In the early stages of reading, word decoding skills are prerequisite to reading. Word decoding involves word discrimination, phonemic decoding, and understanding of meaning. In this process, phonemic awareness enables students to examine language independently to manipulate its component sounds, and to use letter-sound correspondences to read and spell words. The 7th national curriculum of English and the primary school English textbooks fail to provide systematic language structure focus to facilitate efficiently student acquisition of the English phonemic system. Therefore, many students suffer from lack of word decoding development as well as encoding development, particularly in the 5th and 6th grades. This study explores the English phonemic awareness of Korean primary school students. To achieve the purpose of this study, a test for phonemic awareness was developed and Korean students' phonemic awareness was examined. The test deals with six areas: phonemic segmentation, phonemic manipulation, syllable splitting, blending, oddity, and invented spelling. The results are as follows: Firstly, many students showed successful results in phonemic segmentation and oddity. However, they have difficulties with syllable splitting and invented spelling. While students have strengths in the awareness of consonants except for r-l, f-p, and b-v, they suffer from lack of awareness of vowels. Secondly, errors of invented spelling and blending showed that students have differing development stages of phonemic awareness, e.g., some students master the phonemic system perfectly whereas others perceive only the alphabetic sounds. Finally, this research suggests that a balanced approach to reading is necessary in the early reading in the Korean context.

Abstract
Ⅰ. 서론
Ⅱ. 초보 학습자의 읽기 발달
Ⅲ. 연구 방법
Ⅳ. 결과 분석
Ⅴ. 결론 및 제언
참고문헌
부록

• 이윤(한국교육과정평가원) | Lee Yoon