What is the Alphabetic Principle

The alphabetic principle is the understanding that there are systematic and predictable relationships between written letters and spoken sounds.

What does this mean for reading instruction? Readers learn that letters make predictable sounds. Readers map these sounds to letters to decode words.

Learning and applying the alphabetic principle takes time and repeated practice. It does not come naturally for most children. In English, there are many letters to learn and there are many variations of sounds (think about how ea sounds different in the words steak, great, and bread!).

Systematic and sequential phonics instruction helps readers to learn the relationships between the sounds of spoken language and the letters of written language. Being able to map sounds to letters and letters to words? That is the essence of the alphabetic principle.

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