What does phonemic awareness refer to?

Phonemic awareness specifically refers to the skill of hearing and manipulating the individual sounds, or phonemes, in spoken words. This means being able to identify, isolate, blend, segment, and manipulate sounds in order to understand how these sounds come together to form words. For example, a child with strong phonemic awareness can recognize that the word "bat" consists of three distinct sounds: /b/, /a/, and /t/, and can rearrange these sounds to create different words, such as "tab" or "abt". This foundational skill is critical for developing reading and writing abilities, as it lays the groundwork for understanding the relationship between sounds and their corresponding letters when learning to read.

Recognizing letters on a page, producing written text, or reading words aloud involves additional skills that build upon phonemic awareness, but they do not encompass the primary definition of phonemic awareness itself.