Emergent Lit

Accent

The relative force with which a syllable is pronounced; the primary accent receives the strongest emphasis.

Alphabetic Principle

The concept that alphabetic symbols represent spoken sounds, forming the basis of English orthography.

Alphabetic Writing System

A system where individual spoken sounds are represented by individual written symbols.

Blending

Combining individual phonemes to form spoken words, also involves putting onsets and rimes together.

Blends

Two or three letters that represent separate but closely associated sounds, also known as "clusters."

Consonant Diagraphs

Two different consonant letters that represent a single consonant phoneme.

Consonants

One of the two classes of sounds in a language (the other being vowels), including 25 consonant phonemes.

Deletion

The mental removal of part of a word to form another word.

Diagraphs

Two different letters that represent a single phoneme.

Graphemes

Written symbols that are the basic, minimal, indivisible units of writing, comprising 26 letters in the English alphabet.

Isolation

The ability to identify where phonemes occur in words, such as at the beginning, middle, or ending.

Long Vowels

Vowel sounds often heard in words like cake, heated with a macron above the letter.

Onset

The part of the syllable that comes before the vowel.

Phonemes

Spoken sounds that are the basic, minimal units of sound in words, totaling 44 in the English sound system.

Phonemic Awareness

The knowledge that spoken words are made up of discrete sounds and the ability to manipulate these sounds.

Phonics

The study of sound-symbol relationships in learning to read and spell.

Phonological Awareness

An umbrella term encompassing the study of speech sounds and their production.

R-Controlled Vowels

Vowels followed by the letter r, which do not have a standard long or short sound.

Rhyming

The ability to recognize and produce words that rhyme.

Rime

The vowel and any consonants that follow it in a syllable.

Schwa

A vowel sound occurring only in unaccented syllables, represented by the symbol /_/.},{

Segmentation

is the ability to break words into their component phonological parts. 

Short Vowels

are the vowel sounds you hear in the middle of words like cat, bed, big, hot, and mud. These sounds typically occur in a Consonant-Vowel-Consonant (CVC) pattern and they are marked with a breve, or small u shape, above the letter. 

Silent Letters

are consonant letters that have no corresponding sounds in words. 

Substitution

involves changing words by replacing one sound with another. 

Syllables

Clusters of phonemes that make up larger sound units in words, they must each have a vowel, and they can be open or closed.

Vowels

constitute the second largest category of sounds in any language (consonants are the largest).

Vowel Digraphs

two vowel letters that combine to make a single sound

Vowel Diphthongs

two vowel letters that make a unique sound different from either of the vowels in isolation.