The Alphabetic Principle
Table of Contents
What Is The Alphabetic Principle?
The alphabetic principle is the idea that letters represent sounds of spoken language. The English language consists of 26 letters and 44 speech sounds.
Children must first learn to correctly identify letter names as a foundation of the alphabetic principle. Once children can automatically identify the letters of the alphabet, then they can map the appropriate sounds to the letters. When children know their letters and the sounds that correspond to each letter, they understand the alphabetic principle.
Why Is It Important?
Learning the alphabetic principle is necessary for reading and writing. If a child cannot learn it, they will not have access to learning phonics and spelling instruction. A child must be able to recognize letters and the sounds that are associated with the letters in order to build off those connections to read and write.
It is also important for the alphabetic principle to be established early in a child’s academic career. It is the foundation for decoding words, automatic word recognition, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
The Elements
Alphabet knowledge:
One element of the alphabetic principle is alphabet knowledge. Research by the National Literacy Panel shows that letter name knowledge in preschool and kindergarten is one of the most important predictors of later reading and writing success. The skills needed to identify letters and read words require the same underlying skills. Both activities require a student to encode the letter or word, store it in working memory, and then retrieve the correct label for it. For this reason, identifying letters can be seen as the simplest form of reading.
By the end of kindergarten, children should be able to identify all upper and lower case letters correctly. Please visit our guide to kindergarten reading skills if you would like more developmentally appropriate milestones.
Letter-Sound Correspondence:
The second element of the alphabetic principle is the letter-sound correspondence. Letter recognition is the building block to decoding skills. Children must first automatically and accurately learn letter names. Then children can tie sounds to those letters. This is the only way to guarantee that children will be able to read and write unfamiliar words.
Free websites like Starfall offer great resources for alphabet knowledge and letter sound correlation. You can also visit the Florida Center for Reading Research for free activities that are based on evidence and research.
The Alphabetic Principle and Comprehension
The alphabetic principle has a correlation to comprehension. First children learn individual sound and symbol relationships. They use the knowledge to start reading words. Next children start to see common letter clusters as units. Instead of sounding out each individual letter, they begin to read the cluster automatically. For example, patterns such as -ink, -ing, and -tion, become read as a unit. Lastly, children go from recognizing clusters of letters to instantly recognizing whole words. Instant word recognition leads to reading fluency.
Now that the student is not using all their mental bandwidth to decode words, they can use that extra brain power to comprehend what they are reading. Moreover, their instant word recognition allows them to read more words per day. This is a valuable skill. The child who reads more words per day will have more opportunities to learn new vocabulary. All of this rests on how effectively a child can establish the alphabetic principle.
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