Name – Shonté Joyner Course- EED-470

Instructor- Jennifer O’Conner

Untitled illustration of Preston Blair’s Phoneme Set(John and Sarah’s Free Material, 1996)

•Defined as a sound that distinguishes one word from the other.•A unit which brings about a change in meaning between two almost similarly sounding words.•It is a very important knowledge about a language that each and every individual should possess to excel in it.

There are 44 phonemes in the English language.

These 44 phonemes are classified based on the uniqueness in their sound and also on their orientation.

Phonemes are classified into 7 sections: consonant sound, consonant digraph, short vowel sound, long vowel sound, other vowel sound, vowel diphthongs, and the vowel sounds that are influenced by “r”.

• A survey and a research conducted in USA states that children with poor reading skills fail to cope up in the future.

• Children starting from the very first grade should be imparted with the knowledge of phonemes.

• Teachers should come up with creative and instructional programs to make the children aware of the importance of phonemes. Phoneme Chart for Children

Teachers have come up with a new method which will test the reading skills of children.

A list of words is prepared and handed over to the children, the difficulty level of the words increase gradually.

With the increase in the number of mistakes made by the children the evaluation of the particular children is done.

It has been proven that accurate knowledge on phonemes and its proper use improves fluency.

English language consists of 26 alphabet letters but there are 44 phonemes which states its importance in the fluency and pronunciation in English language.

Childrens’ reading skills and their fluency obviously improves with the proper implementation of the teaching programs discussed.

DaleKaled, 2005

Phonemic awareness is defined as a unit of speech or sound that helps the listeners to differentiate between two words.

Phonemic awareness and phonics do not have the same meaning.

Phonemic awareness is a factor that prevents reading disabilities among students and should be included in the academic curriculum for betterment in reading skills.

Untitled Image of Phonemic Awareness

A setup has been formulated to conduct an experiment among some students to test the effectiveness of the program.

Read well program is conducted which is a very effective tool to improve oral reading fluency.

Typical and conventional classroom program is continued along with read well program which is a collection of some assignments.

Phonics is the process by which speech or sound is used to build a relationship between letters and sounds and this method is used in recognizing various kinds of words.

There is a basic difference between writing the English language and the spoken English language because while writing sound is not an important factor pronouncing is.

Phonics flashcard: short a [æ] sound

Two words namely explicit and systematic have been used here.

Explicit because the letter and sound relationship are being taught to the children and they are asked to produce sounds of various letters that are in use.

Systematic because it teaches the students about the sound value of the letters and is generally a unique approach. Untitled illustration of Explicit Systematic Phonics

The teachers and staffs responsible for imparting the read well program should go through a training program.

A rather informal discussion is carried on between the trainers and teachers, a very basic idea about the training program is forwarded and to make this training a success, interactive sessions should be conducted which will help the cause.

The program conducted for the betterment of the students in case of fluency is assessed.

Two individuals are given the responsibility of collecting and recording the assessments for each and every child.

A point to point agreement and disagreement is mentioned and then the percentage of agreement and disagreement individually is calculated.

Phoneme C D G K N R S Y Z (n.d.)

The primary objective of the program is to improve the reading fluency among the children at a very young age.

The program was conducted among a group of students and it was noticed that the mean ORF did increase.

The increase was of around 50% or more. For instance, if the number of students is 7, then the increase in mean ORF was noticed in almost 4 students.

No experiment can be successful without collecting proper feedback regarding it.

The children who took active participation in the process are provided with a questionnaire consisting of some questions.

The children themselves evaluated the process with transparency and this feedback helped the teachers in improving their techniques for the future.

While collecting the feedback for the program a mixed reaction among the individuals is noticed.

A percentage of the participants considered the program as very helpful and effective in improving the quality of reading.

While some participants stated that it involves a lot of reading exercises and they did not like the process.

After a vivid study and research it can be concluded that the importance of phoneme cannot be ignored.

Knowledge on English language is incomplete without knowledge on phoneme and its proper use.

Therefore the reading programs that are being conducted should be continued and improved because the faults should be corrected at the young age itself or else it would be quite tough to cope with in the future.

DaleKaleD. (2005). Phoneme chart. Retrieved on December 10, 2014, from: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Phoneme-Chart-21719846

John & Sarah. (1996). Phonemes. [Online Image]. Retrieved December 10, 2014, from: http://www.beidaenglish.com/spoken-english/how-to-pronounce/attachment/learning-phonemes/

Phoneme Chart for Children [online picture]. Retrieved on December 10, 2014, from: http://imgarcade.com/1/phoneme-chart-for-children/

Phonics flashcard: short a [æ] sound[online picture]. Retrieved on December 10, 2014, from: http://http://english4kids-step-by-step.blogspot.com/2013/03/phonics-cards-short-sound.html

[Untitled illustration of Explicit and Systematic Phonics]. Retrieved December 10, 2014, from: http://www.lizarum.com/assignments/flash/2005/animation/lip_synching.html

[Untitled illustration of Phoneme C D G K N R S Y Z ]. Retrieved December 10, 2014, from: http://www.lizarum.com/assignments/flash/2005/animation/lip_synching.html

[Untitled illustration of Phonemic Awareness]. Retrieved December 10, 2014, from: https://speechymusings.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/phonemic-awareness-powerpoint/

[Untitled illustration of Preston Blair’s Phoneme Set]. Retrieved December 10, 2014, from: http://www.bertramfiddle.com/read-my-lips-bertram/