What is phonemic awareness?
Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear the sounds within a word when it is spoken. There are 45 sounds in the English language; they are heard and practiced in the 72 Orton Phonograms. The phonograms teach Phonemic Awareness which is literally sound awareness. It is the understanding that words are made up of sounds and being able to hear, recognize, break apart and manipulate the individual sounds that make up a word. For example, it is the ability to recognize that the word mother is made up of the separate sounds /m/-/o/-/th/-/er/. Children vary greatly in their natural ability to hear the sounds within words. Many do not realize the words they hear break apart into smaller sounds (phonemes). Hearing the individual sounds within a word is difficult because when we speak, we effortlessly blend all the sounds together which hides the phonetic nature of spoken language. In order to read and spell fluently these sounds (phonemes) must first be taught systematically and explicitly in
First of all, Phonemic awareness is not phonics. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds-phonemes–in spoken words. Before children learn to read print, they need to become more aware of how the sounds in words work. They must understand that words are made up of speech sounds, or phonemes (the smallest parts of sound in a spoken word that make a difference in a word’s meaning).
