How to sound words

How to Sound Out Words

(from The Teacher’s Guide: Third Grade to Adult Edition)

If a student encounters a word that he does not know how to decode, he must sound out the word.  Sounding out a word refers to the process of decoding a word by identifying the sounds of each individual letter in the word and then blending those sounds together.  A student sounds out a word when he does not know the identity of the word.  There is a specific sequence of steps to follow when using this sounding-out procedure.  When a student is sounding out a word, have him perform the following steps, and insist that this sequence of activities be systematically followed.

Procedure To Follow When Sounding Out an Unknown Word:

Step One: Always begin by identifying the vowel sound. 
Step Two: After accurately identifying the vowel sound, identify the consonant sound that immediately follows the vowel sound.
Step Three:  Blend together the vowel sound with the following consonant sound.
Step Four:  If two consonants follow the vowel and do not join to together to form a consonant team, isolate the vowel sound and the first consonant that follows the vowel.  Blend those two sounds together.  Next isolate the sound of the second consonant following the vowel.  Blend the sound of the vowel and the first consonant with the sound of the second consonant.
Step Five:  After the vowel sound and all consonant sounds found after the vowel have been blended together, have the student identify the sound of the consonant letter that comes immediately before the vowel.
Step Six:   Blend together the consonant sound with the sound of the vowel and the consonant letter or letters that come after the vowel.
Step Seven: If two or three consonant letters come before the vowel and do not join together to form a team, start with the consonant closest to the vowel.  Identify that consonant’s sound and blend it with the sound of the vowel and the consonant letters that follow the vowel.   Next isolate the sound of the next adjacent consonant letter.  Blend that letter’s sound with the sound of the rest of the word that has already been decoded.   If a third consonant occurs before the vowel, isolate that letter’s sound last and then blend its sound with the rest of the word.

Teach students always to begin sounding out one-syllable words by identifying the sound of the vowel within the syllable first.

Researchers have discovered that syllables can be subdivided into two component parts. Onsets are that part of the syllable that consist of whatever consonants occur before the vowel; rhymes are that part of the syllable containing the vowel and whatever consonants follow the vowel.  Researchers have further identified the fact that students are more easily able to decode a word by being taught to isolate the onsets and rhymes within words.  Thus by teaching students to start the decoding process by isolating the sound of the vowel and any subsequent consonants which follow the vowel, you are in effect teaching students to subdivide a syllable into its most basic component parts.

When sounding out a word, your student is being asked to perform two tasks simultaneously: 1) to associate a specific sound with a specific letter and 2) to blend smoothly one sound to another.  Either of these two skills can individually be difficult for some.  Blending for someone to whom this concept is foreign can be particularly challenging.  However with persistence your student will learn to perform both of these skills automatically.

The Teacher’s Guide: Third Grade to Adult Edition

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Helping Kids Sound Out Words (+ FREE Downloads!)

by Marie Rippel

When you read, you probably don’t spend much time decoding the individual words. You just read, and as you get to each word, you instantly recognize it. But beginning readers don’t have that kind of instant recall yet, so it is important to teach them how to sound out words.

What Does “Sounding Out Words” Mean?

When you sound out a word, you say each sound in the word slowly (s…i…t), and then say the sounds together more quickly (sit). The technical term for this process is blending because sounds are blended together to form a word. Here’s a quick demo:

Our free Blending Procedure PDF has complete step-by-step instructions for both one-syllable and multisyllabic words.

Why Is Sounding Out (or Blending) Important?

When a child can say the sounds of the letters in the order in which they appear, and can then blend those sounds into a recognizable word, she is able to read thousands of phonetically regular words.

Because it unlocks so many words, blending is an important step toward the goal of reading comprehension. In fact, research shows that learning to sound out words has a powerful effect on reading comprehension. ¹

What Kids Should Know Before Sounding Out Words

Before you attempt to teach your child to sound out words, check to see if he is ready. Here’s a free Reading Readiness Checklist for you to download. If you discover that your child isn’t quite ready for reading instruction, you can use the All About Reading Pre-reading program to prepare.

After you’ve used the checklist to ensure that your child is ready to learn to read, it’s time to teach the letter-sound correspondences of several letters of the alphabet. The letters M, S, P, and A are a good place to start because the sounds are easy to pronounce and several interesting words can be formed right away.

Before we get into the four easy steps for teaching blending, let’s discuss a problem that many beginning readers encounter. Recognizing this problem will help you better understand the steps for blending.

Short-term Memory Issues Can Affect Blending

When kids first learn how to decode three-letter words, they have to juggle several cognitive processes simultaneously:

• They must recognize the letters.
• They must retrieve the sounds of those letters.
• They must hold all three sounds in the memory while they sound out the word.

There is a lot going on in their brains! In fact, it is very common for beginning readers to have difficulty with standard blending procedures. Just about anyone who has taught blending has encountered a situation like this:

What just happened there? Here’s the problem: by the time the child got to the third letter, he had forgotten the sounds of the first two letters, and then had to resort to guessing. But it’s not that kids can’t remember three things in a row—it’s just that there are too many competing processes going on in their heads at once.

It’s easy to understand the problem. But what can we do to help?

“Cumulative Blending” Solves This Problem

Cumulative blending is quite simple. Start by building a phonetically regular word with the Letter Tiles app or physical letter tiles and then follow the steps below. We’ll demonstrate with the word map.

1. Touch one letter at a time and say the sound of each letter.

2. Go back to the beginning of the word and blend the first two sounds together.

3. Start over at the beginning of the word. Slide your finger under the letters and blend all three sounds together.

4. Finally, say the word at a normal pace, as we do when we speak.

This is called cumulative blending because there are successive additions of the letter sounds. First we blend the first two sounds (/mă/). Then we start at the beginning of the word again, this time blending all three sounds (/măp/). If there were more sounds in the word, as in split, we’d start at the beginning of the word for each successive addition:

/sp/

/spl/

/splĭ/

/splĭt/

Cumulative blending provides the extra support, or “scaffolding,” that beginning readers need. When you feel your student is ready, he can try blending all three letters without this additional step, but don’t try to withdraw the support too soon. These steps and the support they provide help memory issues immensely.

Download a Free Blending Lesson

Would you like to see how we teach blending in the All About Reading program? Download this sample lesson!

This is the first lesson in AAR Level 1. The blending activities start on page 4 of the PDF.

The All About Reading program walks you through blending and all the skills your student needs to become a strong reader. The program is multisensory, motivating, and complete. And if you ever need a helping hand, we’re here for you.

What’s your take on teaching kids to sound out words? Have anything else to share? Let me know in the comments below!

___________________________________
¹ University of Royal Holloway London. (2017, April 20). Phonics works: Sounding out words is best way to teach reading, study suggests. ScienceDaily. Retrieved May 1, 2017 from www.sciencedaily.com

Pronunciation of English words with voice acting ∣ Enguide.ru

English dictionaries “learned” to speak so that you can use them to practice pronunciation of words in English. We have selected the most convenient online dictionaries with voiced transcription.

English pronunciation, phonetics of the English language give novice students a lot of work. Therefore, we devoted a whole series of articles to sound and pronunciation: about the phonetics of the English language, about the rules of reading in English and how to train the correct English pronunciation (British and American). All these topics overlap, but each covers a different aspect of English phonetics. And in this article we want to share a convenient technique that allows you to first learn and then train the correct pronunciation of English words. Phonetic transcription and a “speaking” dictionary will help with this. nine0003

English phonetic transcription

Phonetic transcription is a graphical record of how a word sounds.

The task of transcription is to record the correct pronunciation of a word as accurately as possible. To do this, each uttered sound is indicated by one or more symbols. They are called - phonetic symbols.

English pronunciation is legendary. In the sense that the reading and pronunciation of English words is very specific and different from how these words are written. Unlike writing, words in spoken English are made up not only and not so much of letters, but of letter combinations and combinations of sounds. nine0003

To read English correctly, it is desirable to fulfill three conditions:

1. know and apply the rules of reading in English;
2. learn English words with pronunciation from the very beginning;
3. know English transcription.

The advice about remembering the correct pronunciation is clear, but it's quite tricky. But why are reading rules not enough - after all, if you own a rule, you can apply it at the right time ?! This seems logical, but the problem is that not all English words follow the rules of reading. Many of them are exceptions that need to be either memorized or... nine0003

This is where transcription of English words comes in handy. It makes it possible to correctly read and pronounce English words, including unfamiliar ones. Therefore, in all dictionaries, words with transcription are given. But we want to talk about an even more convenient source of information about the sound pronunciation of English words - this is a "speaking" dictionary, or the pronunciation of English words online.

Where can I listen to pronunciation of English words online?

Practicing the correct pronunciation of English, British or American, is no small matter. Here, all means are good if they really help to instill in the student the correct pronunciation of English words. We have repeatedly mentioned various online resources that help you learn English better and easier. It's time to think about English dictionaries that use audio pronunciation as an additional feature. nine0003

You may disagree: they say that such a function is available in any online translator! And you will be right. But the advantage of the World Wide Web is precisely that we have a choice. You do not need to install special programs on your computer or smartphone to find out how to pronounce the English word of interest. And you can listen, compare and choose the sounded English dictionary that you like:

• Sound Word: here is the transcription, pronunciation and translation of English words online in one service. An instant translator from English into Russian (and other languages) is at your service. You can read more about online translators in the article 6 Best Online English Translators. You can translate both single words and whole sentences. The service provides a translation of each English word with transcription and allows you to listen to its pronunciation. You can choose free pronunciation with British and American accents. nine0024
• The English speaking dictionary is also handy to use to practice correct English pronunciation. This is an extensive database of words in English in audio format. There are almost all the most commonly used words in the English language, so you will surely find everything you need. Moreover, you can not only listen to the voiced words online, but also download and listen to it until you remember its pronunciation.
• Cambridge dictionary from Cambridge University Press contains several British, American and business dictionaries at once. Here you will find simple and clear definitions, translations and practical examples showing how words are used in English. This resource is based on 1.5 billion words from the Cambridge English Corpus and allows you to listen to words spoken in British and American English. nine0024

There are a lot of similar sites with the pronunciation of English words online, but these three seemed to us the most convenient. Their important advantage is the "human" pronunciation of words. That is, the audio pronunciations were read word by word by native English speakers, and not generated by the program. In addition, they are very easy to use: just enter a word in a special field and click the “search” button to get a translation with comments and a button to start an audio recording of this word in mp3 format. nine0003

Let's try to translate an excerpt from Shelley's poem "Good Night":

The night is good; because my love
They never say good-night.

This is what the talking dictionary “answers” ​​to us:

The whole phrase of the pillars: “Good night; because, my love, they never say goodnight.”

And words separately:

• is [ ɪz ] / this is
• good [ɡʊd]/ good, kind
• because [bɪˈkɒz]/ because, after all
• my [maɪ] / my
• love [lʌv] / love
• They [reɪ] / they
• never [ˈnevə(r)]/never
• say [seɪ] / say
• goodnight [ˈgʊdnaɪt]/ good night.

Plus definitions, comments and examples of how these words are used in different contexts. Well, very handy for learning English pronunciation!

Pronunciation of English words for children

Some teaching methods, especially English textbooks for children, offer transcription of English words in Russian letters. This is an ambiguous approach to the study of foreign languages, it causes a lot of controversy. Here are the main reasons:

“For” recording the sound of English words in Russian letters :

• Convenient for beginners
• Everyone can start learning English on their own
• Convenient for tourists (English phrasebooks with Russian transcription).

Against writing down the pronunciation of English words in Russian