7. What the Research Says About Phonemic Awareness Instruction
Results of the meta-analysis conducted by the National Reading Panel (opens in new window) (NRP), released in 2000, found that “teaching phonemic awareness to children is clearly effective. … [It] benefits not only word reading but also reading comprehension. PA training contributes to children’s ability to read and spell for months, if not years, after the training has ended.”
Small-group instruction had larger effect sizes on phonemic awareness acquisition than individual or whole-classroom instruction, according to the NRP report.
Some students need more practice than others. “Students may need a sequenced approach to develop phonemic awareness if they have less preschool experience, lower language skills, a history of chronic ear infections, a family history of poor reading, or attention issues,” according to a 2023 guide by reading experts (opens in new window) Jane Ashby, Marion McBride, Shira Naftel, Ellen O’Brien, Lucy Hart Paulson, David Kilpatrick, and Louisa Moats.
Some researchers have questioned the need to teach phonological awareness skills (opens in new window) in a progression — moving from syllable awareness to onset-rime to phonemic awareness. It is not necessary to belabor the teaching of any of these skills, as many children will be able to demonstrate them easily without instruction or will be able to master them quickly. Their sequence merely reflects a developmental progression of difficulty from larger units to smaller ones.
Of equal importance, many researchers now recommend using letters when teaching phoneme awareness to most children. Linking the sound with the symbol aids in orthographic mapping and thus is closer to the decoding (reading) task itself.