Live Interactive Chat

Do You Hear What I Hear? Phonological Awareness in Young Children

• Biography
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• Questions & Answers (Transcript)
• Glossary

Phonemic awareness refers to the ability to recognize and break spoken language into its phonemes, or basic sounds, and manipulate these sounds. While phonological awareness and phonemic awareness are often used interchangeably in print, phonological awareness can specifically refer to the ability to accurately differentiate each of the phonemes and would be more commonly used by a speech and language specialist. Phonics is the representations of these basic sounds or phonemes using letters of the alphabet. This is usually the last step and taught after a child has a good grasp of phonemic awareness skills. Because phonemic awareness is one of the best predictors of a child's ability to read easily and fluently, educators are placing increasing emphasis on this skill development during the early childhood years. Questions posed during this Chat include, “My son is 3 years old and has some difficulty with recognizing certain consonants, for example: p, g, b, d. How can I overcome this?” “What role do rhymes and music have in developing phonemic awareness?” “How can a teacher or parent help a child who has a problem with phonemic awareness?”

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