What is considered a good foundation for starting to read?

Good phonemic awareness is a critical foundational skill for starting to read. It involves the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. This skill enables children to understand the relationship between sounds and letters, which is essential for decoding words.

When children have strong phonemic awareness, they can better understand how sounds make up words, facilitating their ability to sound out words when they come across them in print. This foundational skill supports their overall reading development, allowing them to progress to more complex reading tasks.

While understanding grammar rules, having advanced vocabulary knowledge, and strong writing skills are important for overall literacy development, they typically build upon the foundational skills that reading requires. Phonemic awareness is specifically linked to the early stages of reading and is essential for young learners as they begin to read independently.