ABC+: Advancing Basic Education in the Philippines

REGIONAL TRAINING OF TRAINERS

A Primer on Phonological Awareness

Terms Definition
Phonological The ability or skill to hear, identify and manipulate sounds
Awareness of speech. We move across a continuum from simple to
complex:

1. Hears oral rhymes & alliterations

2. Hears words in spoken sentences
3. Hears syllables in spoken words
4. Hears onsets & rimes in words
5. Hears individual phonemes in words

No print should be visible when practicing phonemic awareness

Phonemic This falls under phonological awareness. Phonemic awareness is the
Awareness ability to manipulate the smallest unit of sound.

Example: the sounds /k/ /u/ /p/ blend together to say the word
“cup.”

Phoneme The smallest unit of sound in a language. There are 44 phonemes in

English.

sheep
has 5 letters has 3
s,h,e,e,p phonemes
/sh/ /ee/ /p/

Phonemic blending The ability to blend individual sounds into a word

Phoneme The ability to break a word into individual sounds
segmentation Example: the word sand is broken down to the sounds /s/ /a/ /n/ /d/

Phonemic The ability to replace a sound with another to form a new word
substitution
Phonemic addition The ability to add a sound to a word to form a new word
Example: from art to cart (remove the sound of c)
from star to start (add the sound of t)

rhymes Similar sounds at the end two or more words

Examples: cat-bat; boo-true; sope-dope
rime The first vowel sound/phoneme followed by all the other phonemes

Examples: at in rat ; esh in fresh

onsets The initial consonant sound, blend, or digraph in a single syllable

word or syllable.

Examples: The sound of /c/ is an onset in the word cat

The sound /sh/ is an onset in the word sheep
The word “axe” does not have an onset.

alliteration Similar sounds at the beginning of two or more words

Example: Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

digraph A combination of two letters that make one sound, as in ph and ey

blend A combination of two or more consonants that “blend” together,

but each sound can still be
heard, as in sk, str and tr

diphthong A combination of two vowels forming one syllable, as in ou, oi, ea,
oy, and ow.
The letters y and w are semi-vowels and are thus considered
diphthongs when combined with a vowel
Figure 1 shows the subsets of concepts and areas of phonological awareness.

Figure 1: Phonological Awareness and What Falls Under It

Figure 2 shows the progression of phonological awareness.

Figure 2: Progression of Phonological Awareness (Schuele and Boudreau 2008)

Figure 3 shows examples of activities that you may use as students progress in their
phonological awareness.

References
Literacy Teaching Toolkit: Phonological Awareness. (2020, March 18). Retrieved 14 July, 2020, from Victoria
State Government Education and Training: https://www.education.vic.gov.au/
Phonological Awareness. (n.d.). Retrieved July 14, 2020, from Reading Universe:
https://www.readinguniverse.org/
Schuele, M., & Bourdeau, D. (2008). Phonological Awareness Intervention: Beyond the Basics. Language,
speech, and hearing services in schools. USA. doi:10.1044/0161-1461(2008/002)