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Phonemic Awareness And Analysis

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Reading instruction can only be successful when a teacher incorporates all of the major content strands of the reading process into their lesson plans, phonemic awareness is the starting point of this process. Phonemic awareness is, in its most simple terms, is the conscious awareness of the sounds in words (Hill, 2012, p.137). An example of this would be a child who can recognise the sounds /c/, /a/ and /t/ in the word cat and understand when those sounds are put together they form a word and that this theory can be applied to all words. By using explicit teaching methods, a child will have been well supported in developing their phonemic awareness, this lays the foundation for the further development of their reading skills. These explicit …show more content…

As stated in Ewing and Maher (2014, p.2), there are two types of approaches to teaching phonics: synthetic and analytic. A synthetic phonics approach uses individual letters and their sounds and gradually builds on the number introduced until they can be formed into words. An analytical approach to phonics uses whole words and breaks them down into their phoneomes. It is the analytical approach that appears to be of most benefit to students in relation to developing their reading abilities because it asks students to draw meaning from the printed word. Jim Rose was commissioned by the UK government to investigate the teaching of phonics and literacy (The Rose Report, 2006), the main recommendation from that report was that teachers should use a synthetic approach to teaching phonics. This report garnered much debate as it presented an opinion that was very different from much of the data that had been collected over the previous 30 years of research. Wyse and Styles (2007, p.40) wrote an article debating the merits of the recommendations of the Rose Report and disagreed with them, stating that the Rose Report’s conclusion was not supported by research evidence. Hill (2012, p.260) states that there are many methods to teach phonics and there are continually new methods being created, it is the teachers role to determine a way to incorporate the many options available to suit the style of learning of the students in their

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