List of long and short vowel words

Phonics Word Lists - Cheat Sheets for Short & Long Vowels

One of my favorite ways to help kids become better readers and spellers is to help them see that words are related, often by spelling pattern. And that’s exactly what these free phonics word lists help kids do. They are a great tool for spelling and reading!

These short and long vowel word lists are a freebie from Printable Spelling Activities & Games and are great for younger learners as well as struggling readers. I’ve included four different fonts {one font in cursive} so that they can fit multiple ages.

*The free download can be found at the END of this post.

*This post contains affiliate links.

Phonics Word Lists and How to Use Them

I created these phonics cheat sheets specifically for playing spelling games with my first grader. Some spelling games we like to integrate include Scrabble Jr., Scrabble Boggle, & Bananagrams.

But it became apparent pretty early on that even though he has above average reading skills, his spelling skills were lagging {normal part of development}. To make up for this, I have made the games less competitive so he doesn’t get so frustrated.

This school year, as I pulled out our games again, I felt he was ready for a little more independence with using spelling strategies, so I created these phonics word lists {cheat sheets} for him to use when we play.

With a little teaching and modeling on how to use the word lists, his frustration level has been lowered and he has more confidence in playing the word games. He knows that with each word on the list, he can change out the red letter{s} and put another letter {or letters} at the front to spell a new word.

The words on the lists contain the most common word family chunks {and some extras as well}. The short vowel sheet* features 80 common word patterns and the long vowel sheet features 105 common word patterns. There is great power in the words because when the first letter {onset} is changed, thousands of words can be spelled!

*Note: The short vowel page has some extra patterns included that aren’t entirely short vowels, like car, ball, and her, just to name a few.

Amazon.com Widgets

More Phonics Resources:

Single Syllable Phonics Cheat Sheet
Teaching Kids to Read is NOT Enough
Low Prep Phonics Games {over 300 included!}
Find the Oddball Game
Mix n’ Match Spelling
CVC Word Lists {The Measured Mom}

: Short Vowel Word Study

Literacy Apps for Kids {Interactive apps that reinforce phonics skills}

Enjoy!

~Becky

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Long Vowel Sounds: Word Lists & Activities

Phonics | Spelling

ByDelilah Orpi

This post may contain affiliate links, and I will earn a commission if you purchase through these links. Please read the disclosure policy for more details.

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In this post, I’m breaking down long vowel sounds (or long vowel words) to help you teach them when working with struggling readers and spellers.

Looking for long vowel word lists? Download all 5 of my pdf long vowel sounds word lists in my freebies library by joining my email list below.

What is a long vowel sound?

Long vowel sounds are vowels that are pronounced the same as their name. You’ll often hear teachers say that long vowels “say their name”.

Long vowels are very common but they can be tricky because there are so many spellings for each long vowel sound.

There are actually 4 ways to make long vowel sounds:

Vowels at the end of a syllable make the long sound. For example, in the words me and halo (ha-lo) the vowels are all at the end of a syllable so they make the long sound.
Silent e makes the previous vowel long. The words bike and phone have a silent e at the end that makes the previous vowel long.
Vowel teams can make the long sound. Vowel teams work together to make one sound, and usually, it’s a long vowel sound. For example, boat and meat both have vowel teams that make the long sound.
I or O can be long when they come before two consonants. In words like cold and mind, i and o make a long vowel sound.

Long Vowel Words

Long vowel sound words are words that have vowels that say their name. Below are a few examples:

Long a – baby, cake, rain, day, they, weigh
Long e – me, eve, hear, meet, piece, candy
Long i – silent, bike, light, my
Long o – go, home, toe, boat, snow
Long u – music, mule, pew, feud

Long A Sound

The long a sound can be represented by 8 different spelling patterns:

a – baby
a_e – cake
ai – rain
ay – play
ei – reindeer
eigh – weight
ea – steak
ey – they

Learn more about teaching the long a sound here, and check out my Long A Words Activities & Worksheets for printable activities.

Long E Sound

The long e sound can be represented by 8 different spelling patterns:

e – be
e_e – eve
ee – meet
ea – beach
ei – protein
ie – piece
ey – key
y – candy

For ideas, tips, and tricks when teaching the long e sound, read this post all about teaching the long e vowel sound, and check out my Long E Words Activities & Worksheets for printable activities.

Long I Sound

The long i sound can be represented by 6 different spelling patterns:

i – silent
i_e – shine
ie – pie
igh – light
y – my
y_e – type

You can learn more about teaching the long I sound in this post. And check out my Long I Worksheets set in my shop for printable activities on the long i sound.

Long O Sound

The long o sound can be represented by 5 different spelling patterns:

o – go
o_e – phone
oe – toe
oa – boat
ow – snow

You can learn more about teaching long o words and check out my long o worksheets.

Long U Sound

The long u has two sounds: yoo (/y/ /oo/) and oo (/oo/).

The long u sound can be represented by 7 different spelling patterns:

u – music
u_e – mule
ue – rescue
eu – feud
ew – few
oo – food
ou – soup

Learn more about teaching the long u sound here.

Tips for teaching the long vowel sounds

Teach one spelling pattern at a time!

I don’t mean one vowel sound, but just one spelling pattern. So for example, if you’re working on long a, you would work on the spelling pattern a silent e (cake, same, cave) until students have mastered it, then move on to ai, and so on. You should not be teaching multiple spelling patterns together, even though they make the same sound.

I know that most programs out there combine all the long vowel sound spelling patterns into one lesson, especially in spelling lists, but this does not work for struggling readers. You need to break it down for them and only do one at a time.

Teach the syllable types.

Because syllables have a lot to do with whether vowels make the short or long sound, if students do not already know the 6 syllable types then teach them along with the long vowel sound.

Here are resources for each syllable type:

closed syllable
open syllable
final silent e syllable
vowel team syllable
r combination syllable
consonant le syllable

Use a variety of activities to practice each spelling pattern.

Games, dictation, word sorts, memory or matching with flashcards, word hunts, textured writing, body spelling, and bingo are all fun ways to practice the long vowel sounds.

The main activity that is often overlooked is dictation. It seems so simple but the task involves listening to a word, deciding on the spelling, and transferring that info to written form. These are all skills that struggling readers need to practice.

Teach the spelling generalizations.

Some of the long vowel spelling patterns are spelling rules that make it easy to remember.

For example, ai is usually found at the beginning or middle of a syllable, and ay is usually found at the end of a syllable. [Examples: rain, aim, play, daytime]

Here is another example with long o: oa is usually found at the beginning or middle of a word, and ow is usually found at the end. [Examples: boat, coach, snow]

Long Vowel Word List

I made these word lists to help teach the long vowels. I find it handy to have these on hand when playing phonics games or planning activities for long vowel lessons.

Grab them for free below!

Visit my Teachers Pay Teachers shop to see all my literacy products.

Want to remember this? Save Long Vowel Sounds: Word Lists & Activities to your favorite Pinterest board!

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Delilah Orpi

Delilah Orpi is the owner and founder of Thrive Literacy Corner. She has a Bachelor's degree in Special Education, a Master's degree in TESOL, and is a member of the International Dyslexia Association. She is an experienced educator and literacy specialist trained in Orton Gillingham and Lindamood Bell. Delilah creates literacy resources for educators and parents and writes to create awareness about dyslexia and effective literacy instruction based on the science of reading.

Pronunciation of long and short English vowels

If there is the most terrible beast in English phonetics, then for the vast majority of us it is English vowel sounds, or rather their duration. The main reason long and short vowels in English give us so much trouble is simple - we don't understand them. We do not understand how to pronounce them correctly and how to confidently distinguish them in speech. We can be understood, because the duration of the sound is a subjective thing. Do not measure it with a stopwatch! Do the British themselves rely solely on the duration of the sound? Of course not!

Struggling for quality

First, all English vowels differ qualitatively. For a beginner, this difference may not be obvious, however, the more clearly you remember this fact, the faster you will learn to determine this qualitative difference. Pay attention to the transcription of short [ɪ] and long [iː] English "and". Yes, a colon is added to the long sound, but the main character is not the same - precisely in order to reflect the difference in the quality of the sound, and not just in its longitude. Here, however, there are several unpleasant nuances at once.

First, a lot depends on transcription. There are several systems of phonetic transcription. Here we are talking about IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet), the most authoritative system in the world and generally accepted in Russia. But even in the IPA, for the time being, both long and short English "and" - more precisely, their basis - were denoted by the same symbol.

Secondly, the degree of this qualitative difference itself varies greatly for different vowel pairs. For example, if the long "a" in "cart" is radically different from both "cut" and "cat" and "cot", then the difference between "pool" and "pull" is not so pronounced.

Thirdly, regional accents further confuse the situation (and there are hundreds of them in England alone). The Scots, for example, distinguish between "pool" and "pull" solely by context, that is, even the length of the sound they have in this pair is the same.

A look through the looking-glass: lax and tense

And what to do now? Look at the problem from the other side, from English! To be fair, the English also sometimes refer to their vowels as long and short. However, in more or less academic sources, vowels are divided not into long-short ones, but into "lax" and "tense", i.e. relaxed and tense. Now we will figure out what in this case relaxes and tenses.

Keep in mind that if you pronounce long and short vowels correctly, it will be much easier for you to distinguish them by ear. Now, the main reason for the problems and misunderstanding of English vowels is that we think of them as long and short. But how else to think about them, if they are long and short, you ask. “They told us about it at school,” right? Strictly speaking, the duration of "long" vowels can vary widely, so that even the term itself is not entirely accurate. Much worse, however, is that we are trying to artificially lengthen or shorten these vowels. And folk wisdom says: if you have to imitate, then something is wrong.

Bubbles and colors

We have already noted that the correct position of the tongue often automatically leads to the correct pronunciation. Developing this thought, the length or brevity of the vowel is an effect, not a cause.

So, the first thing to do is to bring the tongue into the correct position. The analogy with a hot potato in your mouth is appropriate, just place the potato not on the tip of the tongue, but closer to the root. Let me remind you that as much as this situation is unusual for us, it is just as natural for the British. That is, the tongue should be relaxed in this position (remembered about "lax"). Now imagine a bubble rising from the bottom of the lake. The sound made by the bursting bubble is as short as possible - bang! - as soon as it touches the surface of the water, the pressure inside the bubble instantly dissipates. Short vowels are pronounced similarly - put, book, cut, bit, etc. To maintain the sound of such a vowel, no additional effort is applied - this is "lax".

When pronouncing long vowels - on the contrary - air pressure on the ligaments maintains the sound for some time. In this case, at the root of the tongue you will feel a slight tension. These two moments are "tense". Thanks to them, the sound acquires a noticeably more pronounced character than that of short vowels. You can compare this to the color saturation of paints - "tense" colors are bright and saturated, while "lax" colors are closer to shades of gray.

Whoever seeks is always

Work on pronunciation is a search. We try to repeat what we hear this way and that, until one day we suddenly understand how this or that sound is actually pronounced and, most importantly, why. And so many times. Here I have offered you a little hint. Armed with it, start paying attention to how English vowels are pronounced by native speakers themselves, and be sure to try to repeat after them. And if you have any questions feel free to ask them in the comments. You can also subscribe to our English Pronunciation Course for free, which will greatly speed up your progress.

The longest words in the Russian language

The Russian language is considered quite difficult, compared, for example, with German or English, although Scandinavian languages are probably in the first place in terms of the degree of difficulty in pronouncing words.

There are many long words in it. If we talk about the longest, then in the Guinness Book of Records the longest word in the Russian language is declared "X-ray electrocardiographic" , it has 33 characters. It was the record of 1933. And in 2003 it was replaced by a word of 35 characters - "highly contemplative" .

Chemistry is a storehouse of the longest words
Although their leadership is formally recognized, in analytical chemistry there are simply huge names of substances, since they are built according to a certain scheme. For example, the adjective "tetrahydropyranylcyclopentyltetrahydropyridine" consists of 55 letters. Or "methoxychlorodiethylaminomethylbutylaminoacridine" - 44 characters.

Another example: the prefix "great-" can be used in a concept that indicates the degree of relationship, many times - "greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgrandfather" . Theoretically, this word can be stretched indefinitely. Word formations from numerals, which denote certain quantities, can also be extremely long: “one thousand nine hundred seven and six centimeter networks” - 43 characters. However, regarding all these examples, philologists are still arguing whether to consider them the longest words in the Russian language. They are not universally used, and the possibility of making endless designs distinguishes them from the bulk.

The longest verbs and other parts of speech
If we talk about verbs, then the longest words are “re-examine” and “internationalize” , they have 24 letters each, if you form word forms with an ending from them, for example , "-ing" , then you get 25 letters. In the longest nouns - "misanthropy" and "excellence" - also 24 letters each - you can create word forms in the plural, and you get 26 letters (although the first word is not used in the plural). Among animate nouns, the most letters - 21 each - in words "eleventh grader" and "clerk" . The longest interjection recorded in Russian dictionaries is "physical education hello" .

We are used to the fact that prepositions and conjunctions are short words, but the word “respectively” falls out of the general row, it has 14 letters. The situation is similar with adverbs - there is only one long adverb "unsatisfactory" , consisting of 19 letters.

Some argue whether nouns and adjectives with hyphens can be considered as the longest words in the Russian language, because they are “glued together” artificially, but still let's pay attention to them: in word "agricultural engineering" - 38 characters, and in "stubber-bulldozer-loader" - 31. Similar words include an adjective (although it is without a hyphen) "electrophotosemiconductor" - 28 characters and "water and mud peat paraffin treatment » - 29 characters. The longest food word formation - out of 38 characters - "bread sausage kindly productive" . The word is funny, but at the same time noted in an authoritative source - the spelling dictionary of the Russian Academy of Sciences (responsible ed. V. V. Lopatin).

The longest words in literature
If we recall the classical literature, Nikolai Leskov has the word “in a more prudent” in one of his popular stories. Interestingly, no one can reliably explain what it means - most likely, Leskov himself invented it.

Probably the longest abbreviation will also make an indelible impression on you:0039 . We will not list the full name of this institute - it will take a whole paragraph. Imagine how difficult it was for the employees of this scientific institution to name their position or place of work if necessary.

An interesting fact - there is an extremely long word for phobia - the fear of just long words! It sounds like this: hippopotomomonstrosesquippedaliophobia (37 characters). By the way, this is actually a Latin term "hippopotomomonstrosesquippedaliophobia" , which is recognized as the longest word in the world.

The most difficult words
Many interesting facts can be found about the most difficult words in the Russian language. For example, it is generally accepted that three "e" are only in the word "long-necked" .