Final answer:
Phonics refers to the relationship between visual letters and auditory sounds in speech, which is crucial for learning to read and write. It involves understanding phonemes, digraphs, and the sounds represented by each letter or letter combination. The correct answer is A) Letters and letter combinations.
Step-by-step explanation:
The term phonics refers to how sounds are represented by letters and letter combinations. This aspect of reading education and linguistics is fundamental to how individuals learn to read and write, focusing particularly on the relationship between the visual letters we see in written language and the auditory sounds we hear in speech.
Words are composed of various phonemes, which are the basic units of sound. For instance, in the word 'else', three sounds can be heard, but the word is composed of four letters, demonstrating that not all letters represent individual sounds.
A digraph is when two letters come together to represent a single sound, like the 'th' in 'the'. This concept is a part of traditional phonics instruction, which aims to teach learners the sounds represented by each letter or combination of letters in the alphabet.
Semantics and syntax are also crucial parts of language learning; however, they are focused on meaning and sentence structure, whereas phonics is all about the sounds that letters and combinations of letters make.