What is the largest sound unit within a word?

• A. Syllable
• B. Phoneme
• C. Grapheme
• D. Rime

Answer: (A)

Think about how words are broken into chunks of sound. The largest unit you can hear and separate in a word is a syllable. A syllable centers around a vowel sound and may include one or more consonants on either side, making it a bigger chunk than individual sounds. The smallest unit of sound is a phoneme, which is just a single sound like /b/ or /æ/ in a word. A grapheme is a written symbol or letter that may represent one or more sounds, so it’s not a sound unit itself. A rime is a subpart of a syllable—the portion from the vowel to the end (for example, the “-oke” in “smoke”)—which is smaller than the full syllable. Since the syllable is the largest sound unit you can segment a word into, it’s the correct choice.