Correct Response: D. Phonemic awareness involves the ability to recognize and manipulate the individual sounds in spoken words. An English language learner who is not familiar with a particular English sound, because the sound does not exist in his/her first language, is likely to have difficulty perceiving and/or discriminating the sound aurally, and may also have difficulty pronouncing the sound. A is incorrect because English language learners can begin to develop phonemic awareness in English as soon as they have developed some oral language skills in English. They do not need to have a high level of oral language proficiency in English to be able to develop awareness of the concept of phonemes. B is incorrect because phonemic awareness is an oral not a written language skill. Also, a student whose first language is alphabetic (as opposed to a nonalphabetic language) will be at an advantage, not a disadvantage, in developing phonemic awareness in English, regardless of the level of phonetic regularity of the first language, because the student may have already developed phonemic awareness in the first language. C is incorrect because, while having phonological skills in the first language would be beneficial to the student, it is not mandatory for the student to have prior literacy skills in the first language to be able to develop phonemic awareness skills in English.
