California Teacher Credentialing Examination (CSET) Practice Test

A digraph refers to a pair of letters that combine to produce a single speech sound, which is essential in understanding phonics and pronunciation in the English language. This concept is foundational for reading instruction, as it helps students recognize that certain combinations of letters create specific sounds that may not correspond to the individual sounds of each letter. For example, the combination "sh" in "ship" produces one sound rather than two distinct sounds from each letter.

The other options presented do not accurately define a digraph. A type of vowel sound may refer to various vowel phonemes, while a combination of three letters forming one sound would be more appropriately described as a trigraph. The notion of related characters in a story is unrelated to phonics and does not pertain to the concept of digraphs at all.