What is letter-sound correspondence?

• A. The relationship between letters and their sounds.
• B. The ability to print letters legibly.
• C. The rules of punctuation usage.
• D. The meaning of vocabulary words.

Answer: (A)

Letter-sound correspondence is the link between the written symbol and the sound it usually represents. In early reading, students learn which sound a letter typically makes and how letter combinations can represent new sounds. This lets them decode unfamiliar words by blending those sounds together. For example, the letter that stands for the /m/ sound is used in many words, and a, when it appears in simple syllables, often represents a short /a/ sound. Digraphs—two letters working together—like sh create a new sound, as in ship. Because readers understand how letters map to sounds, they can sound out and spell words more accurately.

This concept is different from printing letters legibly, which is about handwriting, or from punctuation, which helps with sentence structure, or from knowing word meanings, which is vocabulary.