What does phonemic awareness specifically refer to?

Phonemic awareness specifically refers to the understanding that spoken words are made up of phonemes, which are the smallest units of sound in a language. This skill involves the ability to identify, manipulate, and work with these individual sounds in spoken language, which is a critical foundation for developing reading and writing skills. Phonemic awareness enables learners to differentiate sounds, which helps them with blending sounds to form words, segmenting words into individual sounds, and recognizing sound patterns—essential components of fluent reading.

While reading written texts, grasping grammatical structures, and recognizing written words are important literacy skills, they are not what phonemic awareness directly addresses. Phonemic awareness is primarily about auditory processing and the skills needed to understand the sound structure of language, forming a crucial base for decoding written language later on.