Grapheme-Phoneme and Phoneme-Grapheme Correspondences

The ability to make grapheme-phoneme correspondences (phonemic recall) comprises a necessary part of decoding unknown written words to their oral equivalents, that is, working out the pronunciation of words while reading. However, group-decoding tests and skills-management systems, both of which measure phoneme-grapheme correspondences (graphemic recall), are frequently used to infer students' facility with phonemic recall. The notion that graphemic recall has properties that yield higher scores than phonemic recall and the notion both types of correspondences require identical skills were tested by having 26 second graders make both types of correspondences. Although a design with counterbalanced sequence by correspondences showed a significantly higher mean score for graphemic recall, the actual difference between the two scores was small. A significant rank-order correlation indicates a relationship between the two types of correspondences, but the skills required to make the two types of correspondences are not identical. The results suggest caution should be exercised when inferring students' facility with phonemic recall from performance on instruments which measure graphemic recall.