Why should phonemic awareness instruction be explicit?

Explicit phonemic awareness instruction is essential because it directly connects the understanding of sounds in language to the process of reading. By clearly teaching students how to recognize, manipulate, and segment sounds, educators help them build the foundational skills necessary for decoding words. This explicit approach enables students to make meaningful connections between the sounds they hear and the letters they see, fostering better reading comprehension and fluency.

While improving handwriting skills, focusing solely on visual learning, and enhancing social skills might have their own benefits in an educational context, they do not address the primary goal of phonemic awareness instruction, which is to equip students with the auditory skills needed for effective reading. Phonemic awareness is all about processing sounds, and an explicit instructional approach is most effective for reinforcing these critical skills among learners.