“Jargon & Phonemic Awareness”
There are many terms within education and dyslexia that don’t translate well.
My criteria for determining whether something translates well is the person-on-the-street standard.
That is, if you stop the average person on the street and asked them what a term means and you get a confused look, then the term is probably jargon.
Phonemic awareness is such a term often used in talking about dyslexia that does not translate easily. It is jargon. Therefore, I would encourage professionals to stop using it.
If you feel you must use it, find another way to explain what it means.
To help you, phonemic awareness is essentially the awareness of sounds within a given word. The classic screening for phonemic awareness is the following:
To the child: “Say the word ‘cat’.’” (Child repeats the word. “Now say ‘cat’ without saying /k/.” If the child has awareness of word sounds, they will say “at.”
Phonemic awareness became a big deal a few decades ago when research showed that children with reading disability (i.e., dyslexia) often are weak in this skill.
In other words, phonemic awareness correlated with dyslexia.
Please keep in mind something that you may have learned from your introductory statistics classes.
Correlation does not imply causality. In other words, phonemic awareness is not a cause of dyslexia.
Takeaway Point
Don’t weaken! Stay jargon free!