Is Phonemic Awareness Instruction a Waste of Time?
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder examines a provocative argument from reading researchers questioning the value of standalone phonemic awareness instruction.
Key Takeaways
- The debate is nuanced - Some respected researchers argue that phonemic awareness instruction is less effective when separated from phonics
- Context matters - Phonemic awareness taught alongside phonics may be more effective than isolated awareness activities
- Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater - The science of reading still supports systematic phonics; this debate is about implementation details
Transcript
Is phonemic awareness instruction a waste of time?
If you spend any time talking with science of reading people or looking at what's in a science of reading program like UFLY or Hegarty or letters training, phonemic awareness is a big part of it.
So I was really surprised to see this article from esteemed reading researcher Mark Seidenberg, where he argues that phonemic awareness instruction is not helpful.
One thing he does is he points at the UK and says in the UK, they don't teach phonemic awareness at all.
They just go straight into phonetics.
phonics.
And he says that phonemic awareness is a little bit of an abstraction, right?
The idea that you can break a word into sounds that have a pronunciation outside of those words and spend time on that apart from phonics.
He says, I don't really think that is helpful.
So I'm really surprised to see this because it seemed like it was kind of a settled matter, kind of a universal agreement in the science of reading community that phonemic awareness is crucial.
But Mark Seidenberg argues that it's not.
He says, spoken words do not consist of discrete phonemes that are blended together.
Using speech does not require knowledge of phonemes, conscious or unconscious.
Rather than being literally pronounced, phonemes are an abstraction, a way of thinking about spoken words.
We treat words as if they consisted of discrete sounds.
Learning to read doesn't require having conscious awareness of phonemes, learning their correct pronunciations, or performing at a prescribed level on a phonemic awareness task.
Rather, children need to learn to treat spoken words as if they consist of discrete sounds.
And he says we can achieve that simply by teaching phonics, by skipping over phonemic awareness instruction entirely and going straight into traditional phonics.
And you might have seen recently, I talked about this in a recent video, that the oral-only phonemic awareness approach in Hegarty was found to not be very effective.
And when they included The visual of the letters and got more into the phonics aspect of it, that's when they started to see an impact.
So if you are inside the science of reading debates, I'd love to know what you think about this new article from Mark Seidenberg arguing that phonemic awareness instruction is not important and probably a waste of time.
Let me know what you think.