Phonemic Awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate phonemes, which is the smallest part of a spoken language. From a young age, most children attain the knowledge that language is used to express thoughts. According to the National Reading Panel (2000), research indicates that phonemic awareness and letter knowledge are key predictors to student’s success in learning to read, as phonemic awareness is both an understanding and a skill (Phillips and Torgesen, 2006).
To become literate, a child must also have an understanding of the alphabetic …show more content…
Understanding these relationships gives children the ability to recognize familiar words quickly and to figure out some these relationships on their own. Though Phonics is said to be similar to phonemic awareness, it involves more than being able to hear and produce phonemes in words. It involves knowing the letter or letters that stand for the phonemes, recognizing letters in print, and being able to associate the sound that those letters usually stand for. Phonics is one approach to reading instruction that teaches students the principles of letter-sound relationships, how to sound out words and exceptions to the principles. The reason why decoding is important is because it is the foundation in which all other reading instructions are built. If students cannot decode words, their reading will lack fluency, their vocabulary will be limited and their reading comprehension will suffer.
Fluency is the ability to read text accurately, quickly and with expression. This is important as it creates the connection between word recognition and reading comprehension. The more fluent a student is, the faster he or she groups and recognizes words. Children, who have not yet developed fluency, ay read slowly and word by word will have trouble meeting the reading demands of their grade