Read and Speak Better English with “Phona-text”

As we have said before, reciting the alphabet perfectly does NOT guarantee that readers will know all the SOUNDS they will need for reading. However, learning the alphabet IS important for several reasons: (1) We will always have to SPELL with alphabet letters. (2) ORDER is part of our culture. We have many occasions to put things into alphabetical (A, B, C) order. We look things up in reference books because someone else put that list into alphabetical order. (3) VOWELS and CONSONANTS come from the alphabet. The “vowels” are letters “a,” “e,” “i,” “o,” “u,” and sometimes “y.” The “consonants” include any letter that is NOT a “vowel: (b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, w, v, w, x, y, and z). In “Phona-text,” letter “y” is considered a “consonant” because when “y” is a vowel, it is heard as long “i” [ i ] (as in the word “shy” [SHi] or long “e” [e] (found at the end of the word “happy” [ha’-pe].) Even the sound of the much-used little words that we call “articles” (“a,” “an,” and “the”) are determined by whether a vowel or consonant SOUND follows them. If the very next word after an article starts with a “vowel SOUND,” we will use “an” or the pronunciation of “the” [THe] before those words. For example, we would say “an apple” or “the [THe] apple.” But if the next word starts with a consonant SOUND we would say “a [u] ball” and the [THu] ball.” It is not determined by the LETTER, but by the consonant or vowel SOUND. Because the “h” is silent in the word “hour,” we would not say “the [THu] hour,” we would correctly say “the [THe] hour [ao’-wr] was noon, so the [THu] hands on the [THu] clock [KLok] are both on 12. Friends are coming in “an” hour.” The terminology “long vowel” means that it sounds the SAME way that you hear it when reciting the alphabet. Beyond that, each vowel produces many different sounds that you heard while talking about the pictures that demonstrated the Key Words of the previous story “Saturday Outside.” Here are some of the Key Words that can be heard with various vowel sounds or used as “silent letters”: A/a: day, apple, eat, head, bat, ball, hair, hear, card, mailbox, grapes, yard, what, snake, zigzag, measure, and practice. E/e: eat, get, head, legs, measure, she, ten, ice, apple, number, grapes, snake, shoes, and practice. I/i: ice, into, coil, bird, hair, right, mailbox, high, pick, fish, this, swing, voices, child, zigzag, kick, quick, and practice. O/o: O.K., not, noon, into, book, coil, out, door, mailbox, dog, throw, voices, windows, shoes, and box. U/u: up, out, number, jump, measure, and quick. Plus, the [u] sound can take the place of ALL vowels in unstressed vowel situations. In reciting the alphabet, just to say a letter’s name, we hear different vowel sounds: We hear long [a] to pronounce letters A, H, J, and K. We hear long [e] to pronounce letters B, C, D, E, G, P, T, and Z. We hear long [i] to pronounce letters I and Y. We hear long [o] to pronounce letter O. We hear long [u] to pronounce letters U and W. We hear short [e] to pronounce letters F, L, S, and X. We hear short [i] to pronounce letters M and N. We hear short [o] to pronounce letter R. Remember: the “long” vowel sounds are the same as you hear when reciting the alphabet. The alphabet letters are for SPELLING while the “Phona-text” symbols are for “SOUNDING-OUT” words while you read. Let’s review the chart of the “Phona-text” symbols with the story’s Key Words now: “Phona-text” Sound Symbols (with Key Words from the story and grouped to sing to the tune of “Ten Indians”) _______________________________________________________________________________ Group 1: Long Vowels (underlined) a e i o u day eat ice O.K. noon Group 2: Short Vowels (no extra marks) a e i o u apple head into not up Group 3: Vowel Pairs ,AW, ,UU, oe and ao ball book coil out Group 4: “r” Combos r ar ir or or bird hair hear card door Group 5: Bumps r n m and h right number mailbox high Group 6: Sticks & Circles l b d and p legs bat and ball dog sitting watching pick Group 7: Cross Bars t f TH and TH ten fish throw this Group 8: Tails & Blends j g GR and NG jump get grapes swing Group 9: Points v w y and HW voices windows yard what Group 10: Curves and Zigzags CH s SH z ZH child snake she / shoes zigzag measure Group 11 “k” Cousins k x=KS q=KW and c=k/s kick box quick practice Vowels Also Help Us to Read by Syllables A “syllable” is a single uninterrupted sound that forms one piece of a word. Thanks to syllables, we do not have to fear long words. It might sound trite, but you can only eat an elephant “bite by bite.” In whole words, each one of those smaller “bites” is called a “syllable.” Syllables help us to treat long words like a group of short words sitting side-by-side. Use a pencil with a clean eraser to put a dot under each vowel that appears alone between two consonants in the regular spelling of a word. (Syllables ten and eleven of the sample word prove that there are exceptions to every rule because both “I” and “a” are separate syllables.) We also put only one dot under each cluster of two or three vowels that are sitting side-by-side (such as the “-iou” before the last letter “s”) in the sample word that we are about to use. After you put dots under the vowels of the following fun word from the Mary Poppins musical, let the “Phona-text” symbols help you to read this very long word by syllables. We have put hyphens between syllables to make it easier to read. supercalifragilisticexpialidocious [su’-pr-ka-lu-FRa’-ju-lis-tik-eKS’-pe-a- lu-do-SHus] (and it means “extraordinary.”)