-+Phonemic+Awareness+and+Phonological+Awareness

Phonemic awareness and phonological awareness **

Phonemic awareness and phonological awareness are vital and are important concepts in reading as well as learning to read. It is significant that children understand what they refer to for both theory and practice.


 * //Phonemic awareness//** refers to an understanding of the smallest meaningful units of sound, and the ability of a speaker to hear, segment and manipulate the sounds of speech, e.g. the four phonemes in the spoken word //ball// is /b/, /a/, /l/ and /l/ - saying the first sound in the word //ball//, and recognising the other sounds and blending them. The following video shows a very good example of an alphabet book where we can use as teaching tools to teach letter names and letter sounds. This is perfect for learning centers where we can prepare activities for children to improve on their word recognition.

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 //**Phonological awareness**// refers to the ability to focus on the sounds of language as separate from its meaning. It involves intonation, stress and phonemes. This includes larger segments such as onset and rime, as in //b-ike//, and syllables, such as //un-der//. In order to develop children's phonological awareness, we need to provide activities that refers to sound structure of speech and the way the sounds of language operate and are produced. The following video is an example of an activity that involves students to take part in onset and rime.

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