Which term represents one sound with one letter, a basic unit in early spelling development?

• A. prephonemic spelling
• B. early letter-name spelling
• C. full alphabetic coding
• D. consolidated word recognition

Answer: (A)

In the earliest stage of spelling development, children begin to connect language with letters in a simple, symbolic way. Using one letter to stand for a sound—essentially a basic, one-to-one representation—reflects this initial level of representation. That is why this term fits the prephonemic spelling stage: it captures the idea of starting with a single letter symbol to convey a sound or the word’s initial sound, before more systematic phoneme-to-letter mappings emerge. As children grow, they move to stages where letter names influence spelling, then to fully mapped alphabetic coding, and finally to recognizing words by sight. The other descriptions describe later, more advanced stages or different skills (like mapping most phonemes to letters or sight-word recognition), which don’t align with this early, one-sound-one-letter approach.