. Phonemic awareness refers to the knowledge studnts have of individual sounds in words and their abillity to manipulate those segments of sound (Stahl & Murray, 1994). Research shows that students' ability to identify and manipulate these sound elements are highly related to reading achievement (Ball & Blachman, 1991; Stanovich, 1988a).
Phonemic awareness includes a variety of abilities. Students
must be able to identify and separate beginning sounds of words,
identify and separate ending sounds, and substitute sounds within
a basic pattern. They must also be able to recognize rhyme and be
able to rhyme. Finally, students need to be able to demonstrate
metalinguistic awareness by putting sounds together (blending),
take them apart (segment), and delete them. This awareness of the
phonology of the language and students abilities to manipulate
the sounds of the language equps them to master phonics in
reading (Richeck, Caldwell, Jennings & Lerner, 1996).
Assessing Phonemic Awareness. Phonemic awareness is assessed by determining whether students can really manipulate the language. For example, we would ask students to blend sounds as well as segment the sounds. We might also ask them to identify the first sound in a spoken word or to say a word without a sound such table without the t. Once children demonstrate that they are able to manipulate words ask them to point out a sentence, a word, a phrase to determine if they do know the difference between the structures.
There are several ways to assess phonemic awareness. One such
survey can be found on pg. 94 in Reading Problems,Third
edition by Richek, Caldwell, Jennings & Lerner (1991). The
Yopp-Singer Test of Phonemic Segmentation is another assessment
tool that can be used.
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