What is Phonemic Awareness?

“Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the individual sounds in spoken words” (Armbruster, Lehr, & Osborn, 2003, p. 10). It is the foundation for reading. It is the ability to detect individual speech sounds within words. This ability is a requirement for developing accurate decoding skills and strategies (McShane, 2006, p. 13). Phonemic awareness is often described as part of a broader category known as phonological awareness. Phonological awareness includes the ability to work with larger units in spoken language such as syllables and rhymes, which often include more than one phoneme. Children typically find it easier to work with these larger units (e.g., rhyming words) before proceeding to develop skills with individual phonemes (NICHHD, 2000, p. 2-10).