Partial alphabetic: During this stage, children know most letter names but just are beginning to learn the relationship between letters and their sounds. They may be able to guess at how to read a word by its first letter but are not able to systematically decode or sound out words.

What are the stages of the alphabetic phase?

Ehri and her colleagues describe five phases of “working knowledge of the alphabetic system”. Their phases are pre-alphabetic, partial alphabetic, full alphabetic, consolidated alphabetic, and automatic.

What is meant by partial phonetic spelling?

Partial-Alphabetic: Readers know some letter-sound correspondences, but can’t decode whole words. They might use partial phonetic cues—often 1st or last letters—along with the context—to figure out words.