The awareness of the sounds (phonemes) that make up spoken words. Such awareness does not appear when young children learn to talk; the ability is not necessary for speaking and understanding spoken language. Phonemic awareness is a necessary step for learning to read. In alphabetic languages, letters and letter clusters represent phonemes, and in order to learn the correspondences between letters and sounds, one must understand that words are made up of phonemes. phonics A way of teaching reading and spelling that stresses symbol-sound relationships; used especially in beginning instruction.