Phonological awareness refers to the ability to hear and manipulate the sound structure of language. This encompasses working with the sounds at the word, syllable and phoneme (sound) level. Phonemic awareness is a sub-skill of phonological awareness. It is the ability to hear and manipulate the smallest sounds in spoken words (phonemes). 

Phonological awareness is one of the best predictors of initial reading progress. The ability to hear and manipulate phonemes plays a role in the acquisition of reading skills. There is considerable evidence that the primary difference between good and poor readers lies in the good reader’s phonological processing ability.

Phonemic awareness teaches children to attend to sounds and primes their connection of sound and print. It provides a way to approach new words and helps children to understand that letters in words represent sounds.

Below are examples of phonological awareness tasks to try at home with your child.

Breaking words into syllables (syllable segmentation)

• I’ll clap the parts in ‘football’  foot / ball
• Show me the syllables in ‘magical’  ma / gi / cal

Rhyme Awareness & Production

• ‘Cat’, ‘hat’, do they rhyme?
• What else rhymes: ‘Hand’, ‘band’, and…?

Initial & Final Sound Identification

• What is the first sound in ‘pillow’?  /p/
• What is the last sound in ‘slept’?  /t/

Blending sounds into words

• • I’ll say the sounds, you tell me the whole word.

/f/ /a/ /n/ – fan 

/s/ /i/ /t/ – sit

/s/ /l/ /e/ /d/ – sled

/t/ /r/ /ee/ – tree

Segmenting words into sounds

• • I’ll say the word, you tell me the sounds in the word.

Fan – /f/ /a/ /n/

Sit – /s/ /i/ /t/

Sled – /s/ /l/ /e/ /d/

Tree – /t/ /r/ /ee/

Phoneme deletion

• Say ‘cat’. Now say ‘cat’ without the /k/.
• Say ‘fan’. Now say ‘fan’ without the /n/.

Written by Sumeyya Yilmaz – Speech Pathologist at De Silva Kids Clinic