In encoding assessment, a student writes 'wej' for wedge and 'juj' for judge. They need explicit instruction on which skill?

In encoding assessment, a student writes 'wej' for wedge and 'juj' for judge. They need explicit instruction on which skill?

• A. The rule for grapheme -dge
• B. The difference between voiced and voiceless consonants
• C. Segmenting phonemes
• D. Vowel sounds in unstressed syllables

Answer: (A)

The skill being tested is how you map a sound to its correct spelling pattern, focusing on the grapheme-phoneme relationship for the /dʒ/ sound. In wedge and judge, the final /dʒ/ sound is written with the digraph -dge, not with a single letter like j. The student’s spellings, we-j and ju-j, show they haven’t learned that after a short vowel, English commonly uses -dge to spell /dʒ/. Providing explicit instruction on this grapheme-phoneme rule helps the student encode the sound with the correct written form, which is the goal of encoding assessments. This isn’t about voicing differences, segmenting phonemes in general, or handling vowels in unstressed syllables.

The skill being tested is how you map a sound to its correct spelling pattern, focusing on the grapheme-phoneme relationship for the /dʒ/ sound. In wedge and judge, the final /dʒ/ sound is written with the digraph -dge, not with a single letter like j. The student’s spellings, we-j and ju-j, show they haven’t learned that after a short vowel, English commonly uses -dge to spell /dʒ/. Providing explicit instruction on this grapheme-phoneme rule helps the student encode the sound with the correct written form, which is the goal of encoding assessments. This isn’t about voicing differences, segmenting phonemes in general, or handling vowels in unstressed syllables.