ABSTRACT
Since the publication of Jeanne Chall’s (1967) landmark book, Learning to Read: The Great Debate, research has advanced our understanding of the beginning reading process. While we still may disagree about the “best” method for teaching beginning reading, the discussion has moved beyond a surface comparison of various instructional approaches to a consideration of the cognitive and developmental underpinnings of the learning-to-read process (Adams, 1990; Snow, Burns, & Grif n, 1998; Rayner, Foorman, Perfetti, Pesetsky, & Seidenberg, 2001). One dominant concept that has been studied and re-studied over the past four decades is phonemic awareness-a child’s conscious awareness of the phonemic or sound segments within a spoken word. Today, any serious reading theorist or practitioner must take into account the role of phonemic awareness in the early stages of learning to read.
