Phonemic Awareness

The Science of Reading is a vast body of research based on hundreds of studies conducted by dozens of researchers over many decades, and involving fields in the social and hard sciences such as psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience. While researchers still have questions about the exact processes by which skilled reading develops, a sufficient number of studies have produced similar results to allow them to conclude that certain things are true and others are not.

The goal of this post is to cover one of researchers’ most important findings, one that is most directly connected to whether a reading program has the potential to be effective.

Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify the individual sounds that make up words. 

For example, the word dog has three phonemes: d, aw, and g.

The word shape also has three phonemes: sh, ay, and p. 

This is an aural skill only—it does not involve letters or words. 

Phonemic awareness is perhaps the most crucial pre-reading skill: if children cannot consistently identify, distinguish between, and/or manipulate sounds, they will struggle to connect them to letters and groups of letters, making phonics ineffective. 

Recognizing vowel sounds—particularly short vowels—is especially challenging for many children.

In such cases, the underlying aural issue must be addressed in order for progress to be made with written language. Children will need to practice blending (putting together), segmenting (taking apart) and manipulating (changing and substituting) sounds.  

Note that breaking words down into phonemes is not a natural skill—in everyday speech, sounds are frequently omitted, dropped, or pronounced unclearly—and that some children may need considerable explicit instruction and practice to master it, particularly if English is not their/ their family’s first language.