A child at the phonetic stage of spelling development usually writes:

• A. Letters for every sound heard within a word
• B. Letter combinations that represent digraphs commonly used in English
• C. Full, conventional spelling
• D. Only uppercase letters

Answer: (A)

At the phonetic stage, children spell by sound. They listen to a word, break it into individual sounds, and write a letter (or letters) that matches each sound, even if the overall spelling isn’t conventional. This is the essence of invented spelling: letter-for-sound representations rather than correct, standard spellings. So a child would write something like “kat” for the word “cat,” representing each spoken sound with a letter, not worrying about whether that spelling is the usual one. Digraphs (two letters that make one sound) and full, conventional spelling belong to later stages, and relying only on uppercase letters isn’t a defining feature of this stage.