Which term describes knowledge of the shapes and names of letters of the alphabet, as indicated in the source material?

Which term describes knowledge of the shapes and names of letters of the alphabet, as indicated in the source material?

• A. Phonemic awareness
• B. Grapheme knowledge
• C. Alphabetic principle
• D. Print awareness

Answer: (C)

Familiarity with the shapes and names of the letters is what lets a learner connect written symbols to spoken sounds. This is the essence of the alphabetic principle: letters and letter patterns represent the sounds of language, so knowing what each letter looks like and what its name is equips someone to map that symbol to its sound during reading and writing. When students can recognize and name the letters, they’re prepared to apply letter–sound correspondences to decode words and spell. The source often treats this letter-shape and name knowledge as a foundation for using the alphabetic principle in literacy tasks. By contrast, phonemic awareness focuses on manipulating sounds without written symbols, and print awareness centers on understanding how print works in texts, while grapheme knowledge sits close to this idea but is framed here as part of applying the alphabetic principle.

Familiarity with the shapes and names of the letters is what lets a learner connect written symbols to spoken sounds. This is the essence of the alphabetic principle: letters and letter patterns represent the sounds of language, so knowing what each letter looks like and what its name is equips someone to map that symbol to its sound during reading and writing. When students can recognize and name the letters, they’re prepared to apply letter–sound correspondences to decode words and spell. The source often treats this letter-shape and name knowledge as a foundation for using the alphabetic principle in literacy tasks. By contrast, phonemic awareness focuses on manipulating sounds without written symbols, and print awareness centers on understanding how print works in texts, while grapheme knowledge sits close to this idea but is framed here as part of applying the alphabetic principle.