Phonemic Awareness

Phonological awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate words and sentences. 

Even before children can begin sounding out words, they must understand the idea of how words work. The earliest reading skills a child learns fall into this category, and come well before actual reading begins. Some examples of phonological awareness include:

• recognizing and identifying rhyming words
• recognizing alliteration (words that all begin with the same letter)
• understanding that sentences are made of unique words
• recognizing that words can be broken into syllables. 

Once children have a strong sense of phonological awareness, they can then move on to developing phonemic awareness.

Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify letters sounds and blend them together to form words. 

It is important to understand that phonemic awareness is not about reading words, but about understanding the sounds made by letters. This is often an oral practice, rather than a written one. 

The term phonemic awareness gets its name from the word phoneme. 

A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in speech. 

In writing, a  phoneme is represented as the sound a letter makes surrounded by slash marks. 

The sound made by the letter f, for example, would be written as /f/. The sound made by the letter b would be written as /b/.  

When working on phonemic awareness, it is essential to remember that some letters can produce more than one sound.

The letter S, for example, may be represented by the phoneme /s/ as in the word sit or /z/ as in the word his.

Pro Tip: The consonants c, q, and x do not have their own unique phonemes. C sounds use either the /k/ or /s/ phonemes. Q sounds would use the phonemes /k/ /w/, as in walkway, while X combines the phonemes /k/ /s/, such as fox.

Below is a graph showing the 18 consonant phonemes with examples of the words where they are used. This chart is an excellent starting point in developing a child's phonemic awareness.

It is important when talking about phonemic awareness to recognize the difference between phonemes—the sounds created by a letter—and graphemes.

A grapheme is the visual representation of a phoneme. When teaching letter sounds, it is essential to understand that some phonemes can be represented by more than one grapheme. For example:

• /f/ may be represented by either f or ph
• /k/ may be represented by c, k, ck, ch, or que 
• /j/ may be represented by g, j, or dge
• /s/ may be represented by c or s.

The English language contains roughly 250 graphemes.

The English language contains 5 short vowel sound phonemes: /ă/, /ĕ/, /ĭ/, /ŏ/, and /ŭ/. 

Pro Tip: The short vowel phonemes are represented as the vowel with a symbol called a breve over it. The breve is a curved mark used in phonetics to indicate the short vowel sound.

Early readers and those working on developing their phonemic awareness skills will begin by identifying the most common short vowel sound graphemes—a, e, i, o, u. These often appear in CVC words followed by consonant blend and digraph words, but these phonemes can be associated with more complicated graphemes, or spelling patterns.

• The short e (/ĕ/) phoneme, can be represented either by the grapheme e (as in get) or as ea (as in bread).
• The short i (/ĭ/) phoneme, can be represented either by the grapheme i (as in pig) or as y (as in gym).

These more complicated spelling patterns are taught as children progress in their phonics instruction and gain greater phonemic awareness.

Below is a graph showing the 5 short vowel sound phonemes.

A digraph is a combination of two letters that work together to make one sound, or phoneme. For example, the letters SH in the word shampoo work together to make the phoneme /sh/ while the letters CH in chimp work together to make the phoneme /ch/.

When teaching digraphs, it is important to remember that a phoneme is the sound made by a letter or combination of letters, not the visual representation of a letter. For that reason, not every digraph grapheme has an associated digraph phoneme. For example, the letters PH in the word dolphin work together to make the phoneme /f/ while the letters CK in stick work together to make the /k/ sound. This can be a challenging concept for a child who is just developing their sense of phonemic awareness, and is often one that takes more time to master.

The English language contains 7 digraph phonemes: /th/ (voiced and unvoiced),  /wh/, /ch/, /sh/, /ng/, and /zh/.

Below is a graph showing the 7 digraph phonemes with examples of words that makes these sounds.

Pro Tip: The phoneme /th/ can be said two different ways: The unvoiced /th/ as in think, thumb, and thimble is pronounced without moving the vocal chords. The voiced /th/ as in feather, mother, and this causes the vocal chords to vibrate. Practice saying these words with your child. It may be helpful to place a finger on your throat to feel the movement (or lack of movement) of the vocal chords.

The English language contains 5 long vowel sound phonemes. These phonemes represent the sound made by the name of the vowel. Children often learn these after mastering short vowel sounds and digraph phonemes. 

While short vowel sounds can occasionally be represented by more than one grapheme, long vowel sound phonemes can be represented by a variety of graphemes. Some of these, in particular, can prove challenging for a child still acquiring a sense of phonemic awareness, as the same graphemes can make more than one sound. EY, for example, can make either the long A or long E sound.

The long A, written as /ā/, has 8 graphemes associated with it: 

• a-e (as in case)
• ai (as in pain)
• ay (as in say)
• a (as in apron)
• ei (as in rein)
• ey (as in they)
• ea (as in steak)
• eigh (as in sleigh)

The long E, written as /ē/, has 8 graphemes associated with it: 

• e (as in we)
• e-e (as in theme)
• ei (as in ceiling)
• ie (as in fierce)
• y (as in candy)
• ee (as in sweet)
• ea (as in eat)
• ey (as in honey)

The long I, written /ī/, has 5 graphemes associated with it:

• i (as in hi)
• i-e (as in nice)
• igh (as in high)
• ie (as in tie)
• y (as in fly).

The long O, written /ō/, has 5 graphemes associated with it:

• o (as in hello)
• o-e (as in cove)
• oe (as in toe)
• oa (as in boat)
• ow (as in flow)

The long U is the only long vowel that makes more than one sound. The long U can be written as /ū/ (as in tune) or /yū/ (as in cube). 

Pro Tip: Different literacy specialists prefer to list the long U in different ways. Some use the phonemes listed above. Others use /ū/ and /ōō/.

The long U ( /ū/), has 8 graphemes associated with it:

• u (as in music)
• u_e (as in cube).
• ue (as in clue)
• eu (as in feud)
• ew (as in stew)
• oo  (as in loop)
• ou (as in soup)
• ui (as in suit)

More complicated spelling patterns are taught as a child's phonemic awareness grows and they progress in their phonics instruction.

Below is a graph showing the 5 long vowel sound phonemes.

Like /th/, oo vowels look the same but sound different. Below is a breakdown of the two oo vowel sound phonemes.

Pro Tip: Remember that the sound made by /ōō/ can also be considered a long U sound, depending how you choose to teach this particular sound. 

A diphthong occurs when two sounds appear together. In a diphthong, the letters can both be heard, but cannot be separated. Below is a breakdown of the three diphthong phonemes.

The letters AR, ER, IR, OR and UR are known as R-controlled vowels. An R-controlled vowel is a vowel sound that is changed, or “controlled” by the R following it. Some examples include car, tern, bird, fort, and curt.  

The three main R-controlled vowel phonemes are /ar/, /or/, and /er/.  

The /er/ phoneme is the most diverse, and is regularly represented by the graphemes er, ir, and ur. On rare occasions it can also be represented by the grapheme or, as in the words worm and world. 

The  letters ar can also make the /or/ sound, as in the word warm or the /er/ sound, as in the word hazard, although these sounds are less common. 

In addition to the standard R-controlled vowel phonemes, there is much debate over words such as air and ear, which contain vowel teams. A vowel team is two letters that work together to make one sound, like the long A ai in rain or the long E ea in eat. When followed by the letter R, the sound of these vowel teams changes. For that reason, some people include /ā(r)/ and /ē(r)/ when teaching phonemes. These sounds can prove particularly challenging to children still developing a sense of phonemic awareness as the way they get categorized often comes down not to a set sound they make, but to what one can hear in the sound and how each individual pronounces the letters.

Phonemic awareness is not an innate skill, but one that must be taught. Children in kindergarten, and even into first grade, are often taught phonemic awareness skills through a variety of approaches:

• Phoneme blending
• Phoneme addition 
• Phoneme deletion 
• Phoneme substitution 
• Phoneme segmentation

Pro Tip: With each of these elements of phonemic awareness, it is important to note that changes to words must be based not on changing letters, but on changing phonetic sounds. A child at this level is not expected to know that the word CAT begins with a C, but rather that it begins with the /k/ sound.

One way to enhance phonemic awareness is through phoneme blending. Phoneme blending is the ability to put sounds together to form a complete word. Often letters are written separately, and children are encouraged to blend them together. For example: /k/ /a/ /t/ blends to form the word CAT.

Another way to enhance phonemic awareness is through phoneme addition. Phoneme addition is the ability add an additional phoneme onto an existing word, to form a new word.

Phoneme addition examples:

Question: What word do you get if you add /k/ to -AT?

Answer: CAT

Question: What word do you get if you add /t/ to WAN?

Answer: WANT

Phoneme deletion is another great way to enhance phonemic awareness. Phoneme deletion means having a child manipulate words (usually orally) by deleting phonemes from a word. Usually this begins with a sound at the beginning or end of a word. As children grow more experienced with phoneme deletion, sounds can also be removed from the middle of the word.

Phoneme deletion examples:

Question: What word do you have if you remove the /k/ from the word CAT.

Answer: AT

Questions: What word do you have if you remove the /m/ from LAMP?

Answer: LAP

To enhance phonemic awareness, try working with your child on phoneme substitution. Phoneme substitution, or letter substitution, is the ability to change one word into another word by swapping out one phoneme sound.

Phoneme substitution example:

Question: Say CAT. Now replace the /k/ with /b/?

Answer: BAT

Question: Say CAT. Now replace the /ă/ with /ŭ/.

Answer: CUT

The final way to work phonemic awareness is through phoneme segmentation. Phoneme segmentation is the ability to break word down into its individual phonetic components.

Phoneme segmentation examples:

LOG --> /l/ /ŏ/ /g/

SHUT --> /sh/ /ŭ/ /t/

With a strong sense of phonemic awareness in place, children can move onto learning phonics—the actual relationship between letters and sounds.