Phonological Awareness (PA) in Early Childhood Literacy Development

Phonological awareness is a child’s ability to hear and work with the sound structure of spoken words—separate from what the words mean. This skill is one of the foundations for learning to read, spell, and decode words at school.

At Perth Speech Therapy (PST), we often see that when phonological awareness is weaker, children may find early literacy tasks harder—especially sounding out words, spelling, and reading fluency.

What is phonological awareness?

Phonological awareness includes awareness of different “sizes” of sound units in speech, such as:

• Words (e.g., “I / like / cats”)

• Syllables (e.g., ba-na-na = 3 syllables)

• Onset and rime (e.g., c-at, s-un)

• Phonemes (individual sounds)

Phonological awareness is about sounds you hear, not letters you see.

What is phonemic awareness?

Phonemic awareness is a more advanced part of phonological awareness. It refers to noticing and working with phonemes, the smallest sound units in speech (for example, the sounds in “cat”: /k/ /a/ /t/).

Phonemic awareness is often challenging because:

• English has around 44 phonemes but only 26 letters

• Sounds blend together when we speak (phonemes don’t sit neatly apart)

• Syllables are often easier to hear than individual phonemes

Teaching sound awareness skills from basics through to advanced skills.

Children develop a range of skills over time. These can include:

Basic skills

• Blending sounds together (e.g., /c/ /a/ /t/ → “cat”)

• Isolating a sound (e.g., “What’s the first sound in ‘sun’?”)

• Categorising sounds (e.g., “Which word doesn’t start with the same sound?”)

Advanced skills

• Segmenting words into sounds (e.g., “dog” → /d/ /o/ /g/)

• Manipulating sounds (e.g., “Say ‘smile’ without the /s/.”)

When does phonological awareness develop?

Phonological awareness generally develops from larger sound units to smaller sound units.

• Ages 0–4: children build listening and speech skills, but phonological awareness tasks are often limited

• From around age 4+: phonological awareness becomes more noticeable and measurable, often progressing from:

  • syllables and rhyme

  • to onset-rime

  • to individual phonemes

Every child develops at their own pace, but if your child is struggling with early literacy tasks, phonological awareness is worth checking.

Types of sound awareness tasks (easiest to hardest)

Many phonological awareness activities can be grouped by difficulty:

1) Detection tasks (easier)

These involve noticing or identifying sound similarities.

• “Do cat and hat rhyme?”

• “Which word starts with the same sound as ball?”

2) Synthesis tasks (moderate)

These involve blending parts together.

• “What word do you get if you put sun and shine together?”

• “Blend these sounds: /m/ /oo/ /n/”

3) Analysis tasks (harder)

These involve breaking apart or changing sounds.

• “Tell me the sounds in ship”

• “Say plane without the /p/”

Task difficulty can also change depending on:

• the size of the sound unit (syllables vs phonemes)

• where the sound is (start, middle, end)

• how much support the child receives (visuals, choices, repetition)

Why listening to and detecting sounds matters for reading and spelling

Phonological awareness supports key literacy skills, including:

Decoding (sounding out words)

Children learn that letters (graphemes) represent sounds (phonemes). When children can hear and manipulate sounds, it becomes easier to:

• match sounds to letters

• blend sounds into words

• decode unfamiliar words

Spelling

Spelling requires children to:

• hear the sounds in a word

• segment the word into sounds

• choose letters or letter patterns that match those sounds

Reading fluency and comprehension

Decoding ability strongly affects reading fluency (reading smoothly and accurately). Better fluency supports reading comprehension, because the child can focus more on meaning and less on effortful sounding out.

When to seek help

Consider speech pathology support if your child:

• avoids reading or becomes upset during literacy tasks

• struggles with rhyming, blending, or identifying first sounds

• has difficulty sounding out words (decoding)

• is having ongoing spelling difficulties

• has unclear speech, which can sometimes affect sound awareness

How PST can help

A speech pathologist can assess phonological awareness and related skills (speech sound development, language, early literacy foundations), then create a clear plan with targeted practice.