Reading Instruction Competence Assessment (RICA) Practice Test

Which term refers to the ability to identify and manipulate sounds within words?

1. Phonological Awareness

2. Phonemic Awareness

3. Graphophonic Knowledge

4. Decoding Skills

The correct answer is: Phonological Awareness

The correct term for the ability to identify and manipulate sounds within words is phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness specifically focuses on the individual sounds, or phonemes, in spoken language. This includes tasks such as blending sounds to form words, segmenting words into their constituent sounds, and manipulating sounds (for example, changing the initial sound of a word to create a new word). Phonological awareness is a broader term that encompasses not only phonemic awareness but also other sound-related skills like rhyming, syllable counting, and recognizing onsets and rimes. While phonological awareness is important, it specifically refers to a range of auditory skills related to sound in language, rather than the targeted ability to manipulate individual sounds within words that phonemic awareness highlights. Graphophonic knowledge refers to the relationship between letters and sounds—understanding how phonemes correspond to graphemes (letters or letter combinations). This knowledge is crucial for reading but does not directly pertain to the ability to manipulate sounds. Decoding skills involve the ability to apply knowledge of letter-sound relationships to read written texts, which is a step that occurs after phonemic awareness has been established. Hence, while all these terms are related to literacy development, phonemic awareness