Phonological awareness refers to a general appreciation of the sounds of
speech as distinct from their meaning. When insight includes an understanding
that words can be divided into a sequence of phonemes, the finer-grained
sensitivity is termed phonemic awareness
See Brody (1994) pp. 388-392 and Rath, L. in Brody pp. 101-140.
RAPID NAMING: speed and fluency of retrieving and saying specific words (a
weakness in this skill is often associated with similar difficulties naming
letters, retrieving letter sounds, and recognizing written words. There are two
subcategories:
Confrontation naming: fluently saying the words represented by pictures
Constrained naming: fluently generating words in categories, e.g., words
beginning with B or names of vegetables.
GRAPHEME: The smallest unit in the writing system of a language; letter
symbols. (Brody, 1994, p. 390)
BLENDING: integrating separate sounds into a word, e.g., turning /c/ /a/ /t/
into "cat." "Blending refers both to recognizing separate sounds
as a word when the sounds are spoken by the examiner and to integrating the
separate sounds when "sounding out" (phonetically decoding) a word
from print for oneself.
WORD DISCRIMINATION: recognizing how a spoken word differs from another
spoken word. Word discrimination is usually tested by dictating two or three
words (e.g., "cat, cat" or "cat, cap" or "pack, pack,
pack" or "pack. pat, pack") to a student and asking the student
if they were the same or different. Testing can be amplified by asking the
student to repeat the words, say what the different sounds were, or say where
(beginning, middle, or end) the difference was.
ISOLATION:
DELETION: removing a single sound within a word (e.g., "Say 'manhole'
without the 'man,'" or "Say 'blend' without the /b/."
ISOLATION: identifying a single sound within a word, e.g., "What is the
middle sound in 'bip'?")
RHYMING: Two words rhyme if they end in the same sounds. Rhyming is tested by
having the student name words that rhyme with a given word or by asking the
student if two or more spoken words rhyme.
SEGMENTATION: breaking words into component sounds, e.g., saying
"cat" as /c/ /a/ /t/, or syllables, e.g., saying
"segmentation" as "seg-men-ta-tion."
SUBSTITUTION: substituting one sound for another in a word, e.g., "Say
'bat.' Now change the /b/ to an /h/ and say it," or "These three
different-colored blocks represent the sounds in 'cat.' I want you to take
another block and change it to 'bat,'" or "Read this (dog). Now change
the 'd' to an 'h' and read it again."