Which stage is described as emergent readers using visual cues and progressing left to right but not yet linking letters to sounds?

Which stage is described as emergent readers using visual cues and progressing left to right but not yet linking letters to sounds?

• A. Early Alphabetic
• B. Middle Alphabetic
• C. Late Alphabetic
• D. Pre Alphabetic

Answer: (D)

At this stage, readers rely on pictures and visual cues to get meaning and understand that text moves from left to right, but they haven’t yet learned that individual letters correspond to specific sounds. That combination—using visuals for meaning and a basic left-to-right print direction, without mapping letters to sounds—matches the Pre Alphabetic stage. As children grow more confident with sounds and letters, they enter the Early Alphabetic stage, where letter-sound connections begin to form, followed by the Middle and Late Alphabetic stages with more systematic decoding.

At this stage, readers rely on pictures and visual cues to get meaning and understand that text moves from left to right, but they haven’t yet learned that individual letters correspond to specific sounds. That combination—using visuals for meaning and a basic left-to-right print direction, without mapping letters to sounds—matches the Pre Alphabetic stage. As children grow more confident with sounds and letters, they enter the Early Alphabetic stage, where letter-sound connections begin to form, followed by the Middle and Late Alphabetic stages with more systematic decoding.