California Teacher Credentialing Examination (CSET) Practice Test

The correct answer is phonics, which is crucial for systematic and explicit instruction for beginning readers. Phonics involves the relationship between sounds (phonemes) and their corresponding letters or groups of letters (graphemes). Teaching phonics explicitly helps children decode new words by sounding them out, which is essential for reading development.

Beginning readers benefit from a structured approach that allows them to master sound-letter correspondences, enabling them to read unfamiliar words independently. This explicit instruction often includes systematic phonics programs that offer sequential lessons to build upon each child's understanding progressively. Consequently, students develop strong foundational skills in reading, facilitating their overall literacy and comprehension.

While fluency, context skills, and listening and writing are also important aspects of literacy instruction, they do not serve as the primary focus for systematic and explicit instruction geared specifically for beginning readers. Fluency builds upon phonics skills as students gain confidence in reading; context skills involve understanding meaning in text, which develops after foundational skills are mastered, and listening and writing are essential but secondary to the initial goal of teaching reading through phonics.