According to Ehri's phases of word reading development, which characteristic is most closely associated with the full alphabetic phase?

• A. Recognizing a growing set of sight words
• B. Use of phoneme-grapheme correspondence to spell unfamiliar words
• C. Relying on whole-word memorization for decoding
• D. Using context clues to guess pronunciation

Answer: (B)

In the full alphabetic phase, learners use the complete set of sound-letter relationships to read and spell words they haven’t memorized. This means they can map sounds to letters (phoneme-grapheme correspondences) to decode unfamiliar words and to spell them out as well. That exact ability—applying phoneme-grapheme connections to spell unfamiliar words—is what best captures this stage.

Recognizing a growing set of sight words tends to come later, once readers rely more on whole-word recognition. Relying on whole-word memorization for decoding reflects earlier stages when letter-sound relationships aren’t yet consistently used. Using context clues to guess pronunciation is a helpful strategy but not the defining skill of the full alphabetic phase.