Reading and Language Arts (7812) · 11 min read
Print Concepts, the Alphabetic Principle and Phonological Awareness
The words "for teaching" matter. This subtest rarely asks you to define a term in isolation. Instead it hands you a student's spelling list, a transcript of a child reading aloud, a short piece of student writing, or a teacher's lesson plan, and asks what the evidence shows or what the teacher should do next. Every chapter in this section therefore pairs the content (what a phoneme is, what a complex sentence is, what a text structure is) with the teaching move (how to diagnose an error, how to choose a good example, how to sequence instruction). Read the Classroom Scenarios carefully; they are modeled on the way the real items are built.
This chapter covers the earliest layer of reading development: knowing how print works, understanding that letters stand for sounds, and being able to hear and play with the sounds inside spoken words. It serves Category I (Foundational Literacy Skills), topics A (Print Concepts), B (Alphabetic Principle) and C (Phonological Awareness). Expect several items in which you must classify a classroom activity as print awareness, phonological awareness, phonemic awareness or phonics. That single distinction is one of the most heavily tested ideas on the subtest.
Concepts of Print
Concepts of print (also called print awareness) are the understandings a child needs about how written language is organized before reading words makes sense. A child with strong print concepts knows that the marks on the page, not the pictures, carry the message, and knows how to move through a book and a line of text.
Core print concepts include the following.
Upper- and lowercase letters, and basic punctuation marks such as the period and question mark as signals.
Teachers build print concepts during shared reading with big books and enlarged text, through morning messages in which the teacher thinks aloud ("I start writing here, on the left"), and by having children track print with a finger or pointer. A concept-of-print assessment usually involves the teacher handing a child a simple book and asking prompts such as "Show me where I should start reading" and "Point to a word."
Classroom Scenario: During a one-on-one check, a kindergartner listens as the teacher reads "I like my red hat," then is asked to point along. The child points to "I" for "I," "like" for "like," "my" for "my," then points to "red" while saying "red hat" and runs out of words at "hat." What it shows: the child does not yet have a stable concept of word. Saying the two-syllable phrase "red hat" as one unit is common because children hear speech as a continuous stream. The best next move is to practice finger-point reading with short, predictable, mostly one-syllable sentences and to draw attention to spaces ("Each word has a space after it. Let's touch each word once."). Phonics drills on the letter r would not address the actual gap.
The Alphabetic Principle
The alphabetic principle is the understanding that written letters and letter combinations systematically represent the sounds (phonemes) of spoken language. Knowing letter names is not the same thing. A child may be able to sing the alphabet song and name every letter yet not realize that the letter m stands for the sound /m/ at the beginning of "moon." Conversely, the alphabetic principle is in place when a child can use letter-sound knowledge to read or spell a simple word, even imperfectly.
Two pieces must come together for the alphabetic principle: letter knowledge (recognizing and naming letters, and knowing their common sounds) and phonemic awareness (hearing the individual sounds in words). A child who writes "BK" for "bike" is applying the alphabetic principle. The spelling is incomplete, but the child is matching letters to the first and last sounds heard.
Useful teaching details:
Letter names often contain a clue to the letter's sound (b says "bee," which begins with /b/). Letters such as h ("aitch"), w ("double-u") and y ("wye") do not, so they are commonly confused. A child who writes "Y" for the start of "wet" is matching the letter name "wye" to the /w/ sound, a logical letter-name strategy.
Continuous sounds (/m/, /s/, /f/, /l/, /n/, /r/, /v/, /z/ and the vowels) can be stretched without distortion, so they are easier to blend. Stop sounds (/b/, /d/, /g/, /k/, /p/, /t/) cannot be held, and teachers should model them crisply without adding "uh" (say /b/, not "buh").
Many programs introduce high-utility, visually distinct letters first (such as m, s, a, t, p) so that children can quickly read real words like "mat," "sat" and "tap," and they separate easily confused pairs (b and d) in time.
Phonological Awareness and Phonemic Awareness
Phonological awareness is the broad ability to notice and manipulate the sound structure of spoken language. It is an oral and auditory skill. It includes awareness of words in sentences, syllables in words, onsets and rimes, and individual phonemes. Phonemic awareness is the narrowest and most advanced part of phonological awareness: the ability to hear, identify and manipulate individual phonemes. Every phonemic awareness task is a phonological awareness task, but not every phonological awareness task is phonemic.
Key terms:
Phonological Awareness Skills from Easiest to Hardest
| Skill | What the child does | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Word awareness | Counts words in a spoken sentence | "The dog ran." has 3 words |
| Rhyme | Recognizes, then produces, rhymes | "Does cat rhyme with hat?" / "Tell me a word that rhymes with pig." |
| Syllables | Claps, blends, segments syllables | "Clap pen-cil." |
| Onset-rime | Blends or splits onset and rime | "/m/ ... /op/ makes mop." |
| Phoneme isolation | Names the first, last, or middle sound | "What is the first sound in fish?" /f/ |
| Phoneme blending | Combines separate phonemes into a word | "/s/ /u/ /n/ makes sun." |
| Phoneme segmentation | Breaks a word into all its phonemes | "Say each sound in jump." /j/ /u/ /m/ /p/ |
| Phoneme manipulation | Adds, deletes, or substitutes phonemes | "Say slip without /l/." sip; "Change /h/ in hat to /m/." mat |
Phoneme blending and segmentation are the two phonemic awareness skills most directly tied to early reading and spelling. Blending supports decoding (sounding out and then putting sounds together), and segmentation supports encoding (spelling a word by hearing each sound).
Counting Phonemes Correctly
Counting phonemes is a favorite exam task because it exposes whether the test taker thinks about sounds or letters. Say the word naturally and count distinct sounds, not letters.
Phoneme Counts for Common Example Words
| Word | Phonemes | Count |
|---|---|---|
| ship | /sh/ /i/ /p/ | 3 |
| cake | /k/ /ā/ /k/ | 3 |
| box | /b/ /o/ /k/ /s/ | 4 |
| thought | /th/ /aw/ /t/ | 3 |
| string | /s/ /t/ /r/ /i/ /ng/ | 5 |
| knight | /n/ /ī/ /t/ | 3 |
| church | /ch/ /er/ /ch/ | 3 |
Notice that the letter x usually represents two phonemes (/k/ /s/), digraphs such as sh, th, ch and ng represent one phoneme each, silent letters represent none, and each sound in a blend (such as the s, t and r in "str") counts separately.
Worked Example: How many phonemes are in the word "splash"?
Say the word slowly: /s/ /p/ /l/ /a/ /sh/.
The letters s, p and l form a three-letter blend, and each consonant is heard, so each counts.
The letters s and h at the end form a digraph that makes one sound, /sh/.
Result: "splash" has five phonemes from six letters.
Exam Tip: When an item asks which word has a given number of phonemes, say each option aloud in your head and tap the sounds on your fingers. Ignore how the word looks. Words with silent e, digraphs, double letters (the two l's in "bell" are one sound) and x are designed to catch letter-counters.
Telling the Skills Apart
The exam often describes an activity and asks which skill it targets. Use this decision path.
Does the activity involve printed letters? If no, it is phonological awareness (or phonemic awareness, if it works at the level of individual phonemes). If yes, go on.
Does it connect letters to sounds to read or spell words? If yes, it is phonics (or the alphabetic principle, at the very earliest level).
Does it focus on how books and print are organized, such as where to start or what a word is? If yes, it is print concepts.
Classroom Scenario: A teacher says, "Listen: /f/ /i/ /sh/. What word is that?" and the children say "fish." Later she shows the printed letters f, i, sh and asks children to read the word. The first activity is phoneme blending, a phonemic awareness task, because it is purely oral. The second is decoding, a phonics task, because printed letters are involved. The two activities are a sensible pair: practicing blending orally first, then applying it to print, is a well-supported sequence.
Common Trap: Many candidates label any activity with "sounds" in it as phonics. Phonics always involves print (letters linked to sounds). An oral rhyming game, a clapping-syllables chant, or "say cat without /k/" is phonological awareness, even though it is about sounds. The reverse trap also appears: "Elkonin boxes" (sound boxes) begin as a phonemic awareness activity when children push plain counters into boxes for each sound, but they become a phonics activity once letter tiles replace the counters.
Diagnosing Phonological Awareness Difficulties
Students who struggle to read often have weak phonemic awareness. Signs a teacher might notice include difficulty producing rhymes, blending sounds into the wrong word (hearing /m/ /a/ /p/ and saying "mat"), leaving out middle sounds when segmenting, or spelling that represents only the first sound of words. A child learning English may also have trouble hearing phonemes that do not exist in the home language (for example, the distinction between short i and long e for many Spanish speakers, as in "ship" and "sheep"); this is a language-transfer pattern, not a sign of a disability.
Instruction for these students is explicit and brief. Short, frequent sessions with oral blending and segmentation, using concrete supports such as chips or sound boxes, and moving from continuous sounds and short words toward stop sounds and blends work well. Linking phonemic awareness to letters as soon as children are ready tends to strengthen both skills.
Classroom Scenario: A first grader is asked to segment "stop" and responds "/s/ /op/." What it shows: the child can separate the first sound but treats the rest as a chunk and, in this case, also dropped the /t/ of the blend. The child needs work segmenting all phonemes, especially within blends. A strong next step is to use four sound boxes and model sliding a counter for each sound, /s/ /t/ /o/ /p/, then have the child do the same, before moving to spelling the word with letter tiles.
Key Takeaways
Print concepts are about how books and print work: directionality, return sweep, concept of word, print carries the message.
The alphabetic principle is the understanding that letters systematically represent phonemes; letter-name knowledge alone is not enough.
Phonological awareness is oral and moves from larger units (words, syllables, onset-rime) to phonemes; phonemic awareness is its most advanced part.
Count phonemes by sound, not by letter: digraphs are one sound, x is usually two, silent letters are zero, and each consonant in a blend counts.
If an activity uses no print, it is not phonics; if it uses letters to read or spell words, it is.
Diagnose from evidence: incomplete segmenting, first-sound-only spelling and rhyme difficulty all point to targeted phonemic awareness instruction.
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