Phonemic Awareness is described as:

• A. The understanding that letters correspond to sounds in printed words.
• B. The ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the individual sounds, phonemes, in oral language.
• C. The ability to memorize vocabulary.
• D. The ability to read quickly by sight.

Answer: (B)

Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the individual sounds, or phonemes, in spoken language. This means you can break a spoken word into its separate sounds (like /s/ /u/ /n/ for “sun”), blend those sounds to say the word, or change one sound to form a new word. It’s about the sounds themselves, not written letters, and happens entirely with spoken language, before any reading or letter knowledge comes into play. This is different from recognizing letters or their sounds (phonics), memorizing vocabulary, or reading quickly by sight, which involve other skills.