What is Phonemic Awareness?

What You Should Know (modified from Moats, 1999; see References):

• Definition of phonemic awareness (PA).
• The relation of phonemic awareness to early reading skills.
• The developmental continuum of phonemic awareness skills.
• Which phonemic awareness skills are more important and when they should be taught.
• Features of phonemes and tasks that influence task difficulty.
• Terminology (phoneme, PA, continuous sound, onset-rime, segmentation).

What You Should Be Able to Do (modified from Moats, 1999; see References):

• Assess PA and diagnose difficulties.
• Produce speech sounds accurately.
• Use a developmental continuum to select/design PA instruction.
• Select examples according to complexity of skills, phonemes, word types, and learner experience.
• Model and deliver PA lessons.
• Link PA to reading and spelling.
• Evaluate the design of instructional materials.

What Does the Lack of Phonemic Awareness Look Like? (Kame'enui, et. al., 1997; see References)

Children lacking phonemic awareness skills cannot:

1. group words with similar and dissimilar sounds (mat, mug, sun)
2. blend and split syllables (f oot)
3. blend sounds into words (m_a_n)
4. segment a word as a sequence of sounds (e.g., fish is made up of three phonemes, /f/ , /i/, /sh/)
5. detect and manipulate sounds within words (change r in run to s).