What is the difference between phonics and phonemic awareness?

Question

Many people hear that phonics and phonemic awareness are important when it comes to reading fluency for students so what is the difference? Is there a difference? If there is a difference, how do they relate to each other and is one more important than the other?

Answer 1

Put simply, phonics involves seeing letters and hearing sounds(letter-sound correspondence).. Phonemic awareness involves hearing sounds only, and the ability to manipulate those sounds.

An easy way to understand and to remember the distinction is that phonemic awareness can be done “with the lights off” or “in the dark”. You don’t need to see to manipulate the sounds.

ex: The teacher asks, “What sounds do you hear in the word cat? The student says, “c-a-t”.The student does not need to see the word to perform this skill.

In phonics, the student sees the word cat, and must isolate each sound, “c-a-“t, then blend the sounds together to read the whole word-“cat”.

To demonstrate good phonics skills, you must see the letter or letter combination, and associate a sound or sounds with that letter or combination.

One must have good phonemic awareness to perform phonics skills, and thus, be able to decode and read unfamiliar words successfully. Good phonemic awareness includes the ability to isolate sounds, segment sounds, blend sounds, and add,delete, or substitute sounds.