PHONEMIC AWARENESS TRAINING: APPLICATION OF PRINCIPLES OF DIRECT INSTRUCTION

Abstract

Why is phonemic awareness so critical to the learning‐to‐read process? Why do some readers fail to develop phonemic awareness? What can be done to foster phonemic awareness? The research on these three related questions is integrated. It is argued that learning how to read in an alphabetic system requires children to understand the complex relationship between print and speech. This understanding is not easily achieved by children who have difficulty detecting and manipulating the sounds within spoken words. Pre‐reading and beginning reading instruction should be designed to facilitate the acquisition of phonemic awareness. Recommended practices include (a) engaging preschool children in activities that direct their attention to the sounds in words, (b) teaching students to segment and to blend, (c) combining training in segmentation and blending with instruction in letter‐sound relationships, (d) teaching segmentation and blending as complementary processes, (e) systematically sequencing examples when teaching segmentation and blending, (f) teaching for transfer to novel tasks and contexts, and (g) teaching teachers the rationale behind phonemic awareness training.