Defining Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness, sometimes called phoneme awareness or oral phonemic segmentation, is the understanding of, and the ability to manipulate, the smallest units of sound (phonemes) that make up spoken words. There are approximately 40 different phonemes in English, which are represented by one or more of the 26 letters in our alphabet. For example, in the word dog, there are three phonemes, the sounds of which are represented as follows: /d/, /o/, and /g/. While phonemic awareness is not necessary for understanding and speaking the language, research has shown that it may be important to reading success. In fact, phonemic awareness is more highly related to learning to read than are other well-known measures such as alphabet knowledge, intelligence, other emergent literacy skills, and listening comprehension. Phonemic awareness has been shown to be the most important causal factor that distinguishes successful from disabled readers. Youngsters who lack phonemic awareness tend to have difficulty in understanding the alphabetical system of English required for changing print into meaningful sound. Phonemic awareness skills are prerequisites for benefiting from phonics instruction. They are also an important factor in learning how to spell.

Experts do not agree on all of the components of phonemic awareness. Some authorities believe that some of the higher-level phonemic awareness skills are more a consequence of reading acquisition than a cause.

Students with strong phonemic awareness skills understand about sounds in spoken words. They know that spoken words are made up of different sounds, and they know how to manipulate these sounds to make new words. Once students add another key emergent literacy skill, alphabet knowledge, they have two key prerequisites for successful decoding. Next they learn how the letters and sounds correspond (which is called phonics), and active reading begins.