Phonemic awareness is one of the main building blocks of early education, especially when it comes to literacy, and here is a rundown of what there is to know about it.
As most people out there probably already know it, human language, while being intriguing and complicated is at its base simply composed of a bunch of simple sounds, referred to as phonemes. In order to create words, we put these phonemes together to make sound sequences to which we associate a meaning. As you can probably guess it, phonemic awareness refers to a person's ability to hear, identify, distinguish, interpret and manipulate phonemes in their respective language. A large number of studies have been done on this subject and as a result, a new method of teaching was developed referred to as phonics.
What is Phonics Method?
To sum it up in a nutshell, the phonics teaching method relies mostly on helping readers to identify and interpret words by actually sounding them out. In more professional terms which most early education programs use, it is referred to as blending sound spelling patterns. Ideally, this method contributes to developing phonemic awareness in a child, making them a better manipulator of the language. They will start to notice which words rhyme together, share a similar structure and little details like that. In the end, this will go a long way towards developing not only their reading comprehension, but also their writing capabilities as well as their speech fluency.
About the Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read Program
In the last few years a good amount of systems have been released, a large number of which based their teaching methods on the latest findings in regards to the phonics teaching method. Take for example everyone's beloved Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read Program. Even though they have been around for a long time (since 2006) at this point, the new products which they release are actually based on that new system of teaching, especially the pre-kindergarten levels of the program.
All in all, while the phonics teaching method may be somewhat new and still hasn't passed the test of time other, more traditional teaching systems have, the only way to make the next generation better than this one is to go forward and try new methods... because the ones we have at the moment have without a question failed a fair amount of children.
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