Monday, June 11, 2012

Phonological awareness and Phonemic Awareness

I have been reading on the topic of phonological awareness and phonemic awareness. What are the differences between those two terms in reference to the English language?

Phonological is an umbrella terms that covers all sounds awareness. Sounds of instruments, you listen to the beats and sounds of words you also listen to the beats refer to as syllables, onset and rimes, and phonemes.

Syllables are speech sounds.
Examples: clean has one beat = one syllables, eleven has 3 beats = 3 syllables divided into e / le / ven
If you have written haikus before you will remember the rules of 17 syllables divided into 3 phrases of 5 syllables, 7 syllables and 5 again

Onset and Rimes are description of syllables.
Examples: bag is a one syllable or monosyllabic word, b is the onset consonant sound and ag is the rime vowel and the rest that follows.
Not all words have onsets.

Phonemes are the basic sounds in the smallest possible unit.
In English (American) there are 44 phonemes.
long vowels, short vowels, 2 letter vowels, consonant sounds, diphthongs (ai, aw, oy etc)

Phonological awareness is the ability to distinguish sounds.
Phonemic awareness is the understanding of sound and manipulating of sound in order to make it into words.

The foundation of language would be phonological awareness that a child can tell the differences between sounds of the words three vs free, lice vs rice etc.

Clapping to syllables help with phonological awareness. 

And for phonemic awareness, games like rhyming words, stories by Dr Suess, or making up silly words.

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