The Alphabetic Principle: Paving The Way To Learning To Read

The Alphabetic Principle: Paving the Way to Learning to Read by Dr. Marnie Ginsberg

What’s the first step we should take when teaching someone to read? Most people probably assume it's teaching the letters of the alphabet. However, the alphabet letters are NOT really the true foundation of how our written code works. The foundation is actually the alphabetic principle, which is the concept that our written language is a code for sounds.

Written words consist of sounds (phonemes) that are represented by letters and letter combinations (graphemes). Once a child unlocks the alphabetic principle, she opens a doorway to becoming a good reader.In this article, we explore why understanding the alphabetic principle is the true first step in learning to read. We’ll also show how you can use the Build It activity to help pave the way for the alphabetic principle...on the road to a lifetime of reading.

What is the Alphabetic Principle?

The alphabetic principle is the concept that our written language is a code for sounds. All words are built from sounds, or phonemes, which in written form are represented by letters and letter combinations, called graphemes. In other words, graphemes are a code for sounds (phonemes). Learning to read is the work of cracking this code. The alphabetic principle is the first insight one must have in order to begin “de-coding” more and more words.

The alphabetic principle is the first insight one must have in order to begin “de-coding” more and more words.

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To read unfamiliar words, the reader must first understand the idea that the sounds in words can be represented by squiggles on a page. This is not an idea that comes naturally to most humans. Indeed, what an amazing accomplishment the creation of an alphabetic writing system was as this form of communication revolutionized the world. Yep, even a bigger deal than the iPhone or TikTok!

We don’t recognize words by how tall or short or long they are; we don’t recognize words by just the first or the last letter sound. Rather, we translate particular symbols as visual representations of individual sounds (phonemes)--in their very specific, left-to-right order--in words.

For instance, to crack the code of the word “reading,” one needs to know that these graphemes represent these phonemes:

The process of decoding sounds and symbols as in the image above is the work the developing reader needs to practice and grow in. The very first step is even recognizing that a code exists to help us read and that this code is a code of sound-symbol associations.

Why Begin with the Alphabetic Principle Instead of the Alphabet Letters?

U.S. culture begins the teaching of reading by teaching the alphabet. First, we usually guide our 2, 3, 4, and 5 year-old children to learn to recognize the letter names of the 26 letters of the alphabet, right?

But the alphabet is just a supporting player in how the code works. The true first step in learning to read is grasping the concept that sounds in words are pictured with letters and letter-combinations. That’s an “Aha!” we should be teaching our preK students to grasp.

And when we think we’re giving students the building blocks by teaching the alphabet letters, we’re actually leaving important information out. :O Our written code is not exactly based on the 26 letters of the alphabet...it’s based on the 44(ish) sounds in our language! The letters are just tools to build other representations of phonemes. For instance, the letter “s” can represent the

• part of the /sh/ in “shop,” and