Phonics teaches beginning readers to match letters and sound. Learning to detect and understand sounds in words leads to being able to Decode full words. A young student's Phonological Awareness is a powerful predictor of how well they will learn to read.

Phonological Awareness involves a variety of skills:

Understanding whether two words begin and end with the same or different sounds;

Discriminating whether words rhyme with one another; and

Understanding how sounds can be manipulated to form new words.

Additionally, strong associations between letters and sounds have been shown to support early Foundational Writing Skills. Learners who make these connections are able to use this sound knowledge to spell written words.

Phonemic Awareness is also a component of Phonological Awareness. Phonemic awareness is the ability to manipulate phonemes (speech sounds like /p/ or /b/), which are the smallest units of sounds in language.

Read the full annotated bibliography of our Phonological Awareness research.