Phoneme substitution refers to which action?

• A. Deleting a phoneme
• B. Blending phonemes
• C. Replacing one phoneme to form a new word
• D. Segmenting phonemes

Answer: (C)

Phoneme substitution is changing one sound in a word to another sound to create a new word. For example, take the word map and replace the initial /m/ with /k/ to form cap. This shows how swapping a single sound can produce a different with meaning word, which is the essence of this skill. It’s different from deleting a phoneme (removing a sound to form a shorter word or a nonword) and from blending or segmenting (blending puts sounds together to make a word; segmenting breaks a word into its individual sounds).