Mississippi Foundations of Reading Practice Test

What is phonemic awareness?

1. Understanding how to read aloud

2. A skill connected to recognizing print

3. Ability to isolate, blend, segment, and manipulate sounds

4. Keen memory of sight words

The correct answer is: Ability to isolate, blend, segment, and manipulate sounds

Phonemic awareness is the ability to isolate, blend, segment, and manipulate the individual sounds (or phonemes) in spoken words. This skill is fundamental in helping children understand that words are made up of smaller sound units, and it plays a critical role in developing reading and writing abilities. When children can hear and manipulate sounds, they can better connect letters and sounds when they learn the alphabetic principle, which is essential for reading fluency and comprehension. Understanding how to read aloud pertains more to reading fluency than to phonemic awareness because it involves applying the phonemic knowledge in the act of reading. Recognizing print, while important, refers to the visual aspects of reading rather than the auditory manipulation of sounds. A keen memory of sight words is related to vocabulary recognition and reading fluency but does not involve the explicit manipulation of sounds. Therefore, the focus on the ability to work with phonemes clearly identifies why this answer is accurate in defining phonemic awareness.