Phonemic awareness is important for reading and spelling. There are 44 phonemes in English represented by letters and letter combinations called graphemes. Mastering phonemes allows one to read and spell effectively. Various charts organize vowel and consonant phonemes by type and letter to help learn their sounds. Games then reinforce distinguishing phonemes through interactive practice.

1. Reading and Writing 101
Phonemic Awareness

2. Learning Objectives

To learn how to use the Phoneme Charts.

To understand the 44 vowel and consonant
sounds in English.

3. Introduction

You can easily read and spell when you are
familiar with letter sounds.

As proof, do you face any of the following
when you read and spell:
1) Slow down when you face bigger words
2) Say out a big word when you spell
3) Confused between letter sounds, such as 'en' or
'on' , 'ir' or 'er', 'tion' or 'sion', when you spell

If you do, that's because you are relying on
your knowledge of letter sounds!

4. Letter Sounds

Therefore, to function effectively in reading
and spelling, letter sounds must be mastered.

Letter sounds are called Phonemes.

A Phoneme is the smallest sound unit
produced when you read a word.

These words all have 3 sounds.
1)'cat' - /c/ /a/ /t/
2)'tad' - /t/ /a/ /d/
3)'con' - /c/ /o/ /n/

5. Phonemes

In English, there is a total of 44 phonemes from
26 alphabets – 5 vowels and 21 consonants.

5 vowels – 20 phonemes

21 consonants – 24 phonemes

These 44 phonemes represent 95% of all
English words as they are spoken. For example,
for the letter 'a', these are different phonemes:

/a/ nt ban /a/ na sw /a/ n

b /a/ by zebr /a/ b /a/ ll

6. Phoneme Chart

We have organised vowel phonemes into a
convenient chart for you to refer.

This chart serves as a 'dictionary of sounds'.

Refer to your chart in your Learning Guide.

You will see it organised in alphabetical
order, boxes and colours.

We will explain this in further detail.

7. Phoneme Chart – alphabetical order

Alphabetical order is as follows:

a,e,i,o,u

The chart will show the phonemes produced by
these 5 vowels from the first - /a/ as in 'ant' – to
the last - /u/ as in 'bus'.

From this, you can see that:
1) One vowel has many sounds

Q: Underline the six phonemes with the letter 'a'.

8. Phoneme Chart – boxes

The letters inside the boxes produce the same
phoneme – the letters are called graphemes.

The first sound, /a/ as in 'ant', is represented by
'a' but the /er/ sound is represented by:
/ar/, /or/ , /ure/ , etc.

From this, you know:
1) Some phonemes have more graphemes.
2) The first grapheme is the most common for that
particular phoneme.

Q: Which phoneme has the most graphemes?

9. Vowel Phoneme Chart – colours

The colours show 3 types of sounds.
1) Red – Short Monophthong (SM)
2) Orange – Long Monophthong (LM)
3) Yellow – Dipthong (D)

SM – a phoneme that is a short burst; tongue
remains same position.

LM – a phoneme that is of a greater duration;
tongue is moving.

D – a phoneme where there's volume change;
tongue is moving

10. Vowel Phoneme Chart – colours

SM – a phoneme that is a short burst; tongue
remains same position.

LM – a phoneme that is of a greater duration;
tongue is moving.

D – a phoneme where there's volume change;
tongue is moving.

Q: Read each type of vowel phonemes – SM,
LM, D – from A to U. Can you hear the
difference in the length of time you say it and
its volume?

11. Consonant Phoneme Chart - colours

The colours show 6 types of sounds.
1) Red – Plosive
2) Orange – Liquid
3) Yellow – Affricate
4) Green – Nasal
5) Blue – semi-vowel
6) Violet – Fricative

These show the 7 colours of the rainbow
(except for indigo)!

12. Consonant Phoneme Chart - colours

Plosive – a consonant phoneme made by
stopping the air completely then suddenly
letting it out (like an explosion).

Liquid – a consonant phoneme made by closing
the mouth passage but allowing the air to
escape without friction (like water flowing).

Fricative – a consonant phoneme made by
forcing the air out through a narrow opening
(like rubbing where there's friction).

Affricate – a consonant phoneme consisting of
a plosive and a fricative (combine explosion
and friction).

13. Consonant Phoneme Chart - colours

Nasal -a consonant phoneme made by closing
the mouth passage and forcing the air through
the nose.

Semi-vowel – a consonant phoneme made in
the same way as a vowel but not producing a
beat/syllable.

Q: Read each type of consonant phoneme –
SM, LM, D – from B to Z. Can you feel the
closing of your mouth or throat? Note: Vowels
do not need to close mouth or throat; they are
created using the tongue (open passage).

14. Learning Activity

Group yourself into teams.

Play the games on your Learning Guide. You
may start from Game 1 and complete the list up
to Game 4.

Each 'win' is a point.

The team with the highest score wins.

15. Discussion

What are phonemes?

What are graphemes?

Why is it important to learn phonemes and
graphemes?

How do we apply this knowledge?

16. In Summary

Phonemes are letter sounds or sounds made by
letter/s.

Graphemes are the letters representing the
sounds. For example, for phoneme /f/, /ph/ is
another grapheme for the same phoneme.

Being familiar with phonemes will help us
greatly in spelling and reading.

With this knowledge, we know the right
grapheme when spelling and we know the right
phoneme when reading.