| Phonemic vs. Phonological Awareness This topic focuses on phonemic awareness, "the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds (or phonemes) in spoken words." (Put Reading First, 2001) Phonological awareness is a broader term that includes phonemic awareness tasks and other skills such as breaking sentences into words, breaking words into syllables, and recognizing and producing rhyming words.
Phonemic awareness helps children connect sounds to letters and letter patterns—the core of phonics. Phonemic awareness is an auditory, or listening, skill. Phonics, on the other hand, requires the understanding and use of sound-letter correspondence and written words.
Phonemic Awareness Tasks Marilyn Adams (1990) outlines five basic types of phonemic awareness tasks:
Task 1: Rhyme and alliteration
Task 2: Oddity tasks
Task 3: Oral blending
Task 4: Oral segmentation
Task 5: Phonemic manipulation
Children who receive instruction that focuses on one or two types of phonemic manipulation make greater gains in reading and spelling than do children who are taught three or more types of manipulation. Instruction in oral blending and segmentation was determined to have a positive effect on reading development.
Putting Oral Blending and Segmentation to Work
Oral blending helps children hear how sounds string together to make words. It prepares children to read, or decode. Oral segmentation helps children break words into separate sounds. It helps during spelling, or encoding. Teaching children to blend and segment phonemes along with letters can have a significant impact on reading and writing (Blevins, 1998). | 
