What is meant by the term "phonological awareness"?

Phonological awareness refers to the broader skill of recognizing and manipulating sounds in spoken language. This encompasses a range of skills that involve understanding how sounds function in speech, including the ability to identify and work with syllables, onsets, and rimes, as well as individual phonemes, which are the smallest units of sound.

This broad understanding is crucial for developing reading skills, as it lays the foundation for further literacy development, including the ability to decode words when reading. While phonological awareness includes phonemic awareness (the awareness of individual sounds), it also stretches beyond that to include larger units of sound, making it a fundamental aspect of early literacy education. In contrast, focusing solely on comprehension skills, specific phonemes, or letter recognition does not fully encapsulate what phonological awareness entails.