Rethinking Phonemic Awareness in Light of Seidenberg’s Recent Posts Aug-Nov
Lately, the conversation about phonemic awareness (PA) has felt like déjà vu
Are phonemes real? Should we teach 44 of them? Are kids really “missing” phonemic awareness, or are we misunderstanding the task itself?
After the Nov. 19th post I found an additional pair of posts by Dr. Mark Seidenberg (Aug 6 & Aug 10, 2024) and they confirm what many of us working in Structured Word Inquiry (SWI) have been saying for years:
Phonemes are not little sounds that live inside spoken words.
They are abstract categories created by literacy, not prerequisites for literacy.
This is a big shift. And it has huge implications for instruction, assessment, and how we understand struggling readers.
Let’s unpack it.
The Big Clarification: Speech Does NOT Contain Phonemes
The widespread “Phonemes First” model is built on a story most of us were taught:
– spoken words are made of phonemes
– phonemes are little sounds
– children must “hear, isolate, and manipulate” these tiny units
– only then are they ready for phonics
It’s tidy. Logical. And completely false.
Seidenberg explains:
Speech is continuous.
It does NOT naturally break into 44 pronounceable parts.
If you try to record “buh + a + t” and splice them together, you won’t get bat.
If you try to delete the vowel from “buh,” you destroy the /b/ itself. The /t/ at the end isn’t released; we don’t feel the full /t/ phoneme.
Why?
Because what PA programs call “phonemes” are artificial sound fragments, not units of real speech.
So Where Do Phonemes Come From? Literacy.
Here is the mind-bending part:
Phonemic awareness emerges after children start reading.
Not before.
Not from listening alone.
Not from speech experience.
When the brain starts pairing print with speech, something new forms:
a phonemic level of representation, an abstract, segmental layer used for reading and spelling.
This is why:
– people who learn alphabetic scripts develop phonemic awareness
– people who learn non-alphabetic scripts (e.g., Chinese) do not
– literate adults “hear” or feel phonemes in a way illiterate adults cannot
Phonemes are real in the mind, but they are created by literacy, not the raw materials of speech.
What This Means for Instruction
This is where the Science-of-Reading world and SWI converge strongly:
We should not be drilling artificial “phonemes” in isolation.
There is no linguistic or cognitive basis for
– learning 44 phonemes before print
– practicing “pure” phonemes without vowels
– articulatory gymnastics to produce “correct” phonemes
– spending months (or years!) on PA tasks without print
These practices emerged from a misunderstanding of phonemes.
And they waste instructional time, especially for the children who struggle most.
Instead, Seidenberg says we should:
Teach letter names, letter sounds, and reading real words.
The so-called “letter sounds” are not building blocks of speech;
they are the tools we use to bootstrap reading (like training wheels).
They are like a booster rocket:
necessary at the start, then fade as children begin reading real, meaningful words with automaticity.
As children read words, patterns, and morphemes:
-
- phonemes emerge naturally
- phonemic awareness grows
- spelling patterns stabilize
- reading fluency increases
- the brain becomes better at representing linguistic structure
This aligns perfectly with SWI:
Meaning + Morphemes + Etymology → THEN phonology.
You don’t force phonemic awareness into existence.
You let it emerge as children learn the writing system.
Why Struggling Readers Don’t Need More PA Drills
This part needs to be said clearly:
Children don’t fail PA drills because they “lack phonemic awareness.”
They fail because these tasks overload:
– working memory
– processing speed
– attention
– expressive formulation
– retrieval
– language structure
– morphology
– articulation
PA tasks are language-memory tasks, not pure “sound” tasks.
This is why:
PA drills help the middle of the distribution (average students)
SWI, morphology, real print, and real words move the bottom ( struggling learners)
The children with the most fragile cognitive-linguistic systems need structure, meaning, and real words, not sound segmentation tricks.
Why This Matters: Teachers Deserve Accurate Information
Many teachers were taught that:
– phonemes exist in speech
– phonemes must be isolated
– “correct phoneme pronunciation” is essential
– PA is a prerequisite for reading
And they’ve spent years, sometimes decades, faithfully doing this work. Learning that the foundation was shaky is painful. Seidenberg acknowledges this. I acknowledge this. But once we know better, we can teach better. And this is not just a small terminology debate. It changes what instruction should prioritize.
So What Do We Do Instead? A Clear Direction Forward
- Teach letter names
- Teach conventional letter sounds ( phonemes) in words
- Teach children to read real words (not nonsense words)
- Teach word families that share a base and sense of meaning
- Teach morphemes (bases, prefixes, suffixes)
- Teach meaningful spellings
- Teach etymology when relevant
- Pair print with authentic pronunciation in question 4
- Let phonemic awareness emerge naturally
- Teach grapheme-phoneme correspondence alongside spelling-meaning correspondence
Here’s what to stop doing:
- teaching 44 phonemes
- correcting children’s “schwa” in isolated phoneme production
- spending months on oral PA with no print
- drilling deletion/isolation tasks
- delaying reading until PA “readiness”
The Gist
Meaning & structure lead
Phonology follows
That’s how orthography works
Phonemic awareness is not a precursor to reading; it is a product of reading. And that means we can stop teaching phonemes in isolation and start teaching the writing system the way it actually works.
