In the context of reading instruction, what is blending primarily focused on?

Blending is a fundamental skill in reading instruction that involves the combination of individual sounds, or phonemes, to form coherent words. This process is crucial for developing phonemic awareness, a key component of effective reading. When students learn to blend sounds, they engage in saying the sounds of letters or groups of letters in sequence and then merging them together to pronounce a word, which enhances their decoding skills.

By mastering blending, students can effectively tackle unfamiliar words as they begin to read. This skill is often practiced through various phonics activities, where learners are encouraged to articulate sounds distinctly before merging them into a whole word, thereby building their reading fluency and comprehension.

The other options, while related to different aspects of literacy, do not capture the primary focus of blending in reading instruction. Identifying vocabulary words pertains more to comprehension and word recognition, analyzing sentence structure relates to grammar and syntax, and memorizing sight words helps with reading fluency but does not specifically address how sounds combine to form words.