Studies evaluating the acquisition of phonemic awareness and learning to decode print have typically focused on preschool and primary school years. There is limited research of phonemic awareness skills in language-impaired readers post-elementary (Scarborough et al., 1998; Swanson, 2008; Ukrainetz, Cooney, Dyer, Kysar, & Harris, 2000). There are several studies that evaluate the benefit and efficacy of phonemic training with individuals who are hard of hearing, limited English learners, and primary age students (Castles, Wilson, & Coltheart, 2011; Krashen, 1999; Messier & Jackson, 2014); however, limited research is available on the efficacy of phonemic awareness training with secondary age students who continue to exhibit poor phonemic awareness and reading disability. A single subject A-B design was conducted to determine the effectiveness of explicit phonemic awareness training to improve adolescent students phonemic awareness deficits who are struggling readers and the ability to improve phonemic blending and segmenting skills, and reading fluency. The investigation included three adolescent students who completed eight intervention sessions. The baseline and 45-minute intervention sessions took place in a middle school in South Carolina. Ability to segment and blend sounds was assessed at each baseline session and at the beginning of each intervention session. The data were analyzed by a visual inspection and Two Standard Deviation Band method. The outcomes revealed improvement in percentage of accuracy in completion of phonemic awareness tasks for all participants, indicating that explicit phonemic awareness training had a positive effect on phonemic awareness skills and a slight increase in reading fluency words read per minute.
