In Syllable Types, Part 1, we talked about the 6 syllable types you will find in just about any article you look up, product you look for or purchase and in any phonics program you try. Today we are going to talk about 2 more types that are not always included. Even though they are not always included they are valuable to know about. These syllable types help with understanding the pronunciation of words and some more seeming rule exceptions that actually have an explanation or another rule they are following. These two types of syllables are Diphthong Syllables and Schwa Syllables.
It was interesting to me in thinking about this post last night and as I am writing it today to realize that although, I have always been taught about these syllable types in conjunction with learning how to syllabicate (diagram syllables) multisyllabic (2 or more syllables) words. However, 6 of the 8 types will be encountered by readers in single syllable words. All the syllable types except Consonant le and Schwa Syllables can be found in single syllable words. Cat is a Closed Syllable, he is an Open Syllable, white is a Silent e Syllable, meet is a Vowel Team Syllable, mark is an R Controlled Syllable, and boil is a Diphthong Syllable.
The Consonant le syllables are sometimes called Final Stable Syllables because they come at the end of words (final) and they are their own syllable (stable syllable). Since the C-le Syllable contains it’s own vowel sound, it is it’s own syllable, but none of them form complete words. Therefore they cannot be found in single syllable words. Schwa’s are dependent for position on accented syllables within a word. Therefore, to my knowledge no single syllable words would be Schwa Syllables. However, I do know that we as American’s get lazy with our pronunciation of vowel sounds within words at times and therefore may have created some schwa single syllable words based purely on dialect instead of English rules.
Okay let’s get to the subjects of the day, Diphthong and Schwa Syllables. I will discuss both of these individually. We will talk about what they are, why they are not always included in Syllable Type lists and how they effect readers’ decoding and pronunciation skills and abilities. First up, Diphthong Syllables.
- Diphthong Syllables
Diphthong Syllables are not always included in syllable lists and programs because not all programs, teachers, people, differentiate between diphthongs and vowel teams. Remember, a vowel team is technically a team of two vowels that follow the rule “when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking’ and says it’s name’. Vowel teams therefore would only include ie, oe, ai, ee, ea, and most programs would include ay here. I don’t love that inclusion because y is not a vowel. I would personally be more likely to include ue because both letters are vowels and follow the rule for the u saying it long vowel sound and the e being silent. I am honestly not sure why programs do not include ue, unless it is because it is not common. Another possible reason may be because according to some articles I have read, the e is in words like true, is not a part of a vowel team, but an obscure use of silent e because English words don’t end in u.
Merriam Webster defines a diphthong as “linguistics : a gliding (see GLIDE entry 1 sense 4) monosyllabic speech sound (such as the vowel combination at the end of toy) that starts at or near the articulatory position for one vowel and moves to or toward the position of another”. So, a diphthong has a sound that includes two sounds blended or glided over together, but not really a blend of the two sounds the letters would make individually as in blends like bl, tr, fl, etc. Also, there are still two different sounds instead of two letters coming together to make one new sound like digraphs sh, ch, ph, th, wh. Here are the most common diphthongs I think of; oi as in oil, oy as in boy, au as in sauce, aw as in saw, ou in sound, and ow in low or cow.
One thing to keep in mind about the diphthongs oi and oy are that they make the same sound. Another thing is that oi is generally at the beginning of or in the middle of words like oil and soil. Lastly, oy is generally at the end of words like boy or enjoy (en-closed syllable, joy-diphthong syllable).
With au and aw they again make the same sound like oi and oy. This time it is au that is typically found at the beginning of or in the middle of words like audit (aud-diphthong syllable, it-closed syllable) and sauce. And aw comes generally at the end of words like saw and slaw.
Ou and ow are the same as au and aw in respect to having the same sound and the second letter determines their placement in words. Ou is found in the middle of words like found and at the beginning of words like out. Ow is found at the end of words like cow and endow (en-closed syllable, dow-diphthong syllable). The unique thing about ow is that is has two sounds. It makes it’s traditional matching sound to ou in bow (bending at the waist as a sign of respect, pride or gratitude), but also a long o sound in snow and bow. So, this is one spelling that it is important to teach children both sounds for from the beginning. That way when they come to the word b-o-w, they can use both pronunciations and context from the text to determine the correct sound to use.
The most important thing to do in regards to diphthongs and growing readers is to teach them the sound or sounds for these letter combinations so that they will start to recognize then as a sound unit instead of two separate letter sounds. One activity you can use to help your reader start to recognize these letter combinations as a single unit is after a lesson on them have them find all of that combination on a page of a book they are reading or a printed passage or in a magazine or newspaper. You can just have them find as many as they can for 1 minute, so it doesn’t become a huge laborious task. And, if you are using an authentic text (one you are reading anyway or a magazine or newspaper) instead of a decodable text (one devoted to specific letter or letter combination sounds) they may not find any. That is okay, just looking for them will help them make the connection to look for and see these letters as one letter sound unit.
The importance of knowing that diphthong’s form a syllable is that it reiterates to readers that every sounded vowel is a syllable. Syllabicating words with diphthongs in them helps readers become more fluent in recognizing these letter pairs (all of them have two letters as the root di- at the beginning of the word shows. Di- means two.) Fluently recognizing these letter combinations and being fluent in knowing their sound or sounds will greatly aid you growing reader as they encounter longer and more complex words in their reading journey.
2. Schwa Syllables
Schwa Syllables are syllables when the single vowel in the syllable makes a distorted sound. The sound it makes is the short u sound of /uh/. This can happen with any vowel. To be completely honest schwa’s are very complicated to explain thoroughly for me. That is because the placement of a schwa sound has to do with accented and unaccented syllables. I think that it is very valuable to teach young children about accented and unaccented syllables. I think it is less helpful to try to teach older, struggling readers. The reason behind this is that young children can learn new things easily, in most cases, and can therefore, most likely, be taught to hear the accent in words fairly easily. However, for older people like myself or my middle school students who have not been exposed to accented syllables and have not been trained from an early age to hear the accent, it can be VERY difficult to learn.
The most critical thing to teach students about the schwa syllables and schwa in general is again the sound it makes. That way growing readers have another option for when they are decoding (sounding out) unknown words and the actual vowel sound as dictated by the syllable type (open or closed) doesn’t work. For instance in the word banana, you can syllabicate it a few different ways, ban-an-a, ba-na-na, ba-nan-a. According to open and syllable types and the vowel sounds each uses (closed syllables have 1 or more consonants after the vowel and use short vowel sounds, open syllables end in a vowel and use long vowel sounds), the pronunciation of the word changes based on which syllabication you use. The first option, ban-closed, an-closed and a-open would be pronounced ban-an-ay, not how we say the word. The second option, ba-open, na-open, and na-open would be pronounced bay-nay-nay, still not how we say the word. The last option, ba-open, nan-closed, and a-open would be pronounced bay-nan-ay, our last option (and the correct one), but still not how we say the word. Insert schwa syllables and we can finally get to the correct pronunciation. Because the middle syllable is accented (said with more force) it is pronounced correctly as a closed syllable with a true short a sound. However, the unaccented first and last syllables both use the schwa sound of /uh/ for the a. Therefore, we finally get our pronunciation of the word as buh-nan-uh. And the syllables are ba-schwa syllable, nan-closed syllable, a-schwa syllable.
To review, our last two syllable types are diphthongs and schwas. These are most important in helping readers have additional sounds for decoding (sounding out) words. Both of these syllable types are important and I believe that they should be included when teaching syllable types. How deep you go beyond the sounds of the diphthongs and the schwa depends on the needs of your readers and the complexity of the texts they have progressed to.
If you have taught these syllable types to your child or class, how did it go? If you found this information helpful please like this post! Please share your thoughts and experiences below so that we can continue to learn together!
