Phonological and Phonemic Awareness, and Phonics

What is the relationship between phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and phonics? In what ways are they similar? In what ways are they different?

These terms sound similar, and they are all important parts of reading development. However, they each have specific meanings.

In this video, we will define phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and phonics and describe examples of each. We will also describe the relationship between these three areas and explain their role in later reading success.

Phonological Awareness

Phonological awareness is the ability to identify and manipulate sounds in spoken language. It relates to sounds only, not letters.

Let’s examine some components of phonological awareness, along with instructional practices that can assist children with developing this awareness.

Rhyming

Children learn to identify rhyming words through poetry, nursery rhymes, and word play. For example, tree, see, and bee are rhyming words. Young children develop phonological awareness through listening and speaking.

Alliteration

Alliteration occurs when several words grouped near one another in a phrase or sentence begin with the same sound. Sam sees Sue selling sandwiches is an example of alliteration. Teachers can point out examples of alliteration in texts and tongue twisters and can encourage students to create their own examples.

Syllables

Young children also learn to divide words into parts called syllables. Teachers often direct students to clap out the syllables they hear. For example, the word carpet can be divided into two syllables, car-pet.

Onsets and Rimes

Young children also learn to divide words into their onset, or initial sound, and rime, the remaining sounds. For example, in the word house, /h/ is the onset and /ouse/ is the rime.

Teachers can assist students with blending onsets and rimes too. For example, they can ask what word students hear when they combine /b/ and /at/.

Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness is a subcomponent of phonological awareness. It is the ability to identify and manipulate individual phonemes, or the smallest units of speech, in spoken words. Like the phonological awareness skills we discussed previously, it relates to spoken sounds only, not letters.

Let’s look at some components of phonemic awareness and how teachers can assist children with developing these skills.

Phoneme Isolation

Phoneme isolation involves isolating a single sound from within a word. Children typically learn to isolate beginning sounds first.

For example, a teacher may ask, “What is the first sound you hear in mop?”

Phoneme Blending

Phoneme blending involves blending individual phonemes to form a word.

For example, a teacher may guide students through the following sequence.

Say /m/ /a/ /p/.

What word do you get?

map

Phoneme Segmentation

Phoneme segmentation involves breaking apart a whole word into individual phonemes.

A teacher may give each student a rubber band and guide them through the following sequence.

Say cat. What sounds do you hear?

/c/ /a/ /t/

Students will stretch the rubber band as they say /c/ /a/ /t/, representing how a whole word can be stretched into its individual phonemes.

Phoneme Addition

Phoneme addition involves adding a phoneme to a word to create a new word.

Consider this example.

Say

at

Add /c/ to the beginning. What word do you get?

cat

Phoneme Deletion

Phoneme deletion involves removing a phoneme from a word to create a new word.

Consider this example.

Say

leg

Take away the /l/. What word do you get?

egg

Phoneme Substitution

Phoneme substitution involves removing one phoneme from a word and replacing it with another. It is the most advanced of these phonemic awareness skills.

A teacher may guide students through the following example.

Say

mat

Change the /t/ to a /p/. What word do you get?

map

Predictors of Reading Success

Strong phonological and phonemic awareness skills are a predictor of future reading success. Understanding that spoken words are made up of individual sounds lays the foundation for the understanding that printed words are made up of individual letters, and these letters make predictable sounds. Therefore, phonological and phonemic awareness are closely related to our next topic, phonics.

Phonics

Phonics is an instructional practice used to teach people to read and write based on the relationship between letters and their spoken sounds.

It includes the alphabetic principle, or the understanding that written letters make predictable spoken sounds.

Children initially learn the predictable sounds for each individual letter. Later, they blend the sounds made by groups of letters to form words.

Phonics is used for decoding, or reading printed words by blending the sounds made by the letters. It is also used for encoding, or writing words using knowledge of letter/sound relationships.

Tying It All Together

Phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and phonics help readers decode efficiently and develop rapid word recognition.

Let’s look at an example of how the relationship between phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and phonics assists a young child with reading.

Jonas, a first grader, is reading a new book. He comes to the word shop.

Jonas knows that words are made up of sounds, and he knows that those sounds are represented by specific letters.

He knows that sh says /sh/. He knows that “o” can say /ǒ/. He knows that p says /p/. He blends those sounds together to say shop aloud.

Review

Let’s review what we learned in this video.

Phonological awareness is the ability to identify and manipulate sounds in spoken language.

Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify and manipulate individual phonemes, or the smallest units of speech, in spoken language. It is the most advanced component of phonological awareness.

Both phonological awareness and phonemic awareness relate to sounds in spoken words, not letters. They are also predictors of later reading success.

Phonics is an instructional practice used to teach people to read and write based on the relationship between letters and their spoken sounds.

It includes the alphabetic principle, or the understanding that written letters make predictable spoken sounds. Phonics is used for both decoding, which means reading words, and encoding, which means writing words.

Questions

And now, a couple of questions for you to practice what you’ve learned.

Describe a key difference between phonological awareness and phonics.

A kindergartener has difficulty blending and segmenting phonemes. How might that affect her ability to begin decoding words in printed texts?

I hope this review was helpful! Thanks for watching, and happy studying!