Language Magazine – Alexandra Guilamo
“The way we define decoding is the same in Spanish and English. Phonics is the ability to recognize and accurately match graphemes, or letters, to the phonemes, or the sounds, they make. Phonemic awareness, on the other hand, is the ability to focus on and manipulate the phonemes of a word. If students know what to do with each part of a word, they can read the whole word. As all students build confidence and competence in decoding, they begin something called orthographic mapping, which is basically the brain’s muscle memory for identifying similar parts in new words.” (more)