Which term describes the study of the relationship between the spoken sounds in words and printed letters that correspond to those sounds (letter-sound correspondence)?

• A. Reading Fluency Parts
• B. Affixes
• C. Prefixes
• D. Phonics

Answer: (D)

Understanding how spoken sounds link to the letters that represent them is the core idea here. This is phonics—the study and use of letter-sound relationships to read and spell. Phonics teaches decoding by turning sounds into written symbols and blending those sounds to form words, as well as segmenting sounds in a word to spell it. The other terms describe different aspects of reading or word structure but don’t focus on mapping sounds to letters. Reading fluency parts are about reading speed, accuracy, and expression; affixes and prefixes deal with word parts and meaning, not sound-letter correspondence.