The Difference Between Phonological and Phonemic Awareness

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Any research into how to help your child read will undoubtedly have the words phonological awareness and phonemic awareness. I have seen some sources refer to these terms interchangeably but they are not the same thing. 

Both terms are important in reading development and are skills that parents can easily help facilitate at home.  Below we will walk through the differences between phonological awareness and phonemic awareness, as well as discuss their importance to reading. If you would like specific activities to practice with your child, please follow this link.

Phonological Awareness Vs. Phonemic Awareness

Phonological awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate sounds in spoken language and it develops along a hierarchy. An example could be breaking words up into syllables such as ta-ble. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate individual sounds in words, for instance isolating each sound in the word (t)(a)(b)(le). It falls under the umbrella of phonological awareness and is at the top of the hierarchy.

Imagine that phonological awareness is the entire process of a baby learning to walk. First, they start pulling themselves up on furniture to stand, then they start walking with assistance. Next, they progress to standing on their own and then finally taking their first steps and walking.

In this analogy, phonemic awareness is when children take their first steps. It is part of the larger process of learning to walk and is at the peak of the hierarchy. How well a child walks also has implications for other motor skills such as running. If a child is struggling to walk, they probably will not be able to run effectively. 

This is similar to phonemic awareness. If a child is struggling to get to the individual sounds of words, they will most likely struggle with reading, writing, and spelling. Research has shown that the development of phonemic awareness is predictive of future literacy success and has also been identified as a necessary component of reading.

How Phonological Awareness Builds to Phonemic Awareness

The goal is to get to the individual sounds of words but children must progress to that level. The progression of phonological awareness goes from working with larger portions of language and then getting smaller and smaller until they have reached the awareness of individual sounds. Below is a brief explanation of the language hierarchy, starting with the foundational level and working its way to the top.

Word Boundaries

At the bottom of the hierarchy is a child’s ability to determine word boundaries. When children are first interacting with language, they see language as one total entity. As they get older and begin producing words, babies and toddlers become sensitive to word structures and realize sentences break apart into individual words. 

Syllable Recognition

Children first begin segmenting and blending compound words like hot-dog then progress to multisyllabic words such as ba-na-na. Lullabies like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star are great ways to reinforce syllable division as the song naturally breaks the words into syllables.

Onset and Rime

Onset is the letter or letters before a vowel in a word and rime is the vowel and the letters that follow. For example, the following words are divided by onset-rime: c-up, l-ist, fr-og, tr-ain. It is the beginning of transitioning from clusters of sounds to individual sounds. 

Phonemic Awareness

The top level on the phonological awareness hierarchy is the ability to attend to the individual sounds in words, also known as phonemic awareness. This includes blending sounds, segmenting words into individual sounds, and manipulating by adding, deleting, or switching sounds. For example, children can pull apart the word last into (l) (a) (s) (t). Then when asked, “What word do you get when you change the (a) sound to (i)?” A child should be able to appropriately reply with the word list. Phonemic awareness tasks range in difficulty depending on age.

Why Are Phonological and Phonemic Awareness Skills Important?

Children are practicing the skills needed for reading and spelling with only sounds when they are engaging in phonemic awareness activities. Research done by the National Reading Panel shows that phonemic awareness is predictive of future literacy learning. They also identified phonemic awareness as the first of five components necessary for reading. The other four are phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension.

Below are specific ways that phonological and phonemic awareness contributes to reading:

Phonics:

Phonemic awareness is a necessary component of phonics, along with alphabet knowledge. It contributes to learning letter-sound correlations needed for decoding words.

Decoding & Fluency:

The phonemic awareness skill of phoneme blending is the same skill needed when reading words. For instance, when you ask a child what word they get when they blend the sounds (m)(o)(p), they are exercising the same phonological muscles needed to decode words. Enhanced decoding skills leads to better reading fluency, which affects reading comprehension.

Spelling:

The phonemic awareness skill of phoneme segmenting is a required step for spelling. For example, when you ask a child to segment the word hat, they are exercising the first step needed to spell when they segment the sounds (h)(a)(t). This is followed by identifying the letters that match the sounds and then writing them.

 

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How Can Parents Help?

Phonological and phonemic awareness sound like such technical terms but the ways to harness these skills are anything but technical. Activities can be as easy as playing rhyming games with your children or reading nursery rhymes and poems with them. If you would like actionable and easy activities you can do at home, please follow this link to find activities broken down by age. You can also find resources at The Florida Center for Reading Research with activities broken down by grade.

Parents can also be proactive in monitoring their child’s reading. Similar to motor skills, reading milestones are clearly defined and can help parents get ahead of any potential reading struggles. You can visit the link to our guide to monitoring signs of dyslexia for reading milestones and delays. A child’s speech pattern can also give clues to future reading struggles. Follow the link to speech signs of dyslexia if you would like a helpful guide to monitoring your child’s speech.

If you have read through our resources and still have questions on how to support your child, please reach out to us via our connect page. We would love to help you in any way we can.

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