What is phonemic awareness?

 Phonemic awareness is the knowledge that words are made up of a combination of individual sounds.

For example, the word cat is made up of three sounds (phonemes) /c//a/ and /t/. When these three sounds are combined fluidly, they make up the word cat.

If a child knows that cat, car, and caboose all have the same sound at the beginning of the word, she has phonemic awareness. In other words, she is aware that the /c/ sound  begins each of those three words.

Phonemic awareness is more than recognizing sounds. It also includes the ability to hold on to those sounds, blend them successfully into words, and take them apart again.

For example, in addition to the knowledge that the word cat has three separate sounds,phonemic awareness is the ability to blend these three sounds together to form the word cat and, when asked, to identify and separate the sounds within the word.

http://www.nwrel.org/learns/resources/toolkit/NationalReadingPanel_FAQ.pdf