Phonemic awareness is essentially the recognition that our
language is made up of unique sounds. A phoneme is the smallest
phonetic unit in a language capable of conveying distinction in
meaning. For example /s/ and /m/ are different phonemes because
they cannot be used interchangeably, ie., sat and mat are two
different words. However the sounds “th” makes in “thin” versus
“the” are not two separate phonemes. They are allophones because
the two variants do not signify different words. Depending on
the speaker, there are approximately 40 to 45 phonemes in
English which is above average for world languages. Phonemic
awareness is a critical pre-reading skill because without
knowledge that the language is made up of unique sounds that are
put together to form words, the introduction of letters as
representative of those sounds will be meaningless. Phonemic
awareness is not phonics and does not involve the introduction
of letters. Phonemic awareness activities are purely oral.
Rhyming games are excellent means of