Jj is for Jottings 126.  The Bossy ‘E’.

The bossy ‘e’ (sometimes called the magic ‘e’) appears so often in written language that it is worth revisiting in its own right.  It is a classic case of “Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day.  Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Once you know the rule, you can unlock thousands of words.

WHAT IS THE BOSSY ‘E’?

The article on short and long vowels gave a definition, which I will repeat here: “…creating a long vowel sound by putting an ‘e’ on the end of the word.  This is often referred to as the “bossy ‘e’” or the “magic ‘e’”.  (“The ‘e’ on the end makes the vowel say its name.  The ‘e’ is silent.”) Examples are “bake”, “seed”, “hike”, “poke”, “mute”.  See how you can use a bossy ‘e’ to change a short vowel to a long vowel with these minimal pairs: can/cane; bet/beet; rid/ride; hop/hope; cut/cute.  If you say each of these aloud, it is very clear that the first half of the pair uses the sound made by the vowel, and the second half uses the vowel’s name.”

TEACHING THE BOSSY ‘E’.

To teach the bossy ‘e’ to children, they need to know the name of each letter of the alphabet and the sound it makes.  The letter names are what we say when we recite the alphabet or sing the alphabet song.   If you need to refresh your memory about the sound made by each letter, you can find out on this video.

If children don’t thoroughly know letter names versus sounds, they will just be confused.  They won’t have a clue when you remind them that the ‘e’ on the end makes the (vowel) sound say its name.  If you are using the word “vowel”, you will also need to make sure they know which letters are vowels and which are consonants.

Teaching Points.

Here are the small teaching points which make up the big bossy ‘e’ rule:

• The ‘e’ on the end makes the vowel sound say its name. That’s why it’s bossy.
• The ‘e’ is silent. It has used up all its energy by making the vowel say its name, so it doesn’t have any left to make a sound.
• The bossy ‘e’ is found at the end of the word, bossing the vowel from a distance.
• When you see the ‘e’ on the end, it is a signal to say the name of the vowel when sounding out the word.
• But when the vowel sound in the word is ‘e’, the bossy ‘e’ doesn’t jump to the end of the word.  It stays with its twin because they love each other.

As always in English, there are some exceptions in which you do pronounce the ‘e’ on the end: cafe, resume, acne.  The first two are French and should have an acute accent on the ‘e’, which also tells you how to pronounce it. So, in a sense, they are not exceptions but simply words borrowed from another language.  “Acne” is from Latin – yet another borrowed word – which is it doesn’t follow the bossy ‘e’ rule, either.

PRACTISING THE BOSSY ‘E’ RULE.

There are many worksheets to be found online to practise the bossy ‘e’ rule in many different forms.  But you can quickly and easily create some practice with a pencil and a piece of paper.  Write a series of 3-letter words (consonant-vowel-consonant).  Have the child read each word, then add ‘e’ to the end and have them read it again.  In the early stages of learning the rule, stick to making words with the same vowel – all ‘a’ words, or ‘o’ etc. Of course, with the ‘e’ words you can’t usually add the ‘e’ to the end, but leave space to put it beside its twin.  When the child becomes more proficient, mix the vowels around.

You don’t even have to bother to work out whether either word in each minimal pair is a real word or a nonsense word.  In fact, it is a very good language exercise to ask if each one is a real word and, if so, what it means.  Even with simple 3-sound words, there is much vocabulary to learn.  For example, for “tap”, you could talk about the thing you turn on to get water; tap dancing; to strike with light blows; to listen secretly to someone’s telephone conversation (which is also the name of the device used for this); an instrument for cutting a threaded hole in a material; to draw liquid from a cask, barrel etc.  Obviously you would suit your examples to the age of the child.  In fact, this is not only vocabulary, but general knowledge.

Just remember not to confuse things by choosing rule-breaking consonants in your 3-letter words.  You can’t use ‘q’, because it needs ‘u’ after it.  Don’t put ‘r’ at the end, because that changes the sound of the vowel (see r controlled vowels diphthongs).  It is better not to use ‘l’ on the end, because it tends to distort the vowel.

If you pick up a book, newspaper or magazine at random and scan a page for bossy ‘e’ words, you’ll see just how common they are.  Therefore, knowing that one rule opens the door to so many words.

 

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