Graphemes & Phonemes - Correspondence & Differences
Posted by Brainspring on 4th Feb 2025
All cultures have spoken languages, but not all languages have a written counterpart. Speaking is a natural process that occurs whether formal rules are associated with it or not. In Proust and the Squid, Maryanne Wolf said, “The act of reading itself is a kind of evolutionary miracle. It requires us to construct something never before seen in nature—an expert reading system that can take in a code invented by another human being and process it with exquisite efficiency and speed.”
So, unlike speaking, reading is not a natural process. Writing, which is closely related to reading through orthography, is not a natural process either. According to Merriam-Webster, orthography is “the representation of the sounds of a language by written or printed symbols.” Through this amazing orthographic code, humankind is able to creatively express thought in writing and effectively communicate with one another.
What are Graphemes and Phonemes?
Written languages are comprised of words, constructed from phonemes and their graphemic counterparts. The word phoneme includes the morpheme, phon/phone, from the Greek, which means sound. The word grapheme also consists of an important morpheme, graph, derived from Greek, which means to write.
So, a phoneme is a speech sound. Phonemes are represented by letters written in virgules (i.e., /k/, /j/, /l/, /ŏ/, /ō/). A grapheme is a letter or letter combination representing a single phoneme or sound. Graphemes may be one letter (i.e., c, j, l, o) or multiple letters (i.e., -ck, -dge, -ll, -oe). Some graphemes contain multiple phonemes (i.e., x = /k + s/).
Why is it Essential to Understand Phonemes & Graphemes?
When students learn to connect phonemes to the graphemes that represent them with automaticity, they become efficient readers and writers, able to break down unfamiliar words and read more fluently. Knowing the relationship between sounds and their corresponding letters also helps students map the sounds they hear to the correct written symbols, improving their writing accuracy and spelling.
Students who understand these concepts can distinguish between words and sounds, aiding in vocabulary growth and comprehension. Without understanding phonemes and graphemes, students struggle to develop the essential skills of reading and writing, which are critical for literacy, academic achievement, confidence in reading, and communication.
Grapheme & Phoneme Practice
Emerging readers should receive regular practice with phoneme-grapheme correspondence through a multisensory review called the Three-Part Drill. First, students verbally convert symbols to sounds, then graphically sounds to symbols, and finally, blend several graphemes together to create words.
This practice builds automaticity and fluency at the sound level and eventually at the syllable level. Through this process, teachers glean critical diagnostic data, pinpointing their students’ areas of difficulty.
Practicing Phonetically Irregular Words
Understanding phoneme-grapheme correspondence is helpful not only for identifying phonetic words but also for phonetically irregular words. Identifying the components of a word that both follows and breaks a rule is an essential analytical skill that fosters interest in the language. In Brainspring professional development courses, participants learn to orthographically map phonetically irregular words as the first step in understanding and identifying what we call Red Words.
For example, when analyzing the word from, students are guided through the process of identifying how many phonemes they hear in the word. Then, they match the phonemes to graphemes. Most of the graphemes in the word from correctly correspond to the phonemes; however, there is one grapheme that does not correspond—the o. In this word, the o sounds like the letter usually associated with the short u sound.
After this analysis, students are then guided through a series of multisensory steps to learn the correct spelling of this phonetically irregular word. Through this process, students can, with regular review, read the words automatically, thereby increasing fluency and comprehension.
Research in the science of reading shows that having a strong connection between phonemes and graphemes is essential for reading and writing fluency. Explicit teaching of phonemes and graphemes helps to strengthen neural pathways related to reading.
The science of reading also supports the idea that developing a deep understanding of phoneme and grapheme correspondences through structured phonics instruction is central to helping students become proficient readers and writers.
Wolf, Maryanne. Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2007.