| alphabetic principle |
The use of letter and letter combinations
to represent sounds
|
| consonant blend |
A combination of two or three adjacent
consonants
|
| consonant digraph |
Two graphemes (letters) pronounced as one
phoneme
|
| diphthong |
A vowel speech sound composed of two
adjacent vowels in the same syllable producing only one phoneme (sound)
|
| grapheme |
A letter in the written form
|
| irregular past tense |
A past tense verb that does not follow
conventional spelling rules
|
| mental orthographic image |
The specific visual representation of a
known word in the mental lexicon
|
| long vowel |
A vowel that is pronounced as its letter
name
|
| morpheme |
A unit of semantic meaning (e.g., "bats"
contains two morphemes: bat and s
|
| morphological awareness |
Metalinguistic awareness of the
semantically meaningful units of words
|
| morphology |
The study of the structure of the
meaningful units in words and how they are combined to form words
|
| orthographic knowledge |
Explicit information about sound-symbol
correspondences, letter patterns, and positional and phonetic constraints
on letter patterns
|
| orthography |
The writing system of a language
|
| patterns and rules |
Similarities among items that can be used
to group them; when items are grouped, students should be able to describe
the "rule" for an item belonging to the group
|
| phoneme segmentation |
The metalinguistic ability to separate a
word into individual phonemes
|
| phonemes |
The smallest meaningful unit of speech
that combines with other sounds to form words
|
| phonemic awareness |
The metalinguistic awareness that words
consist of individual sounds and that these sounds in words can be
manipulated
|
| phonemic discrimination |
The metalinguistic ability to discern the
subtle differences between phonemes that signal change in meaning
|
| phonics |
The study of the relationships between
letters and the sounds they represent
|
| phonological awareness |
The metalinguistic awareness of all
aspects of the phonological structure of language from individual phonemes
to syllable structure, word boundaries, and prosody
|
| phonology |
The study of the sound system of language
and the rules that govern those sounds
|
| prefix |
A morpheme that precedes a root or base
word or another prefix and that modifies the meaning of the base word
(e.g., unhappy)
|
| root word |
A morpheme that can stand alone to which
prefixes and suffixes may be added
|
| semantics |
The study of the meanings of words
|
| short vowel |
The five lax vowel sounds most commonly
associated with "short vowels"
|
| sound-symbol correspondence |
The relationship between a single sound or
phoneme and the letter(s) or grapheme(s) that represent the sounds
|
| stressed syllable |
An accented syllable in which the vowel
sound is distinct
|
| suffix |
A morpheme that follows a root or base
word or another suffix and that modifies the meaning of the base word
(e.g., advisor)
|
| syllable segmentation |
The metalinguistic ability to separate a
word into individual syllables (e.g., pencil has two syllables:
pen and cil)
|
| unstressed syllable |
An unaccented syllable in which the vowel
sound is minimized or nondistinct
|
| vocalic r |
The syllabic /r/ sound, as in germ
or actor
|
| vocalic l |
The syllabic /l/ sound, as in candle
and legal |
| |
|
Reference: Masterson, J.J.,
Apel, K., Wasowicz, J. (2002). SPELL: Spelling
performance evaluation
for language and literacy, examiner's manual.
Evanston, IL: Learning
by Design. |
