MTTC 103 Elementary Practice 2025 – 400 Free Practice Questions to Pass the Exam

The term that describes the sounds represented in a word is phonemes. Phonemes are the smallest units of sound in a language that can distinguish one word from another. For instance, changing the phoneme /b/ in the word "bat" to /c/ changes the word to "cat." This highlights how phonemes are essential in understanding how sounds come together to create meanings.

Syllables, while related to the structure of words, refer to units of rhythm in a word rather than individual sounds. Morphemes represent the smallest meaning-bearing units of language, which can include words or parts of words, such as prefixes and suffixes. Phonetics, on the other hand, is the study of the sounds of human speech, but it does not refer specifically to the individual sounds as they function within words. Therefore, phonemes accurately capture the concept of the elemental sounds that comprise a word.