No pictures, but we spent a fair amount of time talking about the meaning of each word. Several can be divided into roots/ prefixes/ suffixes – e.g. astro-naut (star sailor), com-put-er (the process of thinking together with), kilo-gram (one thousand grams), micro-chip (very small chip), tele-vision (long distance images). This opens up fascinating lines of investigation – finding words in the dictionary beginning with the same prefix (astrology, astronomer, astrophysics; comrade, combine, compose; kilobyte, kilometre, kilowatt; microbe, microphone, microscope; telegraph, telepathy, telephone, telescope).

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  Prefixes (attached at the beginning of a word), roots, and suffixes (tacked on at the end) are individual chunks of meaning which can be rearranged in countless ways to convey countless ideas. The suffix ‘phone’ means ‘sound’ – so a ‘micro-phone’ gives you access to small sounds, while a ‘tele-phone’ transmits sounds over a long distance. ‘Scope’ means ‘looking at’ – so a ‘micro-scope’ helps you to look at very small things, and a ‘tele-scope’ shows you things that are far away. No reason why your students shouldn’t start exploring dictionaries at this point, to discover more examples of this fascinating method of constructing words, inherited from the Greeks and the Romans. In fact a decent dictionary will show you the paths by means of which our present day words entered English speech, and what languages they are derived from.

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  A bit of time spent on this sort of work has huge advantages. Dictionaries will cease to be daunting and forbidding, and become familiar friends instead; while focusing on the smaller building blocks of words is a great help for remembering how to spell them. (E.g. All you have to do is learn spelling cues for ‘tele’ – ‘tee-lee’ – and you are well on the way to spelling everything that has ‘tele’ as a prefix.) See Section 6, Dyslexia, and the problem of spelling, also Writing, typing and spelling, below.  And Simon Horobin, professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford, has written a book describing in detail the different routes taken by thousands of English words.  Does Spelling Matter? (OUP) reaches the triumphant conclusion that spelling does indeed matter, not least because it preserves the links with so many great writers of the past. Well worth reading by anyone interested in this wonderful language of ours.  

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  But I digress! ‘First sound onto left hand edge’ is only the initial step in the process – once that is established, steps 2 and 3 (match the middles and ends; blend the sounds as you go along) can follow in rapid succession.

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  The rest of the words in my secondary level phonic programme are the same as the primary ones. Not a problem, many are still quite ‘grown-up’, so will not seem patronizing. Simply omit the 1a three- part words (bad, jazz, mad, sat, van etc.) and go straight to Set 1b: grab, hand, slam; desk, lend, nest; kilt, quiz, twig; blot, frog, smog; jump, plug, tusk;  scram, exact; quest, request; crisp, strip; frost, clock; trust, strum.

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  Show your students the word, and tell them straightaway what it says. Then help them to sound it out, blending the sounds as they go along:  gŭ, grŭ, gră, grab;  hŭ, hă, hăn, hand. If possible, show them how to write (or type) the words at the same time, again sounding the words while they do so: this is the best possible foundation for accurate spelling.  

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  They have now mastered the complete matching procedure, and practised it thoroughly with at least 25 words. From here on, as with any skill, the key is more practice, practice, practice, until the ability to sound out written words has become instinctive and automatic. So now, if they hesitate when they are ‘reading back’, ask them to sound out the word, providing any necessary help: you want them to have the continual experience of success, rather than struggle or failure.

 

  All that is left to cover are the two main peculiarities of the English written system: two-letter sounds; and the story of Alphabet Magic.  

 

Two-letter sounds

  Because English speech uses about 44 different sounds, but there are only 26 letters in the written alphabet, we have numerous words where two or more letters match a single sound (like children, night, or dough). At secondary level, I found that many youngsters were quite vague on this score, so I used Book Two in my illustrated Alphabet Magic series (‘The Book of Combinations’) to help familiarize them with 24 words containing two-letter sounds: train, crayons, astronaut, claw, children, beach, three, helicopter, third, nurse, star, morning, jewels, king, kangaroo, book, mouth, tower, elbow, coal, graph, shampoo, cloth, fruit. There is a picture of the word on the right hand page, and the word itself is printed in big letters on the opposite page, with the combination in red.

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  You can teach these words in pretty much the same way as the ‘alphabet’ words. I.e. help your students to say the whole word first, then identify the two-letter sound. After that they sound out the word, adding on just one sound for the combination: tŭ, trŭ, trai, train. Again, it’s a good idea if they practise writing or typing the words, sounding them out as they go along.

 

The story of Alphabet Magic

  The other peculiarity of written English is that when some letters (mainly ‘e’, ‘i’ and ‘y’) occur in certain positions in words, the sounds matching earlier letters can alter.

  E.g.  made, these, shine, clothes, tube, shining, shiny

          city, cygnet, gentle, gypsy  –  etc.

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  If you wish, you can pontificate about ‘split digraphs’ (which in my book are deadly dull, and anyway don’t cover everything). Or, you can share the land of Alphabet Magic with your fellow explorers, by telling them stories of the magic ‘e’, ‘i’ and ‘y’, the double defence, and the bodyguard ‘u’.

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  I have yet to meet anyone who can resist these tales – but also bear in mind that many of your adult strugglers are likely to have children. If they pass on the stories to their own youngsters, this will greatly strengthen their self-esteem, in addition to all the other benefits of doing so.

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  The saga is told in full, alongside delicious illustrations, in Book Three of my series of phonic books, ‘The Story of Alphabet Magic’.

 

  Here it is in brief, to give you the general idea:

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Episode 1:  ‘I’ gets vertigo

  Explain about the difference between vowels and consonants – 21 consonants, and 5 vowels. ‘Consonant’ means ‘sounded together with’, and what the consonants are ‘sounded together with’ are vowels. So every word, in fact every syllable, has got to have a vowel in it somewhere.

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  Am I right? – check on various words. But now look at these words: fly, sky, try – any vowels? No, but they do contain a vowel sound, the long ‘i’ sound at the end. The ‘i’ doesn’t like being at the ends of words (suffers from vertigo, or ‘end of word phobia’), and made friends with ‘y’, who took her off to see the Alphabet Wizard. ‘Y’ was given the job of standing in for ‘i’ (as an honorary vowel) when she didn’t feel up to the task herself.

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  This helps with remembering how to spell words with ‘y’ at the end. There are some words that do end in ‘i’ – encourage your students to track them down in a dictionary by offering a small monetary reward for each one they find.

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Episode 2:  The magic ‘e’  

  ‘E’s problem was that he couldn’t talk very well, he was fine in the middles of words (e.g. red, yes, lend, nest) but not at the ends. The other vowels (except for ‘i’) made fun of him, so the ‘i’ and the ‘y’ took him off to see the Alphabet Wizard. He said the vowels needed to be taught a lesson, and gave ‘e’ some magic power. ‘E’ could send this power over a single intervening consonant, making an earlier vowel say its alphabet name. Practise with these words:

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Spell 1:  made, grate, snake;  these, scene;  kite, shine, slide;  hope, clothes, phone;  tube, exclude, fortune

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(Say  mŭ, mă, măd, māde;  gŭ, grŭ, gră, grăt, grāte  etc. Also sound out the words while writing or typing them.)

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Episode 3:  ‘I’ and ‘y’ join in

  ‘E’s new magic power was so useful that more and more words wanted his help; ‘e’ began to buckle under the strain. The Alphabet Wizard said the ‘i’ and the ‘y’ could work the power as well, to give the ‘e’ some respite:

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Spell 2:  hoping, shining, shiny

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  However, consonants can’t use magic. (They are not members of the Magicians’ Union.) So if you add an ending beginning with a consonant to a magic ‘e’ word, the ‘e’ has to stay:

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Spell 3:  hopeful, grateful, hopeless

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Episode 4:  The double defence

  There are now three magic letters – ‘e’, ‘i’ and ‘y’ – but their power had some unexpected consequences. Add an ‘ing’ to ‘trot’, or a ‘y’ to ‘mud’, and you lengthen the earlier vowel sound (because there is only one consonant in between). So double the consonant to protect the short vowel:

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Spell 4:  trotting, hopping, muddy, webbed

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Episode 5:  Cees and Gees and the bodyguard ‘u’

  The Wizard was so fed up by now that he had decided to take a holiday himself. In his absence, the magic power started doing its own thing, this time affecting two consonants (‘c’ and ‘g’) whose alphabet names were different from their sound names. The magic letters had to come right after the ‘c’ and the ‘g’ to work their power.

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Spell 5:  ceiling, city, cygnet;  gentle, giant, gypsy

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  Words that wanted to protect the hard ‘gu’ sound, when it was followed by a magic letter, sometimes employed the bodyguard ‘u’ as a buffer:

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Spell 6:  guess, guide, plague, guy 

   

  And that’s it!

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  The beauty of this story is that you are not expecting your listeners to learn something by rote – you are inviting them to participate in solving a series of problems. What shall we do about the ‘i’s ‘end of word phobia’? How can we give ‘e’ a bit of a break? How can we protect the short vowel sound in words where the ending begins with a magic letter? How do we keep the hard ‘gu’ sound in certain words? Your students soon take possession of this magical world, and often point out instances where the spells are going awry.

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  For example, one ‘struggler’ declared that the word ‘city’ should really say ‘sighty’, because there was a ‘y’ at the end, following a single consonant. Another lad felt you could say ‘see-igh-ling’ for ‘ceiling’ – to which his friend responded that ‘ei’ was in fact a two-letter sound, so all right. And a young girl was intrigued by the word ‘guide’, because there was an ‘i’ trying to magic the ‘g’, but being prevented by the ‘u’, while the ‘i’ itself was being magicked by the ‘e’ at the end!

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  This is excellent stuff: apart from anything else, learners who engage with the basic construction of words in this way have more than a head start when it comes to spelling them.

 

  You have now completed the whole phonic programme, in a matter of months, and your students are fully capable of reading aloud any material at their interest level.

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  One young man, Wayne, had listened to a recording of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox while he followed the text, but was still somewhat doubtful when I asked him to begin reading it aloud by himself. “Yes you can, Wayne, easy peasy,” I said, “I’ll read the first sentence – ‘Down in the valley there were three farms’ – now you carry on. Sound out every single word in your head, before you read it, and you will get every single word right.”

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  Off he went, and the confidence came rolling in as he kept going, and realized that of course he could do it. He read one page, and started on the second, but ground to a halt after saying ‘He mashed the livers into a disgusting paste’, and stared closely at the text. (The following word was ‘and’ – so what was the problem?) “Miss, look – you know you said the magic power could only work through one consonant, well in that word ‘paste’ it’s working through two, isn’t it! See, the ‘e’ is getting at the ‘a’ even with an ‘s’ and a ‘t’ in the way.”

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  “Wayne, that’s absolutely brilliant, of course you are right. This is one of the exceptions I was telling you about – there always are exceptions, it’s just that they don’t happen very often. You can tell the others about ‘paste’ tomorrow, can’t you – how exciting.” Satisfied grin from Wayne; then, nothing daunted, he gets right back to grips with the text. “He mashed the livers into a disgusting paste, and stuffed the paste into the doughnuts.”

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  At the end of the session, I stopped him as he was leaving. “Oh Wayne – spell ‘paste’ before you go.” “P, a, s, t, e,” with an ‘of course’ smirk; then another huge grin of confidence as he sped off, swinging his bag in the nonchalant manner of someone who knows he can, he’s got this reading business taped, at long last he is the one in charge.

 

Complete list of words in the phonic programme

  The words used above are all included in my secondary level packs of phonic word cards. Here is a complete list:

 

The Alphabet Set – Secondary Level  26 cards

astronaut,  battleship,  computer,  dragon,  electricity,  flying saucer, galaxy, helicopter,  ink,  jet engine,  kilogram,  laser,  microchip, nucleus,  oxygen, programme,  quarter,  robot,  snake, television, umbrella,  video,  witch,  x-ray,  yeti, zebra crossing

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Sound Spelling Set 1 – Vowel Sandwiches  50 cards

Set 1a

(These can be omitted when working with teenagers and adults.)

bad, jazz, mad, sat, van;   bed, fell, red, web, yes;   big, him, kit, lid, pig; cog, doll, fox, got, top; bus, cup, nut, sun, tub

Set 1b

grab, hand, slam;   desk, lend, nest;   kilt, quiz, twig;   blot, frog, smog; jump, plug, tusk;   scram, exact;   quest, request;   crisp, strip;   frost, clock;   trust, strum

 

Sound Spelling Set 2 – The Combinations  36 cards

Set 2a

train,  crayon,  astronaut,  claw,  children,  beach,  three,  helicopter, third,  nurse, star, morning, jewels,  king,  coal,  Typhoo (kangaroo), book,  mouth,  tower, elbow,  graph, shampoo, cloth, fruit

Set 2b

(The combinations are not printed in red. The student identifies the combination/s, then sounds out the word)

proud,  bring,  drown,  play,  flew,  sprang,  squeak,  splash,  shrink,  scream,  other,  mother

 

Sound Spelling Set 3 – Alphabet Magic  34 cards

Spell 1 – The magic ‘e’ spell

           made,  grate,  snake;   these,  scene;   kite,  shine,  slide;  

           hope,  clothes,  phone;   tube,  exclude,  fortune  

Spell 2 – The magic ‘i’ and magic ‘y’ spell

           hoping,  shining,  shiny

Spell 3 – Consonants can’t use magic

           hopeful,  grateful,  hopeless

Spell 4 – The double defence

           trotting,  hopping,  muddy,  webbed

Spell 5 – Changing ‘c’s and ‘g’s

           ceiling,  city,  cygnet;   gentle,  giant,  gypsy

Spell 6 – The bodyguard ‘u’

           guess,  guide,  plague,  guy

 

Packs of the secondary level phonic word cards are available (while stocks last) from: Felicity Craig, 33 Newcomen Road, Dartmouth, Devon, TQ6 9BN, UK. Price: £6.50 per pack, including postage. Payment with order, please – cheques only.

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Overseas customers: £10.50 per pack, including postage. (Please send a sterling cheque with your order.)