Letter-sound correspondence refers to what?

• A. The connection between individual letters and the sounds they represent (graphophonics)
• B. The relationship between words and their meanings
• C. The process of counting phonemes in a word
• D. Matching punctuation to sentences

Answer: (A)

Letter-sound correspondence is the mapping between individual letters (graphemes) and the sounds they represent (phonemes). This is the heart of phonics, helping children decode unfamiliar words by sounding them out and spell by writing sounds with letters. We call this graphophonics—the relationship between letters and the sounds they stand for.

This idea is different from semantics, which is about word meanings, and from phonemic awareness, which focuses on identifying and manipulating sounds in spoken language without written letters. It’s also not about matching punctuation to sentences, which deals with writing conventions and structure. Understanding how letters map to sounds is what makes decoding and accurate spelling possible, especially in early reading development.