Phonemic Awareness
Manipulation of the Sounds of the Oral Language
Phonemic
awareness has been exhaustively discussed in the last
decade in relation to how children begin to read (EducationNews.org,
2005). It is defined by the International
Reading Association as “an understanding about the smallest
units of sound that make up the speech stream…” (2005, p.
3)
Khmer speakers, who have absorbed the unique phonological
characteristics of the Khmer language, may be influenced by
Khmer phonological characteristics when learning to speak
English as a second language. A comparison of the sounds
of Khmer and English will help educators distinguish between
linguistic influences and learning disabilities. Teachers
need to be familiar with these differences so that they do
not interpret them as speech impediments or indicators of
any learning disabilities. Clearly all children, who come
to school speaking a language, can use sounds (phonemes to
comprehend and produce meaningful language) (Freeman &
Freeman, 1996). In terms of ability, Adams (1990) defines
phonemic awareness as having five levels:
- to hear rhymes and alliteration as measured by knowledge
of nursery rhymes
- to do oddity tasks (comparing and contrasting the sounds
of words for rhyme and alliteration)
- to blend and split syllables
- to perform phonemic segmentation (such as counting out
the number of phonemes in a word)
- to perform phoneme manipulation tasks (such as adding,
deleting a particular phoneme and regenerating a word from
the remainder).
However, Khmer students may arrive at school with little
proficiency in the language of instruction which is English
and need the time and the opportunity to learn it as a foundation
to their literacy development through English. On the other
hand, if Khmer speaking students are already proficient readers
in Khmer they do not need to be assessed or have instruction
in phonemic awareness per se, because they already know how
to read and reading only happens once.
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