Maybe you’ve heard the term used when it comes to your child’s reading ability. What is it? And why does it matter?
Phonemic awareness (PA) is the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken words and the understanding that spoken words and syllables are made up of sequences of speech sounds (Yopp, 1992). The difference between phonemic awareness and phonics (which has become a commonly used word) is that phonemic awareness has to do with sounds and does not involve words in print.
Children start recognizing speech and using it themselves long before they begin to read on the page. As children learn rhyming games, read with an adult, and play with words, they can start to hear that sounds within words can be manipulated. But not all children develop the ability to auditorily recognize the different sounds within words or words within phrases.
Without phonemic awareness, readers can’t group words with similar sounds, change sounds within words, or recognize single letters, blends, or syllables within longer words.
PA is essential in developing the ability to read. If one can’t recognize that there are different sounds in a word like ‘dog,’ then you can imagine how hard it would be to see each of those letters as different sounds on the page.
Research has shown that phonemic awareness is a foundational skill that predicts future reading success. Fortunately, it is also a skill that can be taught through multisensory, repetitive, and engaging instruction. In our practice, students with the most significant phonemic awareness gaps typically start with the LiPS® program, which teaches children to feel how each sound is made in the mouth, a concrete anchor for something otherwise invisible.
Phonemic awareness is one of the foundations that structured literacy instruction builds on. For the bigger picture, read: What is Structured Literacy Instruction?
Yopp, Hallie Kay. “Developing Phonemic Awareness in Young Children.” The Reading Teacher, vol. 45, no. 9, 1992, pp. 696–703. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20200960. Accessed 30 Jan. 2021.