I am having a hard time teaching my son the difference between the short vowel sounds. He can identify the letters and knows the sounds, but when he is writing he gets his short vowel sounds very confused. Any help would be appreciated.
Re: vowels
One of the problems with learning short vowels is that the point of articulation for some of them and some long vowels is almost identical. Take, for example letter sound \i\ and the letter name E. When we attempt to say these, the mouth has the same shape. The fundamental difference is that E is produced just a bit farther forward in the mouth. The tongue retreats slightly to form the \i\ sound.
The same is true with letter name A and letter sound \e, with letter name I and letter sound \o, and with letter name O and letter sound \u. Children with less than perfect auditory discrimination have great difficulty sorting out these sounds in oral language. Trying to write the letter which identifies the sounds becomes an even greater task because children really try to use letter-name knowledge to do this.
One of the ways to help children is to teach the vowels out of sequence, first teaching those with significant sound differences, then retreating to the ones with similar sounds as the \a, \i, \u, \o, \e\ sequence. That separates the teaching of \a\ and \e\ about as far as one can go. Teach each one well before moving on to the next and review the previous ones as soon as new ones have been taught.
I hope this explanation doesn’t muddy the waters it’s intended to help clear. Grace at
Patience is a virtue. This takes time and practice
(a) Even if stressed, many of these sounds are pretty similar. Say in order the short vowels, aaa — eh eh — ih ih — o (aw) - uh uh and you will notice that they are really close sounds, the only difference being that as you work through the list your tongue works from front to back of your mouth. All of them are made with the mouth fairly relaxed, tongue down. Just a slight difference front to back. So if your child doesn’t at first hear or feel such a subtle difference, that’s normal and OK for a beginner. Have the child imitate you and practice saying each sound very much overstressed, both in reading and spelling. This is a fun game and helps remember both the sounds and the spellings.
(b) In unstressed syllables, almost all English vowels drop to the “schwa” or “uh” sound. Say “elephant”. The first e, in the stressed syllable, is definitely a short e “eh” sound. But the second e drops to “uh” or the schwa. Our conventional spelling does not really represent this.
In reading, as you sound out, pronounce each vowel clearly as if stressed. Then say the word faster and faster as you practice blending, and the unstressed vowels will naturally drop.
In spelling, say the word with its artificial spelling pronunciation as a guide to remembering which unstressed vowel is hiding in there.
(c) In writing, there is a huge controversy over “invented spelling”. I saw a book last night that uses a better term, “temporary spelling”. The idea is that *for a beginner* (a very important condition) making up an approximate spelling by sound is more than OK, it’s a good step towards writing and spelling in a more standard way. If a person who is in the first year of learning to read and write (at whatever age, 4 to 80) writes “shrt” and “tedy beres”, this is a GOOD move for a *beginner*. The writer has learned the basic phonetic patterns. After the basic patterns are learned and printing is under fair control, *then* you start to re-shape the spelling to standard.