Phonemic Instruction Research Articles

Beginning reading instruction: Syllables or phonemes? An experimental training study with Arabic-speaking preliterate preschoolers.

This study addressed four research questions: (1) Does teaching using syllables or using phonemes lead to better progress in beginning reading and spelling? (2) Does the effectiveness of syllabic or phonemic instruction depend on children's preferences for these units as predicted by Ziegler and Goswami's (2005) "availability" hypothesis? (3) Do children taught via syllabic consonant-vowel (CV) units spontaneously develop insight into the phonemic basis of an alphabetic writing system, and (4) Do individual differences in reading and spelling gains in phoneme-based instruction depend more on working memory, short-term memory, and Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) owing to the greater number of units that must be rapidly retrieved and processed? To test these hypotheses, 104 preliterate preschool children were taught to read and spell using an unfamiliar script. Across 14 training sessions, children were taught using either whole CV units, phoneme units, or demiphoneme units. Retention and generalization were evaluated during training and 1 week later. Our results showed that CV-based teaching was found to be significantly and substantially more effective in terms of reading accuracy and speed than teaching via phonemes or demiphonemes. Ziegler and Goswami's (2005) availability hypothesis was not supported: All groups learned more easily with CV-based instruction regardless of their preferred phonological unit. In addition, some children taught solely via whole-syllable units showed evidence of spontaneously induced insight into the phonemic basis of alphabetic writing. Finally, working-memory, short-term memory, and Rapid Automatized Naming predicted learning via phonemes but not via CV units. We discuss the implications for beginning reading instruction in different languages and writing systems. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The Effects of Phonemic Awareness Instructions on L2 Listening Comprehension: A Meta-Analysis

This study examines the effect of phonemic awareness instruction on listening comprehension ability in learning English as a second language or foreign language (L2). The searching procedures were carried out using Publish or Perish with discreetly selected keywords. Eight studies with 13 samples published between 2000 and 2020 were obtained. Hedges’ g was calculated, leveraging Comprehensive Meta-Analysis (CMA) software. The overall effect size of phonemic awareness instruction on listening skills was found to be large (Hedges’ g = 0.99, lower bound = 0.82, upper bound = 1.61). The result demonstrated that phonemic awareness instructions to beginners (Hedges’ g = 0.86) or primary school students (Hedges’ g = 3.67) might have a large effect on enhancing their listening skills. Furthermore, research that conducted phonemic awareness instructions (Hedges’ g = 1.43) showed a much larger effect size than phonics instructions (Hedges’ g = 0.45), suggesting the need for a more focused phonemic instruction for L2 learners. Lastly, the effectiveness of phonemic awareness instruction was better assessed when using intensive listening measurements (Hedges’ g = 1.43) rather than selective ones (Hedges’ g = 0.80). These results collectively indicate that phonemic awareness instructions could be both effective and practical for helping L2 learners improve listening skills.

Getting off to a better start in reading and spelling: The effects of phonemic awareness instruction within a whole language program.

In the present study the effect of providing phonemic awareness instruction, at school entry, on the reading and spelling progress of 5-year-old children was examined within a whole language program. In Experiment 1, which focused on spelling acquisition, 15 children received phonemic awareness training twice weekly, each time for 20 min, over a 10-week period, while another group of 15 children was involved in «process writing.» In Experiment 2, which focused on reading acquisition, 17 children received phonemic awareness training while a 2nd matched group of 17 children participated in other language and reading activities that did not involve phonemic instruction, and a 3rd matched group of 17 children received no extra instruction at all