In phonemic awareness, what does sound blending refer to?

Sound blending is a critical component of phonemic awareness that involves combining individual sounds to form a word. This skill is essential for developing literacy, as it allows learners to connect the sounds they hear with written words. When students practice sound blending, they take separate phonemes, such as /c/, /a/, and /t/, and blend them together to produce the word "cat." This process enhances their understanding of how spoken language is constructed and promotes their ability to decode unfamiliar words when reading.

The other options serve different functions in phonemic awareness, such as segmenting sounds, identifying them, or manipulating them within words, but they do not define the blending process.