On Eating Elephants and Teaching Syllabication

I worked with a small group of fourth graders a few years ago who struggled with very basic decoding. I realized that everyday in their classrooms, they were going to encounter multisyllabic words and it was imperitive that I teach them basic phonics along with skills to decode these grade-level words. I began teaching them how to decode cvc nonsense words that were parts of real multisyllabic words and as we progressed through mastering all the phonics rules which they hadn't known, we continuously would apply these to words that were broken down into syllables. Exactly to your point in the article, I taught them how to "play" with some multisyllabic words until the student recognized it: I can't think of any examples at the moment but it will come to me later. I first encountered this way of solving words while learning how to read Japanese on signs in Japan. For example, I read in Katakana (one of the three ways to write words in Japanese, katakana used for adopted foreign words) jya-ke-tto ( in English, something like ja-kay-toe) and I might have to "play with the word", repeat it say faster and faster, until I realize the work is jacket. All of the students enjoyed this work, it was like a game to them, and by the end of the school year, they were able to tackle successfully longer and unfamiliar words that they would see in their grade level textbooks and on tests through our thorough work in learning syllable types. Of course we worked on all reading skills (phonemic awareness, comprehension, etcetera) as well, but my comments are focused on the article here.

Have I been mispronouncing statue my whole life? Before this explanation, I had always divided statue into the syllables of sta-CHOO, more or less following the same pattern as label and tiger. I suppose it's never too late to learn how to decode properly. I always enjoy reading your blog on reading research.

I'm wondering if you could clarify this statement: "Syllables matter in English because they’re the basic orthographic unit that governs the consistency of our system of spelling (Venezky, 1967)"

Syllables are not an orthographic unit in English, and Venezky doesn't claim they are. He talks quite a bit about morphophonemes in the 1967 article, but very little about syllables.

This earlier statement also seems counter to your later point that "Teaching syllabication as a rigid set of “rules” makes no sense, since our orthography doesn’t work like that."

The point about 'approximate pronunciations' is key. I think Jill's question goes to the heart of what I do with my struggling readers so that I don't place too much of a cognitive load on them when tackling multisyllabic words, which means I simply keep 'flexible' or 'approximate' pronunciations front and center. If my students blend the basic sounds in s-t-a-t (stat) and have learned the 'ue' spelling for /oo/--AND have actually got the word 'statue' as part of their vocabulary--they can play with the sounds in the syllables they've initially decoded (stat-ue) and listen for a word they know, ultimately (hopefully) pronouncing it as 'sta-tue' which is how they naturally would say it. I really do think that this flexibility is crucial.

A syllable is not an orthographic unit in English. Orthographic units in English include graphemes and morphemes, but not syllables. While some languages do have syllabic orthographies, English is not one of them. This is because English is a stress-timed language, not a syllable-timed language. Even if big-name salesmen and women promote syllable-based pedagogies for English, that doesn't change the facts that (a) such pedagogies falsely represent the structure of English, (b) such pedagogies often actively obscure real orthographic structures like graphemes and morphemes, (c) pedagogical syllable models are not supported by human data from native speakers, and (d) there is no empirical evidence supporting syllable pedagogies, and ample counter-evidence for them.

Facts, not silly anecdotes about bicycling, is what teachers are craving. They can get it here: https://linguisteducatorexchange.com/product/making-sense-of-syllables-cooke-2011/

Here's an entry in the International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology that will help you understand what an orthography actually is:

https://linguisteducatorexchange.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Orthography.iela0297.pdf

I spend so much time teaching syllable types to beginning readers that we rarely get to syllabication before the student doesn't need me anymore. But, with the adult dyslexic/dyspraxic I have taught for over a decade, Nancy Lewkowicz's approach to reading longer words has been the most profitable: Count backwards from the final syllable to see which syllable to stress. https://www.amazon.com/Word-Workout-Nancy-K-Lewkowicz/dp/0985734914

Erin-

You're correct that Dick didn't talk much about syllables in that article, though in the methodology of his analysis words were divided into syllables to analyze the consistency of the letter-sound relations... that was because those consistencies only really work within syllables (not within words)... something he often spoke about. But that doesn't mean that he describe English orthography as being a simple one-to-one letter-phoneme relationship... He was the first to describe the important morphological features of the orthography and was a strong proponent of the idea that readers had to develop a mental set for variability.

tim

tim

LEX-
You are correct that the syllable is a controversial idea in linguistics, in spite of its usefulness in pedagogy. I'm not sure why you are so angry, but good luck to you.

tim

You don't seem to have come across the "Nessy" Learn to read & spell programme. I've used it succesfully for 4 years now. Devised for Dyslexics & other SEND juniors, my Secondary EAL, Dyslexic ASD & more complexedly disadvantaged students have enjoyed its amusing approach.

I have used Kendore Learning's approach to teaching syllable types as a part of decoding, teaching flexing and varibility around breaking words into syllables and it has been very successful. The order of teaching and order of breaking Jennifer teaches is the total opposite to each other but results in a system less complicated for tier 2 and 3 readers to use.

A very popular program teaches people to flex vowel sounds by saying their name, sound or schwa. It also teaches kids to play with the accent. I also remember a researcher saying that the bigger words become, the more regular they are. Of course, you would explicitly teach common affixes (e.g., tious), since many cannot be sounded out. All in all, this has been a very positive approach used by one of the most well known reading intervention programs in the country.

Merci pour ce billet fort instructif!

Thanks for this. I work with severely dyslexic middle school students, and syllabication has been our bugaboo. I’ve been thinking about it a lot and I really like the concept of conditionality. It’s a challenging concept for students with language-based learning disabilities, but we are starting to do it and I hope it will yield good results.

I teach 4th grade to a group of very struggling students. I am encouraged that we use the “Words Their Way” book. We also use a program “FUNdamentals”. The current pandemic and remote learning has not helped with teaching phonics or how to read multi-syllable words! I am researching how to teach students that cannot read fluently how to write! Any suggestions?

Jacynthe

Je vous en prie.

Tim

Dear Tim,

Can you respond to the critique that Lex shared? I read the questions and now I am curious. Especially in an era where social media aims to advertise curriculum which may or may not be useful, I think conversations among professionals are instrumental for teachers who are here to learn. I have experience with syllable instruction, but I wonder if morphophonemic analysis is a better use of time when studying English orthography, both for decoding and encoding?

I am a teacher trying to learn more so I can do better for my students, so:

do you have a rebuttal to the Lex's comments (points a, b, and c), or did you dismiss it on purpose, and if so, why?

Hello!

A couple of thoughts:
1-for students to even entertain and generalizations about syllable division, they need to have a modicum of competence decoding single syllable word with accuracy--typically short vowels (and hence Closed Syllables) are taught first since they are the most common. Approximately half of all syllables in English contain closed syllables.
2-The main importance of knowing a syllable type (closed v. open syllable type) is this: the syllable type determines the vowel sound (closed=short vowel; open and v-e=long vowel sound). This is huge for many students.
3-I SO agree with the notions of conditionality and flexibility when dividing words into syllables--some readers may be familiar with the "bunny rabbit/pony" generalization: the words 'bunny' and 'rabbit' have 2 consonants between the vowels; hence the split in between and the first syllable is closed and has a short vowel; the reason for the double consonant is precisely to tell the reader that the preceding vowel is short. A bit more: in cases of words such as 'pony', when there is 1 consonant between the vowel, that is a signal to the reader to divide the syllable after the first vowel thereby making the first vowel long-- 'try' to decode the first vowel long--and if that does not 'work' or reveal a common word, then the reader is to 'try' dividing after the first consonant, thereby making the first vowel short. Here is the flexibility--try it both ways. That said, many more words follow the 'pony' division in English to the tune of 80%. I think the confusion often comes because students are exposed to more closed syllables and closed syllable instruction. I often found myself telling the teachers I trained "closed syllables are the base ten of the English language and all the other syllables are taught in comparison to them." I still believe this is true and still believe in teaching those rules of syllable division. The punchline I have heard from both students and teachers is this: "Why didn't anybody teach me this before? It makes so much sense."

Your thoughts?

One more addendum: Once students have traveled some distance down the 'road to reading', teaching morphological units complements the teaching of syllable types. For example, if a student is familiar with basic prefixes of 'un', 'con', 'sub', 'ex', 'pre', 're', etc., the student will know to decode these as units. The same would be true of Latinate roots and Greek combined forms: 'cred'=to believe, so when decoding words such as 'credit', 'incredible' or 'incredulous', it would be best for the reader to maintain the short vowel sound when she attempts to decode the word--and the bonus of knowing that all of the mentioned words would have something to do with 'believing'.

When we break things into smaller sizes, we can accomplish more when trying to take in all at once.