Phonemes are the speech phonological units that make a difference to meaning.
It differs by only one phoneme from each of the spoken words soap, rode, and rip . Phonemic awareness is the insight that every spoken word can be conceived as a sequence of phonemes. Because phonemes are the units of sound that are represented by the letters of an alphabet, an awareness of phonemes is key to understanding the logic of the alphabetic principle and thus to the learning of phonics and spelling. Phonetic value is the sound represented by each letter of an alphabet. Phonics refers to instructional practices that emphasize how spellings are related to speech sounds in systematic ways.