Today we are talking all about silent e. I recently read an email form Children Learning to Read about 5 reasons silent or magic e is used. One of them, I think we all knew, some of the others, I knew, but don’t always or often think about, and some were completely new to me. Since all of these rules will help your child and you learn to become a stronger reader and writer/speller, I thought I would share!

You may notice me using silent e and magic e interchangeably, you may notice the same things with a vowel saying it’s name or long sound. That is because I have had years of teacher training that taught me all these cute sayings to use with young children. I am trying to get away from doing that and using the “grown up” or real terms for things now. But, it is a hard habit to break. I am trying to break it because it causes unnecessary confusion and unnecessary relearning for children. An example of this is that traditionally, children first learn that vowels only make one sound (their short sounds). Then, we teach them that vowels are actually special letters that make two sounds. This is when we tell them that vowels say their names. Later, the child has to learn that those first sounds they learned that vowels make are called short sounds. After that, they learn that vowels names are called their long sounds. Next, they have to learn that a actually has two short sounds and u has two long sounds. Are you exhausted yet!?! Imagine if you were 5 or 6! This progression is not really necessary. I have found that if we expose children to all of their learning from the beginning and only expect mastery of the part that we are focusing on, they learn much more quickly and actually have fewer things to learn. Doing it this way with vowels streamlines things very nicely for learners. Children learn from the beginning that a and u have three sounds, and that e, i and o have two sounds. As they are mastering those sounds we start calling them long and short. Once a child has mastered listing/producing all of the sounds for each of the letters, we can move on to now expecting them to learn and know which are called short and which are called long. This won’t take long because the child has been hearing this information all along. In addition, a child reaches mastery of all the sounds of the letters much more quickly and has more tools to help them read more words more quickly (even before they’ve learned all the rules).

Back to the rules or reasons for using a silent e at the end of words in the English language. We will start with the one that we are all most familiar with:

1. Use a silent e at the end of a word to make the other vowel in the syllable make it’s long sound.

I say the other vowel in the syllable because this rule is used in single syllable words such as make or site, and multisyllabic words such as awake or antiquate. But, the silent e will always come at the end of the last syllable of the word, and will only affect the other vowel in that syllable. One thing that helps me keep this straight is the fact that a syllable is “a word or a part of a word with one sounded vowel”. So, even though the word make, which is one syllable, has two vowels in it, only the a is a sounded vowel. Therefore, one vowel sound in the word means one syllable in the word.

2. Use a silent e at the end of a word to make c or g say it’s soft sound.

This is another rule or reason for using a silent e that I knew, but don’t always think of. This is why there is a seemingly irrelevant e at the end of words like manage or essence. When we think of silent e’s as only having the role of the first rule, then these words do not seem to follow the rules and become some of a seemingly unending pile of exceptions in our language. BUT, when we remember the rule that a c or a g followed by an e, i or y makes it’s soft sound, then all of a sudden these “extra” e’s serve a purpose and make sense for the accurate pronunciation and spelling of these words!

This is where my knowledge of silent e’s rules and roles stopped. But the article I read from Children Learning to Read shared 3 more!

3. Use silent e to change the spelling of homophones.

Homophones are words that sound the same, but have different meanings like pair, pare and pear or bear and bare. These are the homophones I have seen and thought of the most. But there are other homophones that includes plural forms of one word and a totally different word that sounds just like the plural. These are words such as pleas (plural of a plea) and please (to make someone happy). Or another and humorous example is moos (two sounds from a cow) and moose (a large four legged animal).

4. Use a silent e because English words do not end in u or v.

This is one, I recognized once I read it and saw examples, but I did NOT know as a rule for our language! Now those rule breaking exceptions of have and give, just aren’t. I know you may be wondering, like I do, why can’t our words end in u or v, and I don’t know! But, as a child who is learning to write and spell, if I know that English words can’t and that when there a u or v as the last sound I hear in a word, I add an e, I’ll spell so many more words correctly like true and blue. AND, they won’t seem like more words in an ever mounting pile of rule breakers! I am a rule follower by nature, but I’m pretty sure even if I wasn’t, I would find these rules comforting! This is because they are like a road map, and the more of them I know the more detailed the map becomes and the easier it is to find my way! On to our last rule!

5. Every syllable has to have a vowel.

I never really thought of this one because the first thing I learned in regards to this (as a teacher, I didn’t learn anything about syllable types or this rule as a child) was the final stable syllable type of consonant le, like –cle, –dle, –fle, etc. These became syllables for me because they had a vowel sound, and I was taught to have my students circle them when we were syllabicating (diagraming the syllables in words). But, I do know, as mentioned earlier, that every syllable has to have a vowel sound. This just takes it one step further and says that it not only has to have the vowel sound, but an actual written vowel. So, even if the e doesn’t make it’s own short or long vowel sound, it is written here to represent the vowel sound in these syllables in words like stable, little, and bottle.

I hope these 5 rules help you gain a better understanding of the reading and spelling rules that really do govern our language. I hope and pray that they help you reduce your pile of exceptions. And, I hope and pray you get to share this knowledge with someone to make their reading and writing journey easier!

Did you know all of these rules? Do you know any more or different rules about silent e? What has been your most astonishing rule to learn about the English language? Please share so we can continue to learn together!