As educators continue to debate the value of phonic versus meaning-based approaches to reading, a significant number of children continue to fail to learn to read. One of the fundamental tasks facing the beginning reader is to develop the realization that speech can be segmented and that these segmented units can be represented by printed forms. A review of some of the large-scale phoneme awareness training studies reveals an array of activities that can be used by the classroom teacher or clinician. Three studies by the author investigated these issues. The first study, involving 90 kindergarten children in inner-city schools, concluded that it is the combination of phoneme awareness training and learning to connect the sound segments to letters that makes a difference. In the second and third studies, for low-income children from inner-city schools who had limited knowledge about the alphabet prior to their kindergarten participation in the study, an early emphasis on phonological awareness, followed by a code-emphasis approach to reading in first grade, resulted in significant reading achievement gains. An early emphasis on phonological awareness puts children in a better position to take advantage of reading and spelling instruction. Contains 62 references. (SR)