Abby Conner

EDUC 312: Research Article Analysis

October 4, 2014
Ashby, J., Dix, H., Bontrager, M., Dey, R., & Archer, A. (2013, June). Phonemic awareness
contributes to text reading fluency: evidence from eye movements. School Psychology
Review, 42(2), 157+. Retrieved from
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA339254044&v=2.1&u=naal_sam&it=r&
p=AONE&sw=w&asid=29f01f37ef38aa4b3b9236144ce64964
Phonemic awareness is useful in predicting students who will be able to decode words
earlier than other students; however, a relationship that has yet to be explored with phonemic
awareness is the relationship between phonemic awareness and silent reading of a passage
fluently. The study conducted in this article is one of the first studies to attempt to see if a
relationship between phonemic awareness and silent reading fluency exists.
The study measures the eye movements of ten students as they match pictures and read
silently on a computer screen. They tested students who were in the middle of the second grade
and then had the same students return a year later when they were in the middle of the third
grade to see how and if their silent reading fluency had changed. The results of the study
indicated that the students who showed slow phonemic awareness in the second grade were
subsequently slower readers in the third grade.
The paper did note that the ten students were average readers, and that in an ideal world,
a study would like to have more than ten students to test.

This article on a study of phonemic awareness and silent reading was very interesting. I
appreciated how it stated the fact that their findings could be skewed because of the limited
number of children and the fact that all of the children were average readers.
I felt that the findings that students with stronger phonemic awareness would be stronger
readers as they age were fairly easy to understand and easy to predict. It makes sense that the
students who have a stronger sense of phonemic awareness would be stronger readers later in
life. Phonemic awareness is one of the building blocks to being a good reader. The student with a
weaker phonemic awareness block would not be as good of a reader compared to a student who
has a very strong block.
I thought that it was a unique idea to track eye movement as students read silently. It
seems like a good way to see how well students can read without adding the extra element of
talking, especially because students are told to read silently in the classroom but are then tested
on how well they read aloud. I can see eye movement webcams entering the classroom in the
future and the oral reading tests becoming less common.
There are a couple ways that I can see immediately where the knowledge of this study
would be useful in my classroom in the future. One way is to ensure that phonemic awareness is
taught and emphasized in classrooms with younger students. Another way would be to help older
students who are struggling readers by seeing if they are lacking in phonemic awareness.
I thought that the article did not do a good job defining phonemic awareness. I feel like to
discuss a topic so heavily and to include it in a study, the definition of what is being tested
should be clearly defined so all of the researcher, parents, students, etc. are all aware of what the
researchers are looking for.