What is a grapheme in the context of literacy?

A grapheme is defined as a letter or letter combination that represents a phoneme, which is the smallest unit of sound in spoken language. In literacy, graphemes are a fundamental component of the alphabetic principle, where the written characters directly correlate to sounds in language. Understanding graphemes is essential for developing reading and writing skills, as they form the basis of how letters represent sounds when decoding words.

For instance, the word "cat" features three graphemes: the letter "c," which represents the initial phoneme /k/, the letter "a," representing the vowel phoneme /æ/, and the letter "t," representing the final phoneme /t/. This highlights how graphemes work in conjunction with phonemes to create language.

The other options, while related to literacy education, are not accurate definitions of a grapheme. They pertain to different aspects of literacy or reading instruction but do not capture the precise definition of graphemes as it pertains to the representation of sounds through written language.