Correct Response: D: Using printed words as prompts provides English learners who lack basic phonemic awareness skills with a visual support in addition to the supports already provided by context (pictures) and auditory cues. Using printed words for phonemic awareness instruction also helps accelerate the students' reading development because it helps them make explicit connections between sounds (phonemes) and letters or letter combinations. The skills targeted by A are lower-level phonological awareness skills that precede the skills that the students are working on. B is incorrect because it describes a contextual word-identification/vocabulary-learning strategy, which does not build phonemic awareness. C is incorrect because spelling patterns, including phonics-based patterns, rely on students' understanding of letter-sound (grapheme-phoneme) correspondence, which the students in the scenario have likely not yet developed.
