Teaching English Learners: Comparing Syllables in English and Spanish

I'd like to speak to you about phonics knowledge for English learners. We know that English has six types of syllables. In languages such as Spanish, we don't have to worry about it. Transparent languages. What do I mean by transparent language? It's a language such as Spanish ... Finnish is probably the most transparent language ... but it's a language where every single sound is represented by one letter, right? And the sounds don't change. So for example, in the Spanish language, there's five vowel sounds. They never change. In English ... we call that an opaque language. We have vowel sounds, but they have more than one sounds. We can start with just short and long vowel sounds, right? The English language therefore has six syllable types, which helps us to know when to pronounce the short vowel sound versus the long vowel sound. And so one of the most common, common syllable types is when you have a vowel and then it's followed by at least one consonant, and that will make the vowel short, right?

So I might say a word like ten in the English language ... 't-e-n.' Hmm. That has the vowel sound /ĕ/ ... and the consonant after it: /n/, 'n'. I have the same pattern in Spanish: ten. It means something totally different. It means, like, here! Have it! In English, it's a number. So that closed syllable is a very common syllable type. Another syllable type is when the syllable ends in a vowel. Vowels open the mouth: "a-e-i-o-u." We call that an open syllable. And that makes the vowel sound long, right? So I have in English the word no. 'N-o.' I said /ō/ at the end. It's the long vowel sound. In Spanish I would say no, but the vowel never changes. So I never learned about open syllables. So by you teaching me a closed syllable ... that it ends in at least one consonant after that vowel, the vowel's short ... and you teaching me that when it ends in a vowel, I'm going to say the long sound.

I'm not going to say /ŏ/. I'm going to say /ō/ for no. And then we can practice the differences between the closed syllable and the open syllable. That's a wonderful activity for English learners. We also have in English a vowel followed by a consonant and that silent 'e', like in the word dame. I said the long 'a' sound and it was followed by the 'm', and the 'e' was silent. In Spanish, I have 'd-a-m-e.' We say dame. Means give it to me, but in English it's dame. And what's really going to be problematic is you're going to ask me to not pronounce that final sound. We have no silent vowels here. It's very difficult for me to take off that vowel. But you taught me: a vowel, a consonant, and an 'e'. And I do see most first grade teachers do this syllable type, so that's wonderful. But we want to make the connection to the home language if possible. And then we have two vowels together. Those are called the vowel pair syllables. The vowel pair syllables have two vowels in that same syllable. And you have to be careful. We're going to have to teach each one. You know that rule? When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking. It's only true less than 50% of the time. I might have a word like pie in English: 'p-i-e'. Pie. Do you know I have that same kind of word ... 'p-i-e' ... in Spanish? Pie. Right?

And it's also this kind of vowel pair, as well, of putting it together in the same syllable, but it means foot. So you say pie, I say pie, right? So I need to learn, and you're going to have to teach me every single one of those vowel pairs. And then I have a vowel followed by that 'r'. And in Spanish, we'll say /rr/ for our 'r', and we say every single sound. But a word like in English ... 'm-a-r', right? Mar. In Spanish, mar. For me it means ocean, right? But I'm going to have to learn not to trill that 'r', and I'm going to have to learn that that's only one syllable, right? And only that 'a-r' making one new sound. So you're going to have to teach me, and you're going to have to teach me 'a-r', 'e-r', 'i-r', 'o-r', 'u-r'. You know, it's very, very difficult. When you have 'o-r', like in a word like doctor, doctor. Notice I said /orr/ in Spanish. It never changes.

But in English, the 'o-r' changes. If I say a word like fort or corn, I heard 'or' in that accented syllable. But when I say a word like tutor, doctor ... oh, it's unaccented. Now I know to say /er/, but no one ever taught me to do that. Then that's why in English, I say, "docTOR," "tuTOR." You have to teach me about accent, and you have to teach me when 'o-r' is not accented, it's going to say /er/. Same thing with 'a-r': star, car, far. That's an accented syllable. Those are one syllable words that are accented, or I can say carport. But when you say something like dollar or collar ... oh, now I have to learn ... it's in the unaccented syllable and I'm going to say /er/. And then in English you have that 'w'. Oh, it messes us up. When I have that 'w' in front of 'o-r' like in world or worthy, that 'o-r' now is going to say /er/. Or I have the 'a-r' after the 'w' ... warm, warn. The sound changes.

So we have to learn about that tricky 'w'. So those are connections that we can make. But also in languages such as English and Spanish, we have syllables at the end. We call them in English the final stable syllable. So words like, that end in '-ble' or '-cle' or '-tion' and '-sion'. So a word like "cable" that has that final ending '-ble' ... we call that a final stable syllable. I have the same thing in Spanish ... '-cable'. But I pronounce that last 'e'. Remember, it's not silent. In English it will be. We'll just say '-ble' at the end, cable, right? And in that case, it means kind of the same thing across the two languages. So by teaching me very explicitly and systematically the structure of the English language and teaching me those syllable types, you're going to help me to understand when I read how to pronounce those vowels and how to read. And that really is going to help me to be a better decoder and get better at that automaticity of reading that will lead us, we hope, to better fluency and comprehension.