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The concept that Adams brought to the fore was "phonemic awareness." Phonemes are the smallest meaningful sounds in a language. English has 44 phonemes that its speakers combine to make all its words. Cat, for example, has three: "kuh-aa-tuh." Adams concluded that in order to read, one must understand that the sounds in a word can be broken up this way; it must also be understood that letters represent these sounds. Some people have phonemic awareness intuitively, but others must be taught it, which can be done with simple exercises.
For Adams, the key to reading is that words must be recognized almost instantly so that the brain can be free to comprehend what is being read. Eye-movement studies show that readers do fixate on virtually every letter in the text. It has also been shown that readers "sound out" words unconsciously. Each letter, then, must be sounded out with incredible speed. Of course, in English there are many different ways for sounds to be represented by letters. In Adams' scheme, a reader does not have to learn all these combinations; once phonemic awareness is established and some sound-letter correspondences are learned, the brain begins to recognize new patterns on its own.
As the 1990s progressed, more verification of the importance of phonemic awareness came from studies conducted by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health. Under the direction of Reid Lyon, researchers have found that problems with phonemic awareness correlate extremely closely with reading failure. Other NICHD studies have reaffirmed the conclusions reached by Chall and Adams--that programs with some systematic phonics instruction lead to better outcomes. Finally, brain-imaging studies are beginning to show how poor readers differ neurologically from good readers, and the indication so far is that the former have less activity in the brain's "phonological processor."
Advocates insist that phonics is necessary but not sufficient for reading instruction. They agree with the whole-language proponents that beginning readers must read real books; the only difference is that phonics advocates believe the very first stories must be written in a fashion that reinforces phonics lessons. Adams goes out of her way to praise the whole-language movement for bringing literature into classrooms and fostering respect for teachers and students. Equally important, she and others reject the deadening ways phonics was taught in the past.
"Phonics," Goodman once wrote, "is a flat-earth view of the world, since it rejects modern science about reading and writing and how they develop." Apparently, though, it is the whole-language advocates who reject what modern science has to say about reading--which is that readers do attend to every letter, that phonics taught in isolation is effective and that poor readers rely on context, while good readers do not. Thus by encouraging guessing, a whole-language teacher is reinforcing a bad habit. As for the idea that written language is acquired as naturally as oral language, that has been dismissed on empirical grounds, as well as by common sense. As Lyon says, "If reading were as natural as speaking, wouldn't all cultures have written language, and would so many people in literate cultures have trouble reading?"