What is the highest level of phonemic awareness demonstrated by a student?

What is the highest level of phonemic awareness demonstrated by a student?

• A. Blending
• B. Segmentation
• C. Substitution
• D. Deletion

Answer: (C)

The level being tested is phoneme manipulation, specifically the ability to replace one sound in a word with another to form a new word. This is considered the highest level because it requires flexible control of phonemes: you must hear the word, identify the exact sound to change, choose a different sound, and produce a new real word with the rest of the sounds staying the same. For example, taking the word hat and changing the initial sound /h/ to /b/ gives bat. That kind of transformation goes beyond simply blending sounds together to form a word or breaking a word into its individual sounds, or removing one sound. Blending, segmentation, and deletion involve identifying or manipulating sounds without producing new word forms, whereas substitution creates a new word by altering a sound.

The level being tested is phoneme manipulation, specifically the ability to replace one sound in a word with another to form a new word. This is considered the highest level because it requires flexible control of phonemes: you must hear the word, identify the exact sound to change, choose a different sound, and produce a new real word with the rest of the sounds staying the same.

For example, taking the word hat and changing the initial sound /h/ to /b/ gives bat. That kind of transformation goes beyond simply blending sounds together to form a word or breaking a word into its individual sounds, or removing one sound. Blending, segmentation, and deletion involve identifying or manipulating sounds without producing new word forms, whereas substitution creates a new word by altering a sound.