Phonics and Science of Reading Glossary of Terms

What is accuracy? The ability to read or decode words correctly, without errors.

What is the Alphabetic Principle? It is the understanding that spoken words are composed of individual sounds and that letters represent those sounds.

What is articulation? The act of producing speech sounds or pronouncing words clearly and correctly.

What is automaticity? The ability to read quickly and accurately without conscious effort or decoding.

What is base word? A word to which affixes (prefixes or suffixes) can be added to create new words. For example, the base word for action, activity, activate is act.

Phonics blending enables students to decode words by fluently joining individual sound-spellings in a word, such as "jam" (/j/, /ă/, /m/).

What is chunk? A group of letters in one syllable that consistently spells the same sounds.

What is closed syllable? A syllable that has one vowel letter followed by one or more consonant letters.

What is Comprehension? Comprehension is the understanding and interpretation of what is read.

What is consonant blend? It is two or three consonants that appear together in a word without any vowels separating them. Each consonant in the blend represents a distinct speech sound or phoneme.

What is consonant letter? A letter that represents a consonant sound and are all the letters that are not vowels. These include the letters b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, y, and z.

What is consonant suffix? A suffix added to a base word that starts with a consonant (e.g., "-ful" in the word "careful").

What is consonant-le syllable? A syllable pattern in which a consonant is followed by "le" (e.g., "able" in the word "table").

What is decoding? Decoding involves the process of translating print into speech by rapidly matching letters or combinations of letters (graphemes) to their sounds (phonemes).

What is digraph? Two letters (sh, kn, ch, ph, wr, ck) that represent a single sound (e.g., "sh" in "ship").

What is Dyslexia? Dyslexia is a “specific learning disability” that is neurobiological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. 

What is encoding? The process of spelling or writing words using letter-sound relationships.

What is Fluency? Fluency is defined as the ability to read with speed, accuracy, and proper expression.

What is a Grapheme? It is a written letter or a group of letters representing one speech sound, or phoneme.

What is high-frequency word? A word that appears frequently in written text. Some examples of high-frequency words include: the, and, is, to, of, in, it, that, you, and was.

What is letter-sound correspondence? It is the sound-symbol association, the relationship between letters and the sounds they represent.

What is long vowel? It is a specific vowel sound that corresponds to its letter's name in the alphabet, it produces the same sound as its letter name.

What is a Morpheme? Morphemes are meaningful morphological units of a language that cannot be further divided. They are the smallest meaningful units of a language.

What is our Orthographic Lexicon? It is our sight word memory. It is all the words we can read accurately and effortlessly.

What is Orthographic Mapping? How we build words into our sight word memory and store them for accurate & effortless recognition.

What is a Phoneme? In linguistics, A phoneme IS THE smallest unit of speech that distinguishes one word element from another.

What is Phoneme Manipulation? The ability to manipulate the sounds (phonemes) in words.

What is Phonemic Awareness? All words are made up of a sequence of individual sounds called phonemes. Phonemic awareness is the ability to focus on and manipulate individual phonemes in spoken words.

What is Phonemic Proficiency? the ability to manipulate Phonemes “unconsciously,” without step-by-step cognition.

What is Phonics?  A method of teaching students to read and pronounce words by learning the phonetic value of letters, letter groups, and especially syllables.

What is Phonological Awareness? It's a skill set that includes identifying and manipulating units of oral language – parts such as words, syllables, onsets, and rimes.

What is Reading Vocabulary? Your Reading Vocabulary is all the words You need to recognize and understand when reading, and it is a part of a complex cognitive process of acquisition.

What is root word? A part of a word that carries meaning but that cannot stand alone.

What is r-controlled vowel? A vowel sound that is modified because it is immediately followed by consonant sound /r/.

What is schwa? An unaccented and unstressed vowel sound. The schwa sound is a weak sound said without any energy, pronounced as /uh/ or /ih/. Any vowel letter can spell the schwa sound in unaccented syllables. The second vowel sound in "seldom," the first vowel sound in "about," and the second vowel sound in "helmet" are schwa sounds. The phonetic symbol for the schwa sound is /ə/.

What is structured literacy? It is instruction that includes the following: Phonology and Phonological Awareness Sound-Symbol Association Syllable Instruction Morphology Syntax Semantics

What is syllable? A unit of spoken language that is larger than a phoneme. Every syllable contains a vowel sound, and almost every syllable contains one or more vowel letters.

What is trigraph? Three letters that work together to spell one sound.

What is vowel digraph? Two vowels that together represent a single sound (e.g., "oa" in "boat").

What is vowel letter? A letter that represents a vowel sound, a, e, I, o, u and sometimes y.

What is vowel spelling? The specific letter or combination of letters used to represent a vowel sound.

What is vowel suffix? A suffix that starts with a vowel and is added to a base word like -ed, -es, -ing, -er, -y, -en, -est, or -able.

What is vowel team? Two or more vowel letters that appear together and represent a single sound, such as, /ai/, /ay/, /ee/, /ea/, /ey/, /ie/, /oa/, /oe/, /ue/, /ui/.

What is vowel team syllable? A syllable that contains a vowel team.

What is vowel-consonant-e? A syllable pattern in which a vowel is followed by a consonant and a silent "e" (e.g., "cake").

What is vowel-consonant-e syllable? A syllable that follows the vowel-consonant-e pattern.