Consonants and Vowels

The "soft g" is represented by the phoneme

/j/

The letter S generally represents two phonemes

/s/ /z/ /s/ being taught first

There are how many vowel phonemes in the English language

19

The consonant Digraph C

Ch usually represent the phoneme /ch/ as in church. Less frequently ch represents the phoneme /k/ as in chemical and the phoneme /sh/ as in machine

Single Consonants

Of the 21 consonant letters and 17 are basically phonemically consistent when they occur by themselves and not in combination with other letters. These include the following: b d f h j k l m n p q r t v w y z

Double C and Double G

When consonants c and g are doubled within a word frequently they record sounds that represent a combination of their hard and soft sound.

Consonant Blends

are sounds in a syllable represented by two or more letters that are blended together without losing their own identity

Vowel Digraphs

are two-vowel letters that stand for a single sound or phoneme

Short vowel sounds

are usually introduced in three-letter words with a spelling pattern of consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC)

Consonant Digraph Th

can represent one of two phonemes /th/ or /TH/

Consonant Digraphs

consist of two letters that stand for a single phoneme

Schwa Sound

is a short, unstressed vowel that often occurs in unaccented syllables

Allophone

is a sound belonging to the same phoneme

Vowel sounds

the inconsistent spelling of vowel sounds is a basic problem of phonics

R-Controlled Vowels

when a vowel is followed by the consonant letter r, the vowel sound is neither short nor long