Chapter 1
Phonological and Phonemic Awareness and Emergent Literacy
Course: Elementary Education Multiple Subjects 7001
Subject: Elementary Education Teaching Reading Subtest 7002
Chapter: Phonics And Decoding
Overview
Phoneme-grapheme correspondence is the foundational literacy concept that links the spoken sounds (phonemes) of language with their written representations (graphemes). This relationship underlies the alphabetic principle, which posits that letters and letter combinations represent speech sounds in a predictable manner. Understanding these correspondences is critical for developing decoding skills—the process of translating written words into spoken language.
For example, the word "dog" contains three distinct phonemes: /d/, /o/, and /g/. Each of these is matched to a single grapheme: "d", "o", and "g". Once children understand this connection, they can decode and read unfamiliar words by segmenting the sounds and blending them back together.
This skill set also supports spelling, or encoding, as students apply the reverse process by hearing a word, identifying its sounds, and writing the corresponding graphemes.