{"id":854,"date":"2021-04-30T13:44:55","date_gmt":"2021-04-30T11:44:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dyslexiasa.org\/?p=854"},"modified":"2021-04-30T13:49:23","modified_gmt":"2021-04-30T11:49:23","slug":"the-importance-of-phonemic-awareness-in-learning-to-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dyslexiasa.org\/?p=854","title":{"rendered":"The importance of Phonemic Awareness in Learning to Read"},"content":{"rendered":"

The importance of Phonemic Awareness in Learning to Read<\/h2>\n

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Humphrey, E. (2017). The importance of Phonemic Awareness in Learning to Read. SPELD-SA Autumn Newsletter 2017. 16<\/em><\/p>\n

Phonological awareness is defines as a conscious ability to attend to and manipulate the sound structure of spoken words. This occurs at three levels: syllable, rhyme and phoneme (Gillon, 2004).<\/p>\n

A phoneme refers to the smallest unit of sound in a language that is capable of changing the meaning of the word. For example changing the \u2018b\u2019 in box to \u2018f\u2019 as in fox, changes the meaning of the word from a square container to a small furry animal. There are approximately 44 phonemes in the English language represented by just 26 letters.<\/p>\n

Phonemic awareness refers to the ability to identify and manipulate sounds in spoken words. Phonemic awareness in particular hes been found to be a strong predictor of reading achievement during child\u2019s first years in school. (Gillon, 2004).<\/p>\n

The greater a child\u2019s ability to understand the sound structure of spoken word the more likely they are to become strong readers. This awareness allows children to more easily map the sounds of the language to the letters they see in print and access their meaning (Carson, Boustead & Gillon, 2014).<\/p>\n

Ways to improve phonemic awareness<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first stem is to ensure the child can hear sounds in isolation before they attempt to detect sounds within words.<\/p>\n

Once the child can hear the individual sounds in isolation they can be taught that words are made up of different sounds and begin to listen for the initial, final or middle sound in the word. For example the word \u2018dog\u2019is made up of three sounds d-o-g. The word \u2018boat\u2019 is also made up of three sounds b-oa-t.<\/p>\n

This skill paves the way for understanding how to segment, blend and manipulate sounds to create or read new words. For example, if you can change the first sound in \u2018boat\u2019 to \u2018g\u2019 the word becomes \u2018goat\u2019.<\/p>\n

Some helpful strategies to try include:<\/p>\n