Chapter 4: Some Theoretical Aspects of Words
Consonants, Vowels, Phonemes, Graphemes, Digraphs, Blends*
When talking about words with other teachers or looking for resources on the internet
you may need to consider the concepts of consonants, vowels, phonemes, graphemes,
digraphs, and blends. We omit a language focus here because these are not terms (with
the exceptions of consonant and vowel) that you typically use to discuss words with
students. For our purposes, it is enough to know what these concepts are and recognize
them in words.
Consonants and Vowels: A Source of Confusion
When teachers talk of consonants and vowels, some confusion may arise because the
terms consonant and vowel are used loosely, and can refer to two different things:
sounds or letters. That is, sometimes consonant and vowel refer to a type of sound and
sometimes the terms are used to label letters according to the type of sound that the
letters typically make, whether they are making the sound or not in a given word. The
sound /b/ as in ball is a consonant sound made by the consonant letter b. However, the
consonant letter b is silent in the word lamb, so lamb does not have a consonant sound
/b/ even though it has a consonant letter b.
Consonants and Vowels: Letters
In short, consonant letters are usually listed as the following letters: b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k,
l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, y, and z. They are called consonants because these letters
typically make consonant sounds. Whereas, vowel letters are the following letters: a, e,
i, o, and u. The vowel letters typically make vowel sounds.
Y is also sometimes listed as a vowel since it makes a vowel sound as in the words cry,
myth, and happy, but a consonant sound in the words yellow and young. The choice to
call y a vowel or consonant is arbitrary with some vowel lists including it and some not.
Consonants and Vowels: Sounds
A consonant sound is a sound like the /b/ in ball, the /f/ in fish, or the /w/ in water.
Consonants are made by closing restricting the vocal tract in some way.
A vowel sound is a sound like the /æ/ in bat, the /aɪ/ in like or the /ɔɪ/ in boy. Vowels
are sounds made with an open vocal tract.
Exercise 4-1: Letters and Sounds. Fill in the table below.
Consonant
Consonant
Vowel
Word
Letters
Sounds
Letters
cat
like
bought
sight
ship
Vowel
Sounds
*When looking at pronunciation it is possible to get bogged down in discussions of a linguistic
nature. The purpose of this book is to examine the way teachers discuss language not the way
linguists discuss language and so I've tried to keep the technical details to a minimum.
Exercise 4-2:
Discuss the following questions with your partner:
(1) Which of the following three statements is correct? Provide reasons or examples to
argue your answer.
(a) There are more consonant letters than consonant sounds.
(b) There are more consonant sounds than consonant letters?
(c) The number of consonant sounds is equal to the number of consonant letters.
(2) Which of the following statements is correct? Provide reasons or examples to argue
your answer.
(a) There are more vowel letters than vowel sounds.
(b) There are more vowel sounds than vowel letters?
(c) The number of vowel sounds is equal to the number of vowel letters.
(3) Which of the following three statements is correct? Provide reasons or examples to
argue your answer.
(a) All words have consonant sounds
(b) All words have vowel sounds.
(c) All words have both sounds.
(4) Can you think of a word that has more consonant letters than consonant sounds?
(5) Can you think of a word that has more vowel letters than vowel sounds?
Long Vowel versus Short Vowels
It may also be helpful to talk about long and short vowels. Short vowels are the 5 basic
vowel sounds like the /æ/ in cat, /ɛ/ in bed, the /ɪ/ in sit, the /ɒ/ in dog, and the /ʌ/ in
run. Short vowels are generally* monophthongs, or pure vowels. Long vowels are
vowel sounds that are made by adding a silent e (often called a ‘bossy’ e), like the /eɪ/ in
cake, the /iː/ in athlete, the /aɪ/ in like, the /oʊ/ in vote, or the /u/ in flute. Long vowels
are generally diphthongs.
To complicate matters, there are also vowel letters such as the ea in beach or the oa in
boat that make long vowel sounds (/iː/ and /oʊ/), but are usually called vowel digraphs
instead (see below). In some sense, this convention is arbitrary, but arises because of the
pedagogical need to order the way in which phonetic rules are taught. So for example,
short vowels are taught as a separate group, ‘bossy e’ long vowels are taught as a
separate group and vowel digraphs are taught a separate group.
*It depends on the dialect of English being spoken however.
Find words to fill in the table
a
short
long
cat
e
i
o
u
Phonemes and Graphemes
Another way to approach the task of discussing words is to talk about phonemes and
graphemes. The discussion of phoneme-grapheme correspondences is particularly
useful for teachers who are teaching phonics.
A phoneme is an individual unit of sound (smaller than a syllable) like the /d/ in dog.
The word cat for example has three phonemes /k/, /a/, and /t/.
A grapheme is a written representation of a phoneme. For example, the /k/ sound in
cat is represented by the grapheme c. Often a grapheme is just a letter, but that is not
always the case. See digraph below.
A digraph is grapheme that is composed of two letters like the consonant digraph sh as
in shirt or the vowel digraph ee as in need. The word sheep has five letters, but only
three graphemes (representing three phonemes).
A cvc word is a word composed of consonant + vowel + consonant without any
digraphs or long vowels. Bed, bat, dog, sub, and fin are all cvc words.
A blend is a combination of consonant sounds without a vowel in between. An initial
blend is anything like the fr in frog or the str in strength. A final blend is anything like
the nd in send or the lt in melt.
An r-controlled vowel is a combination of a vowel followed by r. The r causes the
vowel pronunciation to change (hence it's called r-controlled). The ar in star, the ir in
bird, and the or in storm are examples.
Decoding skills are the skills that help students break down graphemes into their
corresponding phonemes, which is a fancy way to say help students read words.
Teaching decoding skills is often synonymous with teaching phonics.
As a cautionary note, keep in mind that the discussion above only pertains to words that
follow regular phonetic rules. Some of the most common words in the English language
such as one do not have a regular phoneme-grapheme correspondence. These words are
learned by sight, though context and partial decoding can help a child successfully
decode the word.
Exercise 4-3:
If you had to teach decoding skills, in what order what would you teach the list of items
below? In groups, discuss and number the following items with 1 being the first thing
you would teach and 8 being the last thing you would teach.
vowel digraphs
consonant blends
long vowels (bossy Es)
consonant digraphs
consonants sounds
short vowels
r-controlled vowels
cvc words
Along with theoretical aspects of a word such as graphemes and phonemes, it is
sometimes also useful to discuss the syllables in a word.
Language Focus 4-1: Syllables in a Word
Syllables are units of sound based around a vowel. They must include a vowel sound and
may include initial or final consonant sounds. Look at the way we talk about syllables in
a word.
Paper has two syllables.
There are two syllables in paper.
Now write similar expressions for the following words.
attitude
syllable
every
screeched*
The number of syllables in a word is sometimes contentious because it really depends on
your particular dialect of English. Different speakers have different pronunciations that
have different syllabic breakdowns. As well, even many native speakers are fooled into
miscounting syllables by relying on spelling. Every is a case in point: every has two
syllables e-vree, but many speakers 'see' the word as being composed of ever +y, which
breaks down as e-ver-ee, even though it is not usually pronounced that way.
*With nine-letters, screeched along with scratched, scrounged, scrunched, stretched, straights, and
strengths, is the longest one-syllable word in modern English.
The International Phonetic Alphabet
Chapter 4: What's in a Sound
Along with spelling and meaning, pronunciation is one of the most important aspects of
a word that teachers will discuss with their students. In this chapter we look at ways to
discuss pronunciation, sounds that letters make,
Language Focus 5-1: Asking about Pronunciation
If students want to know the pronunciation for a word they can ask the following
questions.
How do you pronounce (this word/this/that/it)?
How is (this word/it/this/that) pronounced?
How do you say (this word/this/that/it)?
You can indicate pronunciation in the following ways:
You pronounce it /word/.
It's pronounced /word/.
Language Focus 5-2: Sounds and Letters
When talking about letters and sounds, there is a strong collocation between make and
sound.
(The) B makes a /b/ sound.
(The) S-H makes a /ʃ/ sound.
Exercise 5-1:
What sound does the letter make in each of the following words?
century
later
knight
philosophy
ocean
Language Focus 5-3: Silent Letters
Some letters don't make any sound whatsoever. For example, consider the words lamb
and watch.
Lamb has a silent B.
The T in watch is silent.
Exercise 5-2: Clarifying Silent Letters
Using Language focus 5-3 above, indicate which letters are silent.
debt
island
raspberry
sign
autumn
Language Focus 5-4: Clarifying Letter Pronunciation
Like in section 2-8 where we looked at clarifying a letter, there are times when we may
have to clarify a sound. We can use the same approach as in language focus 2-8, where
used a well-known word to clarify a letter. This time we use a word with a well-known
pronunciation that most students will already know.
That's /b/ as in boy.
That's /k/ like the /k/ in cat
Exercise 5-3: Clarifying Letter Pronunciation
Combine language focus 5-2 and 5-4 above to clarify the pronunciation of the letters in
bold.
brother
The T-H makes a /ð/ sound like the /ð/ in this.
peach
machine
west
saw
laugh