Silent consonants

My progress in teaching him phonics has been rather slow the past few months.

There are a few reasons behind that. Firstly, I think he's doing fine in terms of reading. Secondly, I needed to focus on other areas like his self care skills, handwriting, fine motor and maths (and preparing him for the entrance assessment which he has since passed). Thirdly, I'm not sure how to progress further once I've completed teaching him the long vowels.

He's learnt how to make (read/spell) the long vowel sounds of a, e, i and o. Before I could teach him, I myself had to learn about it. The Morris-Montessori Word List book was incredibly useful in this respect. Thanks so much Yvonne! We just started on the long vowel u today which I think is tricky because I dont quite get it. To me, "u-e" sounds just like "oo" rather than "u".

Anyhow, I was very happy to have come across this article in The Star, Educate pull out section, today. Very timely. Very useful, as it lists out some of the rules for silent consonants.

I googled the name of the author's approach and came across this site which has more resources that'll help me learn more.
http://www.internationallanguageacademy.com.au/index.php?option=com_k2&view=latest&layout=latest&Itemid=61

The article that appeared in the newspaper is reproduced below.

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The Star newspaper, Sunday July 10, 2011


Recognising silent symbols

EXPLORING ENGLISH

By KEITH W. WRIGHT

Knowing when a vowel or consonant is ‘silent’ will help you spell and pronounce words confidently.

A characteristic of the English language that causes spelling and pronunciation problems is the presence of silent symbols. Tens of thousands of English words have at least one symbol (letter) that is not sounded when pronounced.

Mastering silent symbols is necessary to be able to determine how a particular word is pronounced and spelt. To assist learners, 4S teaches a number of Keys that have already been introduced in previous Exploring English columns.

Silent symbols fall into three distinct groups: silent vowels, silent single consonants, and consonant combinations, where one or both of the symbols are silent.

Silent vowels

The most common silent symbol is the final ‘e’ in words such as: ride, lame, bone, and tube.

The 4S Key To Understanding Pronunciation and Spelling teaches: The final silent ‘e’ usually lets the other vowel do the “talking”. When the final ‘e’ is not sounded, the preceding vowel is “long”, i.e. it says its own name.

4S applies the Skills Transfer technique to teach other related ‘e’-ending words. When one can spell and pronounce “ride” correctly, it is easy to also spell and pronounce bide, hide, side, inside and many other related words.

The next most common silent vowel category is when two vowels come together in a word.

Usually when this occurs, the second one is silent. The first vowel can make either a “long” or a “short” sound. The semi-vowels ‘y’ and ‘w’ can also be silent when they are at the end of a word or syllable, e.g. day, knowing.

The 4S Key teaches: When two vowels go out walking the first one usually does the talking. This is when the first vowel is sounded but the second one is silent, e.g. aim, people, tried, breathe, bread, health, leopard, weather. This also applies to words with the semi-vowels ‘y’ and ‘w’ such as blow and pray.

Again, skills transfer is easy to apply here. Once you know how to spell and pronounce bread, for example, you will realise similar techniques in dead, dread, thread, instead.

Sometimes, in words borrowed from other languages, the first vowel is silent, for example: shield, guide, neutral, guess, quest.

Silent single consonants

Of the 21 consonants, 11 are sometimes silent as single consonants: ‘c’, ‘d’, ‘h’, ‘l’, ‘p’, ‘r’, ‘s’, ‘t’, ‘b’, ‘n’, and ‘z’.

Two other consonants, ‘w’, ‘g’, can be silent in symbol combinations.

The silent ‘c’: back, rack, track, shack,

The silent ‘d’: Wednesday, judge, ledge

The silent ‘h’: honest, hour, heir, exhibit,

The silent ‘l’: walk, talk, calm, palm

The silent ‘p’: receipt, corps

The silent ‘r’: iron

The silent ‘s’: island, isle, aisle, descend

The silent ‘t’: listen, often, fasten, whistle

The consonants ‘b’ and ‘n’ are always silent in one-syllable, root words when they follow the symbol ‘m’, such as in the words bomb, dumb, thumb, lamb, damn, column, hymn and mnemonic. The silence can be lost when a suffix is added, e.g. hymn > hym/nal.

In two-syllable words, when the syllable split is between ‘m’ and ‘b’, both the symbols are always sounded as they end and begin each syllable, e.g. num-ber, thim-ble, tim-ber, ram-ble.

In some words borrowed from other languages there can be an unexpected silent symbol, e.g. such as ‘z’ in rendezvous.

Consonant combinations

Common consonant combinations with silent symbols are ‘wr’, ‘wh’, ‘gh’, ‘kn’ and ‘sc’. In ‘wr’ words, ‘w’ always remains silent, e.g. wrap, wrong, write, wreck, wrench, wrist.

Remember: ‘wr’ always says ‘r..’.

In ‘wh’ words, the silent symbol varies from ‘w’ to ‘h’.

Compare: (i) whip, why, wheat, whale, which, wheel, when, what, where – and (ii) who, whom, whole, whose, wholesale.

In “who” words, the ‘w’ is always silent.

While ‘w’ is often silent when used as a demi-vowel, e.g. blow, it also can be silent when it is part of the ‘sw’ symbol combination, e.g. sword, answer.

There are two variations of the “gh” combination in the silent symbol category.

Sometimes, both symbols are silent: ought, caught, daughter, height, eight, weight.

At others, only the ‘h’ is silent and the ‘g’ says “g..” as in “goat”: ghost and ghetto.

The letter ‘k’ is silent in “kn” words such as knife, knee, know, kneel, knit.

In some “sc” words, the “c” remains silent, e.g. scene, scent, science. But the exception to this is scat and scuttle.

Most odd-looking consonant blends have a silent symbol. They are usually found in words borrowed from other languages, e.g. rhinoceros, gnome, khaki, fjord, tsunami, psychiatry, pneumonia, and so on.

There are two 4S Keys that could be applied here: In odd-looking consonant blends, only one consonant is usually sounded; and when ‘p’ begins an odd-looking consonant blend, it is usually silent.

Keith Wright is the author and creator of the 4S Approach To Literacy and Language (4S) — a modern, innovative and proven method of accelerating the learning of English. The 4S methodology and the associated Accelerated English Programme (AEP) mentioned in this fortnightly column are now being used internationally to enhance the English proficiency of people with different competency levels.

E-mail
contact@4Sliteracy.com.au for a free copy of the 4S-AEP Silent Symbol Booklet.