Which term is most directly associated with decoding by applying knowledge of letter-sound relationships?

Which term is most directly associated with decoding by applying knowledge of letter-sound relationships?

• A. Phonics & decoding
• B. Sight words
• C. Text comprehension
• D. Fluency

Answer: (A)

Phonics is the approach that ties letters to sounds and shows how to blend those sounds to read unfamiliar words. This direct use of letter-sound knowledge to map print to spoken language is decoding. Sight words rely on recognizing whole words by sight rather than sounding them out, so they don’t describe decoding. Text comprehension is about understanding meaning after decoding, and fluency refers to the speed and smoothness of reading, which improves with decoding but isn’t the decoding process itself. So the term most directly linked to decoding via letter-sound relationships is phonics.

Phonics is the approach that ties letters to sounds and shows how to blend those sounds to read unfamiliar words. This direct use of letter-sound knowledge to map print to spoken language is decoding. Sight words rely on recognizing whole words by sight rather than sounding them out, so they don’t describe decoding. Text comprehension is about understanding meaning after decoding, and fluency refers to the speed and smoothness of reading, which improves with decoding but isn’t the decoding process itself. So the term most directly linked to decoding via letter-sound relationships is phonics.