The following quotes are from the American NIH longitudinal research (1994): "The lack of phonemic awareness is the most powerful determinant of the likelihood of failure to learn to read." "Phonemic awareness is more highly related to learning to read than tests of general intelligence, reading readiness, and listening comprehension." "Phonemic awareness is the most important core and causal factor separating normal and disabled readers." NIH research has repeatedly demonstrated that lack of phonemic awareness is the root cause of reading failure. Phonemes are the smallest unit of SPOKEN not written language.

Children who lack phonemic awareness are unable to manipulate sounds within spoken words or syllables. They are unable to do the following phonemic tasks:

Segmentation: what sounds do you hear in the word hot? What's the last sound in the word map?
Deletion: what word would be left if the /k/ sound were taken away from cat?
Matching: do pen and pipe start with the same sound?
Counting: how many sounds do you hear in the word cake?
Substitution: what word would you have if you changed the /h/ in hot to /p/?
Blending: what word would you have if you put these sounds together? /s/ /a/ /t/
Rhyming: tell me as many words as you can that rhyme with the word eat.

If a child lacks phonemic awareness, they will have difficulty learning the relationship between letters and the sounds they represent in words, as well as applying those letter/sound correspondences to help them "sound out" unknown words. Children who perform poorly on phonemic awareness tasks in kindergarten are very likely to experience difficulties acquiring the early word reading skills that provide the foundation for growth of reading ability throughout elementary school. Phonemic awareness skills can and must be directly and explicitly taught to children who lack this awareness.