Concept 1 · free preview
Reading readiness and phonemic awareness
Understand
Before reading begins, a child needs some base skills — this is reading readiness. Phonemic awareness is the most important: hearing, identifying, blending, deleting and changing the smallest sounds (phonemes) of spoken words. It is purely oral — no printed letters are needed.
| Readiness skill | Meaning | Activity |
|---|---|---|
| Visual discrimination | Noticing fine differences between similar shapes (b/d, प/ष) | Matching and sorting identical shapes, pictures and letter forms |
| Auditory discrimination | Hearing differences between similar sounds | Telling apart 'pin–pen', 'kal–kaal' |
| Phonemic awareness | Playing with the sounds of words | 'Say cat; now change the first sound /k/ to /h/' → 'hat' |
| Oral language and print awareness | Talk, vocabulary; how to hold a book, reading left to right | Story talk, tracking with a finger in a big book |
Example
The teacher plays an oral game: 'Say mat. Now say it without /m/' → 'at'. No print is used → phonemic awareness (phoneme deletion).
Common mistake
Taking phonemic awareness to mean 'recognising letters'. The letter-sound link is phonics; phonemic awareness is a listening-speaking skill.
Check yourself
Matching shapes, pictures and letter forms develops which readiness skill?
Answer: Visual discrimination.