Jj is for Jottings 104. Sound-Letter Links and Less Regular Words.
Once children know their sound-letter links thoroughly, they are then able to sound out any 100% regular word. These could be real words or nonsense words of any length, as long as one letter equals one sound (with the basic exceptions here). But what of sound-letter links and words which are less regular?
Learning the basics before moving on to sound-letter links and less regular words. Baby alpacas like to learn their sound-letter links, too, it seems. (From the Border Mail, 2014. Photo by Tara Goonan.)
SOUND-LETTER LINKS AND REGULAR WORDS.
Examples of regular, one letter= one sound words are:
2 sounds=2 letters: us, if, at.
3 sounds=3 letters: can, him, rip.
4 sounds=4 letters: clap, desk, ramp.
5 sounds=5 letters: crust, grunt, steps.
In every case, as long as you know the sound made by each letter, you can sound out and blend the word. Even if the word is unfamiliar, you can still sound it out and blend the sounds to produce the correct word. The following words are nonsense words (not real words), but you can still sound them out easily: bruft, sotmup, crinpod, stradbisk.
SOUND-LETTER LINKS AND LESS REGULAR WORDS.
I am using the term “less regular” rather than “irregular” for two reasons:
- “Regular” and “irregular” usually apply to verbs.
- There are really very few truly irregularly-spelt words in English. You can decode (work out) the majority of words because most sounds in each word do follow normal rules. (Here is some help for reading difficult words.)
You could define “less regular” words as words in which the number of letters doesn’t equal the number of sounds. Some examples are:
2 sounds: door, neigh, toy.
3 sounds : knife, sheep, thing.
4 sounds: soccer, measure, signed.
Once you apply spelling rules, you see that you can decode these words with a mixture of simple phonics (sound-letter links) and applying the rules. For example, in “knife” there are 2 sound-letter links, /n/ and /f/, which are sounded. And there are 2 rules applied: silent ‘k’ before ‘n’; and bossy ‘e’ (‘e’ on the end makes the sound say its name. The ‘e’ is silent. See the section on long vowels).
Of course, the big problem here is whether or not you have been taught spelling rules in the first place! The best and most systematic way of doing this is through the use of decodable readers.
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