Ohio Assessments for Educators (OAE) Early Childhood Practice Exam

What does the ability to segment a series of orally presented words indicate?

1. Understanding the alphabetic principle

2. Familiarity with high-frequency words

3. Development of phonemic awareness

4. Recognition of sight words

The correct answer is: Development of phonemic awareness

Segmenting a series of orally presented words demonstrates a child's development of phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the understanding that spoken words can be broken down into individual sounds or phonemes. This skill is crucial for literacy development because it lays the foundation for learning how to read and write. When children can segment words, they are able to recognize and manipulate the sounds within those words, which is essential when they begin to connect sounds to letters—an important step in mastering the alphabetic principle. Phonemic awareness also supports spelling and decoding skills, enabling children to read unfamiliar words. While the other options relate to aspects of literacy development, they do not directly pertain to the specific skill of segmenting words. Understanding the alphabetic principle involves knowing the relationship between sounds and letters, familiarity with high-frequency words relates to recognition of commonly used words rather than segmenting, and sight word recognition focuses on memorizing specific words rather than breaking them down phonetically. Thus, segmenting orally presented words accurately highlights a child's phonemic awareness.