Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds in spoken words. Before children learn to read print, they need to become aware of how the sounds in words work. They must understand that words are made up of speech sounds, or phonemes.

Phonemes are the smallest parts of sound in a spoken word that make a difference in the word's meaning. For example, changing the first phoneme in the word hat from /h/ to /p/ changes the word from hat to pat, and so changes the meaning. (A letter between slash marks shows the phoneme, or sound, that the letter represents, and not the name of the letter. For example, the letter h represents the sound /h/.)


Children can show us that they have phonemic awareness in several ways, including:

*recognizing which words in a set of words begin with the same sound
"Bell, bike, and boy all have /b/ at the beginning.";

*isolating and saying the first or last sound in a word
"The beginning sound of dog is /d/." "The ending sound of sit is /t/.";

*combining, or blending the separate sounds in a word to say the word
"/m/, /a/, /p/-- map.";

*breaking, or segmenting a word into its separate sounds
"up--/u/, /p/.".

Children who have phonemic awareness skills are likely to have an easier time learning to read and spell than children who have few or none of these skills.

Although phonemic awareness is a widely used term in reading, it is often misunderstood. One misunderstanding is that phonemic awareness and phonics are the same thing. Phonemic awareness is not phonics. Phonemic awareness is the understanding that the sounds of spoken language work together to make words. Phonics is the understanding that there is a predictable relationship between phonemes and graphemes, the letters that represent those sounds in written language. If children are to benefit from phonics instruction, they need phonemic awareness.

The reason is obvious: children who cannot hear and work with the phonemes of spoken words will have a difficult time learning how to relate these phonemes to the graphemes when they see them in written words.

Another misunderstanding about phonemic awareness is that it means the same as phonological awareness. The two names are not interchangeable. Phonemic awareness is a subcategory of phonological awareness. The focus of phonemic awareness is narrow--identifying and manipulating the individual sounds in words. The focus of phonological awareness is much broader. It includes identifying and manipulating larger parts of spoken language, such as words, syllables, and onsets and rimes--as well as phonemes. It also encompasses awareness of other aspects of sound, such as rhyming, alliteration, and intonation.

Children can show us that they have phonological awareness in several ways, including:

*identifying and making oral rhymes;
"The pig has a (wig)."
"Pat the (cat)."
"The sun is (fun)."

*identifying and working with syllables in spoken words;
"I can clap the parts in my name: An-drew."

*identifying and working with onsets and rimes in spoken syllables or one-syllable words;
"The first part of sip is s-."
"The last part of win is -in."

*identifying and working with individual phonemes in spoken words.
"The first sound in sun is /s/."

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