Phonological Awareness, Phonemic Awareness and Phonic Knowledge

Phonological awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate units of sounds in spoken language. It refers to the ability to recognise that words are made up of a variety of sound units, for example single sounds (phonemes) and blends. It includes the ability to: 

  • -attend to and segment the sound stream into 'chunks' of sound  known as syllables. Each syllable begins with a sound (onset) and ends with another sound (rime), eg:
  • - d-og – onset and rime
  • - el-e-phant – syllables
  • -know letter-sound relationships and how to use these to read words (including understanding of the blending process)
  • -understand that there is a systematic relationship between letters and sounds (the alphabetic principle).  

Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate the smallest unit of sound in spoken language. The smallest unit of sound in the English language is called a phoneme. Phonemic awareness is one aspect of phonological knowledge and is very important for learning to read and spell.

Phonic knowledge refers to the understanding that there is a predictable relationship between the sounds of a spoken language and the letters and spellings that represent these sounds in written language. Phonic knowledge and word recognition in the AC:E describes how a student becomes increasingly proficient at using letter-sound relationships and visual knowledge as code-breaking skills. Phonic knowledge and word recognition are among the range of resources students use as they read increasingly complex texts.

Phonological Awareness
 Phonemic Awareness Phonics 
The main focus is on sounds/phonemes
The instruction during phonemic awareness focuses on sounds that students hear in words.  Students are asked to isolate a sound at the beginning or end of a word, blend sounds to say a word or manipulate sounds in words.		 Main focus is on graphemes/letters and their corresponding sounds
In a phonics lesson, the focus is on the letters and the sounds they make.  Students are seeing letters in print. If I say to students, “Listen to the word ‘book’.  What sound do you here at the beginning?” They say /b/ - this is phonemic awareness. If I say write the letter that makes that sound, and everyone writes the letter b, it becomes a phonics lesson.  When students are seeing words or letters in print or writing words or letters, it is a phonics lesson.
Deals with spoken language
Phonemic awareness is an activity you can do in the dark.  The students are not reading or writing any of the words included the lesson.
 Deals with written language/print
During a phonics lesson, students are seeing words and letters in print.  Both teachers and students engage in writing words.  The sounds the letters make are important, but the grapheme that represents the sound is important as well.
Mostly auditory
The words and letters are not shown in print.  The students are hearing spoken words aloud and responding aloud as well.  The focus is on the sounds the students hear in words.		 Both visual and auditory
Because the students are reading and writing words and letters, a phonics lesson is both visual and auditory.  The students are working with print.
Students work with manipulating sounds and sounds in words
Students hear a word said aloud, and we can ask them to change a sound to make a new word.  Eg: the teacher says hop and the students change /h/ to /m/ and the word is mop.  We are not showing them the words or the letters, but they are manipulating the sounds orally.		  Students work with reading and writing letters according to their sounds, spelling patterns, and phonological structure
Students can apply that same oral Phonemic Awareness lesson to print when we give them magnetic letters or a white board.  We can say, use 3 letters to build the word ‘hop’.  Students would write or make the word h-o-p.  We can say change the /h/ to /m/ and the word is mop.  When we change the letter h to m, we can read the word mop

The ability to use phonemic awareness, meaning the awareness of sounds that make up spoken words, and phonics, for example the relationship between letters and phonemes; together with the ability to syllabify, segment and blend individual sounds to form words, are fundamental decoding skills for accessing meaning in the early years. However, phonics and phonemic awareness are only one decoding strategy. Visual, orthographic and morphemic knowledge allows for multiple pathways to decode the ‘deep’ orthography of English. Decoding needs to become automatic as quickly as possible, in order for attention to be focused on meaning making.