What is “phonemic awareness”?

Phonemic awareness refers to the skill of recognizing and manipulating the individual sounds, or phonemes, in spoken words. This foundational ability is crucial for developing reading and spelling skills. It involves tasks such as identifying the individual sounds in a word, blending sounds to form words, and segmenting words into their constituent sounds.

This skill is one of the key components of phonological awareness, which encompasses a broader range of auditory skills. While understanding the meaning of words, reading comprehension, and writing effectively are all important aspects of literacy, they pertain to different stages of language development. Phonemic awareness specifically focuses on the auditory processing of sounds in language, making it critical for early literacy instruction.