How Important Is Teaching Phonemic Awareness to Children Learning to Read in Spanish?

Abstract

This comparative study examines relationships between phonemic awareness and Spanish reading skill acquisition among three groups of Spanish-speaking first and second graders: children in Mexico receiving reading instruction in Spanish and children in the United States receiving reading instruction in either Spanish or English. Children were tested on Spanish oral language and reading skills in fall and spring of Grades 1 and 2. Children in Mexico were the lowest in phonemic awareness among the three groups and very low in their entering first-grade reading skills. However, they ended second grade matching or surpassing the reading skills of the U.S. students while remaining lower in phonemic awareness. Findings cast doubt on whether phonemic awareness instruction is helpful for children learning to read in Spanish.

A Phenomenological Study: The Impacts of Developing Phonetic Awareness through Technological Resources on English Language Learners’ (ELL) Communicative Competences

“…Phonemic awareness refers to the ability to understand that words can be break down into smaller individual units and how to correctly pronounce each one (Goldenberg et al, 2014). It is also consider as the ability to manipulate individual phonemes, blending, segmentation, and deletion (Ehri et al, 2001).…”

What works to improve early grade literacy in Latin America and the Caribbean? A systematic review and meta‐analysis

“…the Mexican children outperformed the other students in later and repeated measures of reading, suggesting that phonemic awareness may not be as necessary for sustained teaching when learning a transparent orthography such as Spanish (Goldenberg et al, 2014).…”

Bilingual Phonological Awareness: Construct Validation in Grade 1 Spanish‐Speaking English Learners

“…Studies investigating children learning two languages show that PA skills in the first and second language correlate highly with each other, appear to transfer cross‐linguistically, and predict word reading development in both languages (Cummins, ; Geva & Wang, ; Riccio et al., ). For example, PA in Spanish has been found to relate to English word reading (Lindsey, Manis, & Bailey, ), English reading achievement (Goldenberg et al., ), and English reading fluency (Riccio et al., ). However, Branum‐Martin et al.…”