AnyOneCanRead®
Learning English Sounds and Spellings: A “Pcues” Tutorial
In the groundbreaking assistive reading software that’s being provided to AOCR, you have learned by now that any word on our site can be “mouse-clicked” or “touch-screened” for pronunciation help with that word.
In addition to hearing every letter in such word “sounded-out,” you may have noticed that very often the appearance of the letter changes to something different than its “normal text appearance.”
What’s happening there? Well, all letters make more than one sound. For each of the different sounds that a letter makes, the software provides for the letter a unique visual change for each one of those different sounds.
These assistive letter-sound / -visuals are called “Pcues,” or “PQs.” That stands for “pronunciation cues or clues.”
For some students, the visual changes may add subtle “extra credit” to helping them decode words faster and with greater accuracy. These students may pick up on these visual aids — after repeated exposures — with no need to “proactively teach” these various different letter appearances to them.
But for other students, a more intentional teaching of these letter-change-appearances may be a critical extra aid for them. We particularly expect that for English Language Learners, these visual aids may speed them to better understanding of the different sounds in English, as well as speed up progress with their decoding expertise.
This tutorial is about learning these visual aids, and there will be two sections that come at this from different angles (Section One is now complete), both of them being highly valuable.
Section One will take each letter (a letter is the “fulcrum” in Section One) and show the visuals for ALL of the different sounds that such letter can make.
Section Two will take each sound (a sound is the “fulcrum” in Section Two) and show the visuals for ALL of the different letters that can make such sound.
In many cases, there may be multiple letters involved that “combine” to make a specific sound. Let’s take the Hawaiian word “luau.” Click on that word, and when it’s in the pop-up box, you’ll see that the “AU” is underlined. That clues the reader to know that the “usual” sounds that can be found with letters-A and -U don’t occur here, and that they “combine together” to form a different unique sound. That “AU” syllable in the word “luau” SOUNDS like the word “OW,” like you yell when you hurt yourself. We will show that potential sound with letters “AU” in both the letter-A section and in the letter-U section.
For now, we will have very little written description other than the first time that a repeatable visual strategy is introduced. We think that after the initial explanation, just clicking on the words to get to the sound-out visuals will be intuitive enough.
One final caveat: we are NOT dealing with all possible spelling-letter-combinations that can occur. These myriads of spellings ARE ALL introduced in other AOCR learning activities. As an example, we just want you to be clear that one particular visual makes a certain sound, such as a “stretched letter-A” that makes the “aww” sound. This visual will occur in all of the words where letter-A is making that “aww” sound, regardless of spellings. We just do NOT provide all possible spellings here, such as: “astronaut, talk, palm, salt, saw, caught, water, etc…” In all of those different spellings, the letter-A is stretched.
Please note that in Section Two, where the SOUND is the fulcrum (not the LETTER), we will introduce additional SPELLINGS that we do NOT cover in Section One, just for the sounds that we do cover in Section One that are denoted as: “SH,” “CH,” and “ZH.”
Section One: The Letter Is The Fulcrum
I.e., we take a letter at a time and demonstrate each of its different possible sounds.
Letter-A:
apple
Teaching point: notice that the letter-A does NOT change appearance in the pop-up box. That’s because it is making its most common, or most frequent, sound. This logic applies to all 26 letters. When they make their most frequent sound, their appearance will never change. There are a couple of tricky letters. Letter-X makes its most frequent sound at the END of a word or syllable, like in { six, box, Max, fixture }. Letter-Y makes its most frequent sound (the “long-E”sound) at the END of a word, like in { Mary, very, many, berry, only, golly }.
cake
Teaching point: notice that the letter-A becomes bold and thick in the pop-up box. That’s because it is making its “letter-name-sound,” the way that we pronounce the letter, by itself, when we are saying the alphabet. This logic applies to all 26 letters. When they make their letter-name-sound, they will always become bold and thick. There are two letters that NEVER make their letter-name sound in an actual word, and they are letters-H & -W. However, they CAN make their letter-name-sound in “acronyms” like: NHL (National Hockey League) or YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association).
meat
Teaching point: notice that the letter-A turns light gray, or as many students describe it, “the letter disappears.” That’s because it is a silent letter and it makes no sound. This logic applies to all 26 letters. When the letter is silent, it will always turn light gray. We have found at least one word for all 26 letters where the letter is silent, perhaps the rarest being letter-X, exemplified in the word “Sioux” (a Native American tribe), where letter-X is silent.
walk, swan
Teaching point: notice that the letter-A is stretched out. The “stretch” visual applies to only four letters, letter-A, letter-U, letter-Y, and letter-H. They are stretched to note that the sound is dragged out just a little longer than most sounds. For letter-A, this “drawn-out” sound has two slightly different versions. In “walk,” the letter-A sounds like the word “aww.” In “swan,” the letter-A sounds like the “short-O” in the word “top.” We’ll discuss the other three stretched letter visuals when we get to those letters.
banana
Teaching point: note that the 2nd letter-A stays normal, because it is making its most frequent sound. But look at the 1st and the 3rd letters-A. They shrink! Say “uh,” slowly. It’s how letter-U sounds in words like “bug” and “fun.” But say “uh” quickly, like you’ve been hit in the stomach! Or it’s like a really brief cough. The sound that’s being described here is the “schwa” sound. It occurs ALL the time! A shrunken letter denotes this very brief “uh” sound, and it occurs with six letters, A, E, I, O, U, Y. We visually shrink A, E, I, O, and Y when they make this brief “uh” sound. We don’t bother to ever visually shrink the letter-U, because the normal “uh” and the brief “uh” are close enough, where the normal “uh” sound-out with letter-U is going to get you to the right pronunciation. A good example word here is the word “instrument.” Sound-out letter-U as the normal “uh” – OR the brief “uh” – and you’ll get to the correct pronunciation either way.
sauerkraut, Sao Paolo
Teaching point: this is our first “2-letters-together-making-a-unique-sound” example. In these words, the letters AU and AO both make the “OW” sound (“ow” like you yell when you hurt yourself). You’ll notice that “AU” and “AO” are underlined together, to clue to you that they are making a unique sound having nothing to do with any other more “usual” letter-A or letter-U sounds.
said
Teaching point: this is another “2-letters-together-making-a-unique-sound” example. The letters “AI” are underlined together to show that they make the common-E sound (like letter-E in “egg”).
says
Teaching point: this is another “2-letters-together-making-a-unique-sound” example. The letters “AY” are underlined together to show that they make the common-E sound (like letter -E in “egg”).
plateau
Teaching point: this is a “3-letters-together-making-a-unique-sound” example. The letters “EAU” are underlined together to show that they make the letter-name O sound (like in “go”).
Mary, fairy, aerosol, Larry
Teaching point: this is our first example of a “BLEND.” Instead of being fully underlined together, the letters in question are DOTTED-underlined together. In this word, the letters “AR” are DOTTED underlined together. Unlike the FULL underline, where the letters make a unique sound that has nothing to do with their more usual sounds, with a DOTTED-underline BLEND, one DOES hear “usual” sounds — in this case common-A and common-R — but they somewhat blend together. You’ll note that there are multiple spellings of the same “AR” BLEND sound, where extra letters are in the spelling, and they are just grayed out to show that they are silent.
warm, dinosaur
Teaching point: this is another BLEND with the same letters as above, “AR.” This represents the sound of the word “OR,” which we will get to under letter-O below. The vastly most frequent time that “AR” makes the “OR” sound is when it comes after letter-W, as in: war, wart, warden, warp, warrior, etc. There are occasional exceptions, like in “dinosaur.” The Pcue for this oddity is a dotted-underlined blend of the letters A & R together, but to distinguish this “AR” spelling from the “AR” blend above (as in the word Mary), the A is stretched in this case, to make sure that you recognize the correct different sound in the two identical spellings. In the “AUR” spelling, the U is grayed out as silent.
marshmallow
Teaching point: in this single oddity, the 2nd letter-A is NOT pronounced as a common-A, but as a common-E. It SHOULD have been spelled: “marshmellow.” Since this happens only once that we are aware of, there is no Pcue to distinguish this rarity.
farm
In this word, the visual for letter-A makes it gray / silent, and the visual for the letter-R makes it bold and thick, leading you to have it make its alphabet-letter-name sound. If one were picky, one could argue that the sound of letters-AR in words like this (car, barn, are, arm, etc.) would be closer to a 2-syllable sound. Letter-A would make the frequent-O sound (like in top, box, Don, etc.), and the letter-R would make its more distinctive “ER” sound (see below under letter-R). So, “farm” might sound like “fo-erm”; “barn” might sound like “bo-ern”; “car” might sound like “co-er.” Visually showing the letter-A as gray / silent, and showing the letter-R as bold and thick (making its alphabet-letter-name sound, is certainly simpler.
Letter-B:
bat
beach
thumb
Letter-C:
EXTRA CREDIT: note that the most frequent sound (we call that the “common” or “most frequent” sound) for Letters-C & -K & -Q is identical, i.e., the sounds that they make in words like: cat, kite, mosque.
cat
ceiling
Czar
face
Teaching point: this is our first example of a visual clue being moved OFF of the line (it can be raised or lowered … don’t worry about distinguishing between raising or lowering … “off of the line” just clues you that a different sound is being made than the more “usual” sounds of the letter. This particular visual clue for letter-C just tells you that the letter-C is making the most frequent sound of letter-S, like letter-S sounds in the word “snake.” Every “off of the line” clue is unique, so they will be dealt with one at a time, as we get to each letter below.
cheese
Teaching point: this is another letter combination that occurs very frequently in English, where the sound is unique and is visualized with letters C & H fully underlined together. There are quite a number of words where this spelling can be tricky, where the letter-C makes its common-C sound, and the letter-H is silent. Examples: ache, Chris, Christmas, stomach, choir. There is one root word where we’ve found both letters-C & H together, and they’re both silent!!! — that word is “yacht.”
Letter-D:
dog
deep
judge
Extra credit: there a couple of other sounds that letter-D can make that we do NOT provide a different visual PQ for. For words like these, the letter-D will be visually unaltered, and you will sound the letter out as its most frequent sound, as in the word “dog” above. However, when you SAY the word, the way that your mouth is formed because of that word’s pronunciation, the letter-D will automatically change to a letter-T sound like in the word “top,” or a letter-J sound like in the word “jelly.” Here are two examples. In the word “baked,” the sound of the letter-D will come out like letter-T, diagrammed like this: baket .
In the word “education,” sound-it-out like this:
“ed-u–ka–shun.
But the way your mouth will form, the pronunciation will automatically be:
“ej-u-ka–shun.”
Letter-E:
egg
eat
cake
eight
Teaching point: this is another “move-the-letter-off-of-the-line” example. In this case, letter-E makes the sound of letter-name-A (the alphabet sound for letter-A).
dew
Teaching point: in this word, both letter-E and -W are underlined together. That’s because they make a sound that we spell as “eww.” Think about kids playing, and they run across something that smells bad. They’ll yell, “Eww, what’s that gross smell?”
entree
Teaching point: in this word, note that with the “EN” at the front of the word, letter-E & -N are underlined together. English words with this “EN” spelling and sound came into English from the French language. The sound is like the sound of the letters “ON” in the word “on” and in the names “Don” (short for “Donald”), “Jon” (short for Jonathan), and “Ron” (short for “Ronald”). Notice that in this word “entree,” the three letter-Es all have different visuals representing three different sounds that this letter is making in this word.
skeleton
Teaching point: the 2nd letter-E in this word is making the brief “schwa” sound that we introduced with letter-A. Thus, it visually shrinks in size.
Sigmund Freud
Teaching point: this is another “2-letters-together-making-a-unique-sound” example. In the last name of the above famous psychologist, the letters “EU” “combine” to make the same sound as letters-OY makes in words like “toy,” and letters-OI makes in words like “soil.” Visually, the “EU” letters are underlined together.
very, Jerry, their, there
Teaching point: in this case, the letters “ER” demonstrate another BLEND, hearing “some” of a common-E and a common-R sound — but they blend together. Thus, letter-E & R are dotted-underlined together. You’ll note additional spellings of the same BLEND sound, where extra letters are in the spelling and they are just grayed out to show that they are silent.
EXTRA CREDIT: at the normal speed of speaking, the “AR” blend (shown with the word “Mary” in the letter-A section above) is actually the identical sound as the “ER” blend just above in the word “very.” If you work at it, you CAN distinguish more of a short-A sound for the “AR” blend, and more of a short-E sound for the “ER” blend. BUT, you will be working your mouth muscles with “more effort” than in your normal speed of speech, which in effect makes the vowel sound of letters-A & E something like halfway in between a short-A and a short-E. We’ll prove it right now. Click on the speaker button below, with the next set of words giving different examples of these two BLENDS with their various spellings, but all making the identical sound:
vary, very, Barry, berry, bury, Mary, marry, merry, tarry, Terry, chary, cherry, dairy, derry, fairy, ferry, Carrie, Kerry, parry, Perry
If you could hear a sound difference between AR and ER, then you’ve got more sensitive hearing than we do!
English
Teaching point: this is another BLEND. The letters “ENG” are DOTTED underlined together, as one does hear common-E, common-N, and common-G, but they blend together to make a particularly nasal sound. The massively more frequent spelling of this identical sound is with the letters “ING” (like in “sing”), and there are very rare examples of this identical sound spelled with the letters “YNG” (like in “syngamy”).
Letter F:
fox
left
waffle
of
Teaching point: this is a rare instance where letter-F actually makes the common-V sound, visually noted by moving the letter-F off of the line. There are only four words in English (that we’re aware of) where this occurs: of, hereof, thereof, whereof.
Letter G:
go
genie
gnat
ginger
Teaching point: in this word, both letter-Gs are moved off of the line to visualize that letter-G is making the sound of common-J (like letter-J does in “jelly”).
cough
Teaching point: this is another “2-letters-together-making-a-unique-sound” example. In this word, the letters “GH” “combine” to make the same sound as common-F (as in the word “fox”) makes. Visually, the “GH” letters are underlined together. One other note: “GH” making this sound can only occur at the END of a word or a syllable; “GH” making this sound NEVER occurs at the beginning of a word or syllable.
English
Teaching point: this is a repeat of the “ENG” “BLEND” noted earlier under the letter-E section.
sing
Teaching point: this is a new BLEND with letters “ING” where one hears common-I, common-N, and common-G, but they BLEND together with a nasal sound. Letters-I, -N, and -G are dotted underlined together. This ING spelling — as a BLEND — makes the same sound as the BLEND “ENG” and the BLEND “YNG.”
Letter-H: (get ready: letter-H shows up in LOTS of fully underlined combinations!)
hat
NHL
(which is an acronym standing for “National Hockey League”)
night
cough
Noted above already in letter-G section.
thin
Teaching point: this “TH” spelling is tricky because there are two different “unique” sounds that are spelled “TH.” In both cases, letters T & H are fully underlined together. But to distinguish their two sounds, in the sound version just beneath this one, you will note that, in addition to T & H being underlined together, the letter-H is also stretched out. This first sound in “thin” we associate as having a sort of “hissing” sound. The sound just below in “this” we associate as having a sort of “buzzing” sound.
this
ship
Teaching point: this “SH” spelling is a unique sound with letters S & H fully underlined together. The best way to remember this sound is to think of putting your first finger to your mouth and then making this sound, and you’re thus telling someone to stop talking altogether, or to talk more softly, by making this simultaneous sound and gesture.
cheese
Teaching point: this is yet another letter combination that occurs very frequently in English, where the sound is unique and visualized with letters C & H fully underlined together.
phone
Teaching point: you learned about letters “GH” making a common-F sound above (in the word “cough”). This is another 2-letter combination that makes the common-F sound. The letters P & H are fully underlined together to communicate this sound. Unlike letters “GH,” which we mentioned could appear only at the END of a word or syllable, “PH” can appear up front or at the end. A good word for demonstrating “PH” at the end is the word “triumph.”
Doctor Zhivago
Teaching point: this is a tricky sound. And this is an odd example. This is the title of a famous book written by the Russian author Boris Pasternak. Many guides to English call this the “ZH sound.” It is a unique sound visualized by fully underlining letters Z & H together. It’s one of our more drawn-out sounds, and it might be the least frequent sound in English. What makes it tricky is that there are very few words that actually have a “ZH” spelling, and there are lots of different ways to spell the sound. Examples: the G in “beige”; the J in “Taj Mahal”; the SI in “vision”; the CI in “coercion”; etc… The next-closest sound to this one is probably the common-J sound, as in the word “jelly.”
Edinburgh
Teaching point: this is a complete oddity. It may be the only English word where a CONSONANT (NOT a VOWEL) makes the “schwa” sound. In American English, one might pronounce this as “ed-in-berg,” which would be a 3-syllable pronunciation. But in Scotland, it is a 4-syllable pronunciation, i.e.: ed-in-ber-uh, with the letters “uh” spoken as a brief schwa sound. Since it represents the schwa sound, Pcues visualizes the letter-H as shrunken.
Letter-I:
itch
ice
tail
police
Teaching point: few people realize that the third most frequent sound of letter-I is actually the letter-name-E sound! It happens very frequently (some other examples: pepperoni, serious, skis, Hawaii, and on-and-on …) The Pcues visualization for this is to move the letter-I off of the line (in this case ABOVE the line … our next example needs to move letter-I BELOW the line!).
onion
Teaching point: letter-I is moved BELOW the line when it makes the sound that letter-Y almost always makes at the beginning of a word or a syllable, such as in “yawn, yes, yard, lawyer,” etc.
family
Teaching point: here is letter-I making the schwa sound, thus visualized as shrunken.
sing
Introduced earlier.
said
Introduced earlier.
Letter-J:
job
jail
Juan
Taj Mahal
Teaching point: as noted above, letter-J sometimes makes the similar more-drawn-out “ZH” sound. This occurs VERY rarely, thus we do not alter the letter-J with Pcues in these rare cases.
jai alai
Teaching point: there are occasionally words where letter-J makes a common-H sound. In this game, the word “jai” is pronounced “hi.” These are so rare that there is no Pcue to represent this exception.
Letter-K:
kick
skate
knee
Letter-L:
lunch
elbow
talk
villa
Teaching point: occasionally, two letter-Ls will occur together in words brought into English from Spanish. A typical American English pronunciation of this word would be: “vil-uh.” An appropriate Spanish pronunciation would be: “vee-yuh.” So, the letters-L are producing the sound of letter-Y as it occurs at the beginning of a word or syllable (as in: yes, yawn, yard, lawyer). Since this is fairly rare, a visual Pcue was not created for this sound-letter phenomenon.
Letter-M:
mad
lemon
mnemonic
Letter-N:
nose
men
hymn
vignette
Teaching point: occasionally, the letter-N will include with it the letter-Y (at the beginning of word or syllable like in yawn, yard, yes, lawyer) sound. The sound is something like this: “ny<uh>.” It’s the sound at the beginning of the Russian word for “no,” i.e., “nyet.” This occurs rarely, so a specific Pcue was not created for this letter-sound phenomenon.
Letter-O: (warning, this letter is a hot mess, and it makes all kinds of sounds, depending on what letters it is next to!:
ox
slow
tough
dinosaur
Teaching point: this is letter-O making the schwa sound, so visually, the letter is shrunken.
room
Teaching point: this is a sound that we demonstrated earlier, when spelled with “EW.” Remember, a kid sees something gross and yells, “Eww!” In the case of letters “EW,” they have to be fully underlined as a pair. We treat letter-O differently when making this sound, and we raise the first-O above the line, and the second-O is grayed to show that it’s silent. (In the next word, letter-O will show up below the line.)
book
Teaching point: this sound of letter-O is VERY close to the schwa sound; in fact, maybe it’s really no different from the schwa sound. Decide for yourself! Either way, it is a VERY brief sound. The Pcue for this is to drop the 1st letter-O below the line and to gray out the 2nd letter-O as silent.
house, down
Teaching point: these “OU” and “OW” spellings both represent the “OW!” sound (like you yell when you hurt yourself, or the first sound in the synonym “ouch”). In both cases, the O & U and O & W are fully underlined together to represent this unique sound.
toy, boil
Teaching point: these “OY” and “OI” spellings both represent the “OY!” sound. “Oy” is actually a word by itself, an expression of dismay, pain, annoyance, etc. I have heard it as a vocabulary word in English, Hebrew, Japanese, and Spanish. In both cases, the O & Y and O & I are fully underlined together to represent this unique sound.
love
Teaching point: sometimes letter-O makes the common-U sound (“uh”). Rather than invent a new Pcue to represent this visually, we use the schwa symbol since it is similar to common-U’s sound. Thus, letter-O in this case is shrunken.
woman, women
Teaching point: as in the word “love” above, the letter-O in both “woman” and “women” are visually given the shrunken schwa appearance. That is accurate for the O sound in “woman,” but really, the O sound in “women” is a common-I, i.e., it is generally pronounced “wi-men.” It’s the only word we’re aware of where the letter-O makes a common-I sound, so rather than invent a one-time new Pcue, it was decided to keep it consistent with its appearance in “woman.”
Sao Paolo
Teaching point: demonstrated earlier in the Letter-A section, “AO” is fully underlined to represent the “OW” sound.
for, door, pore, four, roar, Neils Bohr, George
Teaching point: this is a new “BLEND” for you. For the letters “OR,” depending on one’s pronunciation, the first sound you hear is either a letter-name-O sound or an “AW” sound. The next sound made by letter-R is the “ER” sound. They blend together somewhat, so their visual notation is with a DOTTED underline of O & R together. You’ll note additional spellings of the same BLEND sound, where extra letters are in the spelling, and they are just grayed out to show that they are silent. We covered this same sound earlier with the spelling “AR” in the letter-A section.
one, once
Teaching point: this is a rarity. The word “one” sounds the same as the word “won” (as in “We won the game.”). The first sound in the word that you hear is the common-W sound, BUT, you don’t spell “one” or “once” using a letter-W. So the “ON” is fully underlined together to clue you that it is making a unique sound that includes the common-W sound. Didn’t we tell you that letter-O is a hot mess?! But there are other instances where you have a letter-O and hear the common-W sound …
film noir
Teaching point: the word “noir” came into English from French, and it has a somewhat odd pronunciation, like what the word “water” would sound like if you took away the “T” … “wa-er.” The Pcues visual for this rarity is to fully underline letters-O, I, & R together. That’s the clue that something unique is going on with this sound. Whew! We’re done with “O.”
Letter-P:
pig
peel
pneumonia
phone
Explained in letter-H section.
Letter-Q:
mosque
EXTRA CREDIT: the large majority of the time that one sees the letters “QU,” the two letter sounds being made are best represented by a “kw” spelling. That means that letter-Q is making the same sound as common-K and common-C, and the letter-U is actually making the sound of common-W. But be careful, there are quite a few words where in a “QU” spelling, the letter-U is silent, so you don’t hear “kw” — you just hear the common-K sound. Some examples:
antique, grotesque, baroque, physique, clique, etc.
Also, there are rare occurrences where letter-Q is NOT followed by letter-U (Q is just “by itself”), and it makes its common-K sound:
Iraq, Qatar
barbeque
lacquer
Letter-R:
red
car
February
her
Teaching point: the pronunciation of letter-R at the front of a word or syllable is pretty similar to it’s pronunciation at the end of a syllable, but our perspective is that there is a slight difference. In this case at the END of a syllable, we call it the “ER” sound. The Pcue is to make the E silent and to rotate the “R” and drop it off the line. It is a more “aggressive,” drawn-out sound than letter-R at the beginning of a word or syllable.
EXTRA CREDIT: the most frequent SPELLING of the “ER” sound is with the letters-E & -R. However, there are lots of different spellings, and we’ll provide below one word each for the spellings that we have found:
her, nurse, bird, word, learn, dollar, martyr, journey, chauffeur, acre, conquer, liqueur, lacquer, Coeur d’Alene
Letter-S:
sun
dress
aisle
please
Teaching point: VERY frequently, letter-S makes the sound of common-Z. The majority of the time, this happens at the end of a word (like: his, is, Dave’s, muse, as, ease, tease). It sometimes can occur in a word at the beginning of a SYLLABLE in the middle of the word, like in the word “daisy,” but it NEVER makes a Z-sound at the beginning of a WORD (that we are aware of).
EXTRA CREDIT: in a study of possessives (like “Dave’s”) where the S is at the end of the word, we found that S makes the Z sound after every English sound EXCEPT for common-F, common-K, common-P, common-T, and hissing-TH –> it will make it’s common-S sound in these five cases:
Jeff’s, Mack’s, Pip’s, Chet’s, Ruth’s
Try any other sound before the letter-S, and letter-S will make its Z-sound:
Jay’s, Redd’s, Mary’s, Ann’s, Bob’s, Moe’s, Donna’s, etc …
ship
Explained earlier under letter-H. Note, very rarely, the “SH” won’t make the “SH” sound, but each letter will be at a split syllable, and letters-S & -H will be making their most frequent sound, OR letter-S could also be making its letter-Z sound. Some example words: mishap, customshouse, newshound.
Letter-T:
top
team
castle
thin, this
Explained above under letter-H. One caveat: you can get tricked with the “TH” spelling. In the cases of the words “thin” and “this,” they make their “hissing” and “buzzing” sounds, and the visual Pcue is to underline the two letters together. However, there are a fair number of “TH” spellings where T is making its common sound, and H is silent! Here are examples:
Thomas, Thompson, thyme, Thailand
Also, there are multi-syllable words with the syllable break between the T and the H, so they are both making their most-common sounds:
meathead, carthorse, anthill, warthog, penthouse
Letter-U:
up
mule
though
flute
Teaching point: this is a sound we’ve discussed earlier, “EW” (what kids yell out when they see something gross) with various spellings like: dew, to, moon, shoe, move, etc. Now we find that letter-U can make that same sound, and the Pcue for this one is to raise the letter-U above the line.
bush
Teaching point: we discussed this sound using the word “book” under letter-O. The sound is VERY close to the schwa sound; in fact, maybe it’s really no different from the schwa sound. Decide for yourself! Either way, it is a VERY brief sound. The Pcue for this is to drop the letter-U below the line.
suite
Teaching point: this is our 3rd “stretched”-letter Pcue, for the letter-U. It makes the same sound as common-W. As a comparison, the word “suite” is pronounced the very same way as the word “sweet.” Letter-U can make the common-W sound after many different consonants (cuisine, Duane, huevos, suave, bueno, Tierra del Fuego, guava, nuevo, pueblo, etc.), but the most frequent occurrence of this is after letter-Q (question, quit, quiz, quest, quinine, quote, etc.). Review the letter-Q section for information about when in the “QU” spelling the letter-U can be silent!
plateau
Explained earlier.
mouse
Explained earlier.
busy, business
Exception to be aware of: in words with ‘busy’ and ‘busi’ included in them, the letter-U actually makes the common-I sound. A way to show how they really sound would be: “biz-ee” and “biz-nes.”
Letter-V:
vote
movie
revved
Letter-W:
water
YWCA
“Young Women’s Christian Association”
show
dew
Explained earlier.
cow
Explained earlier.
Letter-X:
box
Just remember that letter-X’s most common sound occurs at the END of a word or syllable. And the sound is “…ks.” The word “socks” makes the same sound as the word “Sox,” as in The Boston Red Sox baseball team.
extra
Sioux
xylophone
Teaching point: in a small number of words, letter-X is at the front of a word, and it makes the common-Z sound. The Pcue to represent this is to take the letter-X off of the line.
exit
Teaching point: the Pcue for words that begin with “EX” is to make the letter-X bold to represent its letter-name sound. And in some “EX…” words, it absolutely makes that sound. We suggest that these words have a “pure” letter-name-X sound in the 1st syllable: excavate, excellent, exclamation, expand, exhale, exercise, etc. The 1st syllable sounds like “eks …” You hear a crisp “K” sound.
But in other words that start with “EX,” when you’re speaking at a normal speed, you actually don’t hear a pure “eks …” with a “K.” Can you say “exit” like that, i.e., “eks-it?” Yes, you can. But the odds are that you won’t! It will sound like “egg-zit.” You will hear a G and a Z, and not a K! Some examples of these words are: exam, exist, exert, exhibit, exaggerate.
We don’t make a separate Pcue to show that difference, because it’s okay to sound it out as “eks,” and when you speak, your mouth will automatically create the G & Z sounds without you having to think about it.
Letter-Y:
very
Just remember that letter-Y’s most common sound occurs at the END of a word or syllable. And the sound is the letter-name-E sound.
Wyoming
they
yellow
Teaching point: the sound that letter-Y makes at the BEGINNING of a word is what most folks think is the letter’s most frequent sound. It’s a y<uh> sound like in: yard, yawn, yes, lawyer. It’s actually the second most frequent sound of letter-Y. The Pcue to visualize this is to stretch the letter-Y, so this is our 4th and final version of a stretched letter.
rhyme
Teaching point: letter-Y can also make a letter-name-I sound. Its Pcue is to raise it above the line.
hymn
Teaching point: letter-Y can also make a common-I sound. Its Pcue is to drop it below the line.
oxygen
Teaching point: letter-Y in this case is making the schwa sound, thus it is shrunken.
toy
Explained earlier.
EXTRA CREDIT: we have found three rare cases where the letter-Y makes the letter-name-E sound at the BEGINNING of a word, instead of the usual y<uh> sound that it makes at the front of a word. These three examples are proper names from French: Yvette, Yvonne, Yves. There may be other examples. In these rare cases, “Y” is designated with its common-Y visual, and it is NOT stretched.
Letter-Z:
zoo
zebra
rendezvous
waltz
Teaching point: in some German words that made their way into English, letter-Z makes the common-S sound. We do NOT visually Pcue that to call it out specifically. It works to sound it out with the common-Z sound, and then when you say it, your mouth will automatically make it the common-S sound without you having to think about it.
Lesson
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