PHONICS AND PHONEMIC AWARENESS

Phonics and Phonemic Awareness



Phonics and Phonemic Awareness

Introduction

Phonics is a method of teaching young learners reading, writing and pronouncing words using phonetic value of alphabetical letters and letter groups. Phonemic awareness refers to the knowledge that all the words are made up of individual sounds or phonemes and the capability to manipulate distinguished sounds in words (Bourassa & Treiman 2001). Decades of rigorous research by the renowned educationists and linguists has proved the importance of phonics and phonemic awareness and their relation to the reading development. Hence, a study of different literature (Carroll, Snowling, Hulme, & Stevenson, 2003 ) suggests that absence of phonemic awareness results into a poor reader whereas its presence indicates a characteristic of good, if not excellent, reader.

Discussion

Since each student has, not only different and unique academic need, but also the unique attitudes toward learning, cultural background, language, personal attributes, interests and socioeconomic background, it is the teacher who recognizes all these different factors and devise an effective instruction plan in order to meet students' unique needs. The objective of differentiated instructions is to make provisions for differences in how individual learners have identical access to academic content. The instruction material may be modified or enhanced for those who need additional support with fundamental elements before moving any further. It is, however, expected that such modification would eventually facilitates every student master the content.

Students with learning disabilities demonstrate, to some extent, a significant discrepancy which could be the result of deficiency in one or more of the areas of listening or reading comprehension, mathematical calculations, reasoning, spelling or basic reading and writing skills. There will most likely be some distinctive and unique challenges posed by these type of students to the teacher as they require, not only more of your time and determination, but also some specialized and differentiated instruction strategies employed in a structured and articulated way in order to enhance their learning capabilities. It is pertinent to mention that disabled student and those with special needs are not to be considered as the ones unable or weaker to learn, rather what they only need is an unconventional and differentiated instruction approach carefully tailored to cater to their distinctive and unique learning capabilities. It is pertinent here to note that there is a difference between individualized instruction and differentiated instruction. The students are not learning anything different, rather they are taught the same thing but employing different ways according to the individual student's personality attributes and background. It is mere the presentation of same thing in distinguished ways so that every student can interpret it in his own way. It is only by employing appropriate strategies that a teacher can effectively enhance the overall learning skills of these students.

There are some differentiated but academically established strategies that would help a teacher effectively develop learning disabled students. As youngsters with learning disabilities often feel it quite difficult to grasp the concepts and term of abstract nature, it would be helpful to provide ...