The Truth about Phonemic Awareness
Question: Should schools invest in a dedicated Phonemic Awareness (PA) program to supplement their systematic phonics curriculum?
ANSWER: NO! Schools do not need an additional PA program to implement alongside an explicit and systematic phonics program.
Phonemic Awareness is NOT Phonics,
but Phonics IS Phonemic Awareness!
Since the National Reading Panel (2000) publication and its now-famous quinquepartite-recommendation of 1. Phonemic Awareness (PA); 2. Phonics; 3. Fluency; 4. Vocabulary; and 5. Comprehension—it has become an article of faith that:
All kids need PA training before and alongside phonics instruction;
All PA training must be done WITHOUT letters. Students can use colored tiles or use nothing except their vivid imagination. But the use of letters during a PA exercise IS NOT PA, but phonics.
Those who accept the first point must contend with the following questions:
Considering that sounds (phonemes) are intangible, would it not make more sense to ask students to manipulate sounds using tangible letters they can see and feel? Why make the task more difficult by having them manipulate phonemes in their imagination?
Wouldn't the manipulation of letters prepare students for phonics instruction? Why separate PA and phonics into two exercises when we can cover them both with a single activity?
Those who accept the second point—that “PA exercises with letters IS NOT phonemic awareness”—should attempt to answer the following question:
Can students sharpen their PA skills by manipulating (adding, deleting, substituting) sounds in words using letter tiles?
To help make the question more tangible, please see this video on the right and ask yourself: Is it possible that this student—who is working hard to manipulate sounds in words using letter tiles—is not engaging in a PA task?
It is, therefore, my position that:
Teachers should always introduce sounds together with a corresponding letter.
Because PA training is a challenge, we should not make the task unnecessarily difficult. Students should therefore always use letters to represent the sounds they are manipulating;
While PA is not phonics, all phonics IS PA! Therefore, teachers should take their students to the phonics pool and dive into the deep end. Phonics instruction will hone in their students’ PA skills.
Let's explore what the science of reading tells us about what is and what is not PA and the best ways to implement PA exercises with students.
Back to Basics: The National Reading Panel
The National Reading Panel Report (2000) informs us that PA skills are correlated with reading ability. However, the report clearly states that (1) PA instruction can be conducted with letters and that (2) PA instruction is more effective when taught with the use of letters.
The following text is from the NRP (emphasis added):
Instruction that taught phoneme manipulation with letters helped normally developing readers and at-risk readers acquire PA better than PA instruction without letters.
—NRP 2-4 (2000)
In other words: PA training can be done with, and without letters, but using letters is “better.”
The NRP explains why it is important for teachers to use letters when conducting PA exercises with their students:
Teaching with letters is important because this helps children apply their PA skills to reading and writing. Teaching children to blend phonemes with letters helps them decode. Teaching children phonemic segmentation with letters helps them spell… Teachers should recognize that acquiring phonemic awareness is a means rather than an end. PA is not acquired for its own sake but rather for its value in helping learners understand and use the alphabetic system to read and write. This is why it is important to include letters when teaching children to manipulate phonemes and why it is important to teach children explicitly how to apply PA skills in reading and writing tasks.
—NRP 2-6 (2000)
In a publication titled Phonemic Awareness Instruction Helps Children Learn to Read: Evidence From the National Reading Panel's Meta-Analysis, the authors, which include Linnea Ehri, CUNY Graduate Center, and Timothy Shanahan, University of Illinois at Chicago, elaborate on their findings of the NRP:
Instruction in PA may be conducted with or without alphabetic letters. In some studies, children were taught to manipulate phonemes in words by using letters as markers for the sounds whereas in other studies children were taught to work with spoken units only. Sounds are ephemeral, short-lived, and hard to grasp, whereas letters provide concrete, visible symbols for phonemes. Thus, we might expect children to have an easier time acquiring PA when they are given letters to manipulate. Also, because letters bring children closer to the task of applying PA in reading and spelling, we would expect transfer to be greater when PA is taught with letters. In the B&I (1999) study, PA instruction with letters produced larger effects on PA and reading than instruction without letters.
—Phonemic Awareness Instruction Helps Children Learn To Read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel's Meta-Analysis. Ehri, Linnea C.; Nunes, Simone R.; Willows, Dale M.; Schuster, Barbara Valeska; Yaghoub-Zadeh, Zohreh; Shanahan, Timothy, 2001.
In a publication titled Modeling the Successes and Failures of Interventions for Disabled Reader, the authors Bruce D Mccandliss, Stanford University, and Mark S. Seidenberg, University of Wisconsin–Madison explain:
Given this support for the phonological impairment hypothesis, it might seem that the most effective way to address reading difficulties is to remediate the underlying phonological impairment directly. For example, one could engage children in the same speech activities that are used to assess these skills, such as activities requiring children to segment and manipulate speech sounds within words (i.e. Lundberg, Frost, & Petersen, 1988). Meta analyses by Bus and Ijzendoorn (1999) however, demonstrate that such speech-only approaches are minimally effective at impacting reading abilities (d=.18), and consistently worse than other variants that spend less time on speech based activities and more time on activities involving reading (d=.88) or letters (d=.66). Similar meta analysis results were obtained by Ehri and Nunes (in press) in which the reading improvement effect size from phonological awareness training with letters (d=.67) was roughly twice that obtained from similar speech-only activities (d=.38). These results hardly follow from the simple form of the phonological impairment hypothesis, and seem to require additional assumptions. Several possibilities have been advanced, including the notion that the presence of letters might serve to perceptually anchor perceptually elusive phoneme sounds (Adams, Treiman, & Pressley, 1998), and the notion that specific training in grapheme-phoneme associations may directly impact reading abilities (i.e. Ehri & Nunes, in press).
—Harm, Michael W., Bruce D. McCandliss, and Mark S. Seidenberg. “Modeling the Successes and Failures of Interventions for Disabled Readers,” 2003.
Conclusions
Those familiar with the findings of the NRP and other research should conclude that PA exercises help students learn to read, but:
PA training can be conducted with and without letters.
PA training is more effective with letters because visual letters (a) help the student perceptually anchor the sound and (b) prepare the student for phonics instruction.
What the Research Does and Does Not Say about PA Instruction
The most comprehensive analysis of the reading research on PA and its application in the classroom is found in a recent publication titled They Say You Can Do Phonemic Awareness Instruction “In the Dark”, But Should You? A Critical Evaluation of the Trend Toward Advanced Phonemic Awareness Training (by authors Nathan H. Clemens, Emily Solari, Devin M. Kearns, Hank Fien, Nancy J. Nelson, Melissa Stelega, Matthew Burns, Kimberly St. Martin, Fumiko Hoeft). Below is the complete abstract:
Purpose: A trend has emerged across schools in the United States in which phonemic awareness is viewed as much more than a component of beginning reading instruction. This perspective argues that “phonemic proficiency”, evidenced by mastery with skills such as phoneme elision or substitution, is an important target for assessment and instruction well beyond initial grades. Daily phonemic awareness instruction outside of print are hallmarks of the perspective, which has influenced state policies on reading instruction.
Method: This paper evaluated the empirical and theoretical basis for advanced phonemic awareness training.
Results and Conclusion: Although promoted as evidence-based, proficiency on so-called advanced phonemic skills is not more strongly related to reading or more discriminative of difficulties than other phoneme-level skills, not necessary for skilled reading, and is more likely a product of learning to read and spell than a cause. Additionally, reading outcomes are stronger when phonemic awareness is taught with print, there is no evidence that advanced phonemic awareness training benefits reading instruction or intervention, and prominent theories of reading development do not align with the claims. We conclude with implications for policy-makers and educators, and discuss how experimental research could address open questions about phonemic awareness instruction.
FURTHER READING
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About the Author
Eyal Rav-Noy is the Co-Founder of Capit Learning and the author of the CAPIT Reading Curriculum, a digital tool that enables educators of beginner and struggling readers to create confident, lifelong readers.
Eyal lives in Los Angeles with his wife, five children, and their dog Luna, and enjoys running all over Los Angeles as he prepares for the next marathon.