In orthographic mapping, what is the relationship between graphemes and phonemes?

• A. Students connect each grapheme to its corresponding phoneme
• B. Phonemes are replaced by graphemes
• C. Graphemes are learned before phonemes but not connected
• D. They are learned in isolation

Answer: (A)

In orthographic mapping, the central idea is that readers attach each grapheme—the letters or letter patterns—to its exact phoneme—thesound it represents. This connection between how words look (graphemes) and how they sound (phonemes) lets you decode unfamiliar words by blending sounds into a word and encode spoken words by selecting the right letters to represent the sounds you hear. English illustrates why this mapping is flexible: the same phoneme can be written with different graphemes (like the /k/ sound in cat, kit, or school), and a single grapheme can represent different sounds depending on context. The goal is to build a stable, interconnected memory of words so they are recognized quickly and spelled accurately, not to learn graphemes in isolation or to replace phonemes with letters.