North Carolina Foundations of Reading Test 2025 – 400 Free Practice Questions to Pass the Exam

Phonics is defined as the method of connecting sounds with letters or letter combinations. This involves teaching students the relationships between letters and the sounds they produce, which is essential for decoding words during reading. By understanding these sound-letter correspondences, learners can apply this knowledge to read unfamiliar words, thereby enhancing their literacy skills.

Phonics instruction helps students break down words into their constituent sounds (phonemes) and understand how those sounds correspond to written letters (graphemes). This systematic approach to understanding the alphabetic principle is foundational in early reading development and is critical for effective reading instruction.

This definition highlights the importance of phonemic awareness and the ability to manipulate sounds, which are crucial skills for young readers. The focus of phonics as a method of linking sounds to letters distinguishes it from other areas of literacy education, such as vocabulary, comprehension strategies, or handwriting, all of which address different aspects of reading and writing but do not directly pertain to the foundational skill of decoding through sound-letter connections.