Developing Phonics Knowledge: Vowels

Recognized By

The student is unable to use vowels to decode one-syllable words because she is unable to give the correct sounds and variant sounds of the vowels and vowel teams.

Discussion

It is important to recognize that the vowel rules are the least consistent phonics generalizations in English. It would probably be accurate to say that those students who least need them—the students who are already capable decoders—best understand these rules. Thus, forcing students with reading difficulties to learn many inconsistent phonics rules often proves fruitless.

Assessing Phonics Knowledge

To check the student’s knowledge of vowels, use a Phonics Assessment.  If you wish to know if a specific vowel element is in a reader’s store of knowledge, you can have the reader attempt to read an unfamiliar word that contains that vowel element. If the reader correctly pronounces the word, you can assume she knows the vowel element contained in that word.

Teaching Phonics Knowledge

In the past, students who were learning phonics were often taught a great many rules that would supposedly help them to decode. Some programs taught students well over 100 different symbol-sound correspondences. However, research studies over many years have shown that some of the rules formerly taught had little utility. Most of the unreliable rules related to the teaching of vowel sounds. Listed here are 10 generalizations that appear to be the most reliable of the vowel rules. However, even these rules are not helpful to many struggling readers:

1. If there is only one vowel letter and it appears at the end of a word, the letter usually has a long sound. Note that this is true only for one-syllable words. (Examples: go and be.)
2. A single vowel in a syllable usually has a short sound if it is not the last letter in a syllable or is not followed by r. (Examples: cat and sit.)
3. A vowel followed by r usually has a sound that is neither long nor short. (Examples: star and work.)
4. When y is preceded by a consonant in a one-syllable word, the y usually has the sound of long i. (Examples include: by and my.) But in words of two or more syllables, the final y usually has the sound of long e. (Examples: baby and funny.)
5. In words ending in vowel-consonant-e, the e is silent, and the vowel may be either long or short. Try the long sound first. (Examples: cave or have and dome and come.) As you can see, this generalization has a lot of exceptions. Fortunately, many of the exceptions are basic sight words, which should be memorized by students and thus should not cause undue confusion.
6. In ai, ay, ea, oa, and ee, the first vowel is usually long and the second is silent. A common mnemonic that is used to help students remember this generalization is: “Maids may eat oak trees.” (Note, however, that ea has many exceptions, including head, great, and heard.)
7. The vowel pair ow may have either the long o sound as in low or the diphthong heard in owl. (In a diphthong, the two vowel letters, in this case o and w, are both heard and make a gliding sound.)
8. In au, aw, ou, oi, and oy, the vowels usually blend or form a diphthong.
9. The oo sound is either long as in moon or short as in book.
10. If a is the only vowel in a syllable and it is followed by l or w, then the a will usually be neither long nor short, but will have the aw sound heard in ball and awl. (When one of the letters r, w, or l comes immediately after a vowel, it usually distorts the sound of the previous vowel, making it neither long nor short. Really Weird Letters is a good mnemonic to help students remember this.)

If you study these rules for a while, you will have little difficulty coming up with exceptions to all of them. In fact, every one of these so-called “reliable” rules uses words such as either, or, usually, or may, and many of the rules also include alternative examples.

For students who have difficulty learning the symbol-sound association for vowels, the phonogram approach is often more effective. A phonogram, as defined here, is a common word family beginning with a vowel or vowel pair followed by a consonant or consonants, and sometimes ending in e. Examples of phonograms are: ake, at, ed, ime, old, and up. These word endings, and many others, almost always are pronounced the same way in the many different words in which they appear. Because of this consistency in pronunciation, students often find it much easier to learn to decode when they are taught using phonograms.

Regardless of how phonics is being taught, it is important that students have a goal of coming up with a word they recognize when they apply phonics to decode a new word in print. If the word is not one they can recognize from their oral language, students should apply an alternate sound to see if the word is now one they can recognize from their oral language. Sometimes students may correctly decode a word and not recognize it because it is not in their oral vocabulary.

ELL Students and Phonics Knowledge

A student whose first language has a more consistent symbol-sound correspondence than that found in English may have some difficulty adjusting to the idea that vowels can represent more than one sound. Differences between the vowel phonemes used in English and those used in a student’s first language may need to be considered when presenting vowel phonics lessons to an ELL student.

Recommendations

A.  It is helpful to teach the most common vowel sounds (long and short) using the following types of phonograms: words that end with the vowel-consonant-e configuration (as in cake) for long vowel sounds and words that have the CVC configuration (as in hit) or the CVCC configuration (as in mask) for the short vowel sounds.  A brief review of the phonogram approach method is presented here.

If you wish to teach the long and short vowel sounds for a, choose the following words:  mat, hat, rat, fat

Discuss the sound represented by short a. Then present the previously listed words. If the student cannot pronounce them, help her to do so. Then present the following words:  mate, hate, rate, fate

Discuss the fact that when the e is added, the first vowel takes on its long sound; when the e is removed, the vowel takes on its short sound. Review the long vowel sound as you did the short vowel sound. Then present other words, such as those that follow. Cover up the final e in each word and ask the student to pronounce the word. Then expose the final e and ask her to say the word with the long sound.  pale, gale

B.  Construct flash cards in which the vowel is shown along with both the word and a picture illustrating a word that uses that vowel, for example, short a in hat or long a in rake. On the opposite side, print only the vowel letter, marked long or short, to be used as the student progresses in ability. When using this method with a large group, you can use transparencies on an overhead projector instead of flash cards.

C.  Have students circle or underline the words that have vowels with the same sound as the first word in the line. See the following examples:

1. lot    lone, dog, of, to
2. rat    car, bear, sad, same
3. line  with, win, bike, is

D.  Record the vowel letters with their sounds and variant sounds and play them to students as many times as necessary to learn them. They should, however, have a chart they can follow to see the letter as they hear the sound. Many commercial programs exist to achieve this objective in fun or clever ways.

E.  Put the vowel letters on cards (3' x 3"). Use the breve (˘) and the macron (–) to indicate the short and long sounds. Divide these cards into groups of 10 each. Lay out separate groups of letters so the student can see 10 at once. As you call the sounds of the vowel letters, or as they are played from a tape recording, have the student pick up the correct card to match the sound of the letter.

F.  Use the same system as in item E. Instead of having the students match letters they hear, have them write the letter matching the letter sound (phoneme) they hear in words.

G.  Use commercial charts that are available for teaching vowels. Audiotapes to accompany the sounds are also available.

H.  Use commercially prepared games or computer software designed for teaching vowels and the application of vowel sounds in decoding.