Phonemic Awareness Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Phonemic Awareness - Essay Example Since early times, children understanding in reading have gone through diverse changes. These changes are the basic factors that guarantee either the malfunction or success of children in learning how to read. Long ago, people suggested that children learned how to read by understanding letters. This old methodology was used in teaching learning skills to children. There are challenges that are accompanied by the use of letters in teaching reading skills. A German researcher suggested the use of words in teaching reading skills instead of using letters. This is because words provide meaning and make sense while letters provide parts of the idea. It is because of this reason that both parents and teachers are debating whether to use the letter approach in teaching reading skills or use of word approach in teaching reading skills. Some researchers conducted experiments that proved the Whole Word Approach to be advantageous to the Letter Approach. It was proven that identifying a five-l etter word is easier than identifying five random letters. He also suggested that it takes a long time to identify random words than it takes to identify a sentence. (Moustafa, 2008). It is unfortunate that even after it was proven that Whole Word Approach is better than Phonemic Approach; people still use Letter Word Approach. Teachers who taught children using letter approach recommended children to read text that was manipulated with letters while those who utilized Whole Word Approach recommended children to read text that is controlled by words. At the start of the twenty first century educationist recommended the combination of both Whole Word Approach and Letter Approach. It was after these encounter that educationist in America emphasized on the use of Whole Word Approach and discouraging the use of Phonic Approach. Children were given storybooks to read, and this was supposed to improve their reading skills. The books contained pictures that were used for understanding of t he story, the words did not contain the story line but the pictures did. Researchers argued that phonic contributed to illiteracy because it does not give instruction. It is because of this reason that teachers are advised to teach children on the different sounds of letters. This enables learners to read and understand effortlessly (Moustafa, 2008). Even though there is great difference in letter approach and whole word process approach, the two have the same principle. The two processes assume that teaching to read is part of the whole process, in that as children study to read letters and words they are able to learn the