Orthographic mapping involves connecting which elements?

• A. Letters (graphemes) and sounds (phonemes)
• B. Letters and punctuation marks
• C. Words and sentence structure
• D. Pictures and context clues

Answer: (A)

Orthographic mapping is about forming connections between spoken sounds and their written forms. It’s the process by which a learner links phonemes to graphemes—the actual letters or letter patterns that represent those sounds—so words can be recognized by sight and spelled from memory. This linking underpins fluent reading and accurate spelling, because it creates stable mental representations of words based on how they sound and how they are written. The best answer captures that direct association between how a word sounds and how it is written: letters (graphemes) and sounds (phonemes). Punctuation marks don’t participate in this sound-to-letter mapping, while words and sentence structure relate to syntax, and pictures plus context clues help with meaning rather than the orthographic mapping itself.