What is Phonemic Awareness?
Phonemic awareness is identifying and manipulating sounds in words. It is a foundational skill for reading, writing, and articulation.
Phonemic awareness can include:
Identifying beginning sounds
Identifying ending sounds
Blending sounds in words
Segmenting sounds in words
Changing sounds in words
How is it different from phonological awareness?
Phonemic awareness is part of phonological awareness.
Phonological awareness is a broad skill that ranges from identifying words in sentences, to syllables in words, to sounds in words.
Phonemic awareness focuses on sounds in words.
What do phonemic awareness and articulation have to do with each other?
Even when making good progress with speech sounds in speech therapy, kids that struggle with phonemic awareness often have difficulty using their sounds consistently, because they are not hearing and identifying where the sounds are.
Kids that struggle with articulation often have difficulty with reading and writing as well. If they say sounds incorrectly, they often read and write sounds the way they say them and not how they hear them.
For example: A child might say "tat" for "cat," sound it out as t-a-t, and write down "tat."
After working on listening for and identifying sounds, kids are able to better generalize articulation skills, because they can better recognize where their sounds are supposed to be.
What does phonemic awareness have to do with reading and writing?
Identifying and manipulating sounds is how we are able to sound out words to read or write them. All literacy skills are built on this foundation!
