Phonemic Awareness

The purpose of this article was to provide a brief background on the academic developments surrounding phonemic awareness. The author briefly discusses how the academic world came to study phonemic awareness and reviews the pertinent published history. The author goes on to present that Yopp-Singer Test of Phonemic Segmentation arguing that it is a test that is easy to administer, score, and interpret. The test is a 22 item test that is administered orally at the rate of five to ten minutes per child where the students are given a word then asked to provide back the sounds of each word presented. The author then reviews the data that supports the reliability and validity of the test presented with associated statistical analysis. Finally the author indicates that the test presented is a good tool for educators to quickly asses a child’s phonemic awareness. The author then points out that the test is a good test to be used primarily with English speaking kindergarteners who are not independent readers and states that it may be a good test of first grader’s to determine their phonemic awareness needs. As

the author points out at the end of the article, this test has not been studied with students that have limited proficiency in English. The application of this test in my classroom may be limited as I am currently teaching in a second grade classroom where students are already starting to become independent readers. Another limitation that I see is that the population that the test was validated on does not match that of my school as well. This area would be a slight flaw in their research in general, that they researched this test on a narrow variety of students (low to middle class) and primarily White. If I were to apply in my classroom, I would envision separating time in my day where I would typically do guided reading and taking the time early in the year to assess each student individually in order to identify each of their needs.