Phonics...Phonemes...What's the Difference?
The five components of reading instruction are: - Phonemic Awareness - Decoding - Fluency - Vocabulary - Comprehension
Phonemic Awareness is about speech sounds only. Phonemes are the smallest units of sound in the spoken language. Phonemic awareness means that when a student hears the word "cat," she can take the word apart to hear the individual sounds K/A/T. This does not usually come naturally, but often has to be taught directly. Being able to identify individual sounds in this way is crucial to developing decoding skills. Phonics instruction is a strategy for teaching decoding, which allows learners to recognize words in print. Phonics instruction teaches individual sound/letter relationships so that beginning readers can "sound out" words so that they can read them independently and accurately, and approximate the spelling of them when they write. So... Phonics Instruction builds decoding skills, which depends largely on the student's phonemic awareness.
Got that?
Adapted from Applying Research in Reading Instruction for Adults, NIFL, 2005. Author: McShane