Final answer:
Students with partial phonemic awareness who are beginning to pair letters with sounds likely fit the profile of Developing readers, a term often associated with the early stages of reading development. This stage is notably challenging for children with dyslexia, a condition that can hinder sound-letter correspondence and make reading and writing challenging. Recognizing phonemes is an ability refined in early childhood, setting the stage for later reading skills.
Step-by-step explanation:
If students have partial phonemic awareness, but not full phonemic awareness, and are beginning to pair alphabet letters with sounds, the students may fit the profile of Developing readers learners. Phonemic awareness is the ability to understand and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in words. This skill is fundamental in the process of learning to read and spell. Developing readers are often in the early stages of understanding this correspondence between letters and sounds, which is critical in forming reading skills.
Difficulty with phonemic awareness can often be seen in children with dyslexia. Dyslexia is characterized by challenges with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling abilities.For children with dyslexia, understanding the sound-letter correspondence can be particularly frustrating, leading to common behaviors such as letter reversals or skipping words while reading, which are considered hallmarks of the learning disability. These reading struggles are often diagnosed around 3rd- to 6th-grade skill level.
It's important to note that early language development plays a critical role in phonemic awareness. Babies have the ability to discriminate among the sounds of all human languages but eventually narrow this ability to the phonemes that are used in their environment by their first birthday. This early discrimination is essential for developing later phonemic awareness.