The activity of matching word strips to sentences primarily develops which reading skill?

• A. Phonological awareness
• B. Fluency
• C. Word recognition skills
• D. Understanding text structure

Answer: (C)

This item targets word recognition at the word level. When students match word strips to sentences, they practice quickly identifying each written word and recognizing its meaning in context. This builds sight-word recognition and strengthens orthographic mapping, helping decoding become automatic so more cognitive effort can go toward understanding the sentence as a whole. It isn’t primarily about manipulating sounds (phonological awareness), which focuses on phonemes and syllables; nor is it about reading smoothness and expression in continuous text (fluency) or about understanding how text is organized (text structure). So the activity mainly develops word recognition skills.