What is the process of hearing a spoken word and identifying its phonemes or syllables?

• A. Standardized test
• B. Segmenting
• C. Semantic web
• D. Visual cues

Answer: (B)

Segmenting is hearing a spoken word and breaking it into its individual sounds or syllables. When you listen to a word and can identify the sequence of phonemes, you’re using segmenting. For example, hearing “cat” and recognizing the sounds /k/ /æ/ /t/ shows this skill. Segmenting is a key ability in phonological awareness that supports decoding and spelling, because it helps map each sound to a letter or letter pair. It’s useful to contrast it with blending, which is putting sounds together to form a word. The other options don’t involve breaking spoken language into sounds: a standardized test is an assessment, a semantic web is about linked data on the web, and visual cues refer to information seen rather than heard.