Which of the following best describes the difference between phonemic awareness and phonics?

The correct answer highlights a fundamental distinction between phonemic awareness and phonics, which is crucial for understanding how children learn to read. Phonemic awareness is the skill that involves recognizing and manipulating sounds in spoken words. It is an auditory-only skill that does not involve any written letters; rather, it is about the ability to hear and work with sounds. This could include tasks like blending sounds to form words or segmenting words into their individual sounds.

On the other hand, phonics is the method that teaches the relationship between sounds and the corresponding letters or groups of letters in written language. It combines these auditory skills of phonemic awareness with visual recognition of letters, enabling learners to understand how sounds translate to written symbols. This understanding is essential for decoding written text and developing effective reading skills.

In essence, phonemic awareness lays the groundwork for phonics. While phonemic awareness is all about sounds, phonics builds upon that auditory foundation by connecting those sounds to printed letters, which is critical for reading proficiency. This is why option C accurately describes the difference between these two essential components of reading instruction.