OnTrack Reading

This will be a bit cumbersome, as the list of Spalding phonograms and the suggested modifications are on the previous Guide page, but by either using two tabs or two windows or your back/forward buttons, hopefully you can find a way to easily follow along. Alternatively, the suggested changes are provided as PDF files that you can download from the last page of this section of the Guide.

Reasoning Behind the Suggested Changes

Phonograms a, e, i, o and u

Notation change: Drop the underlining of long vowel sounds and number them with a 2 instead. This allows single underlining to be used to indicate only phonograms with more than one letter and also encourages the child to think of all the possible options in numerical order.

Sound changes: The reason for adding the /ee/ sound to phonogram i was made on an earlier Page of the Guide. The reason for adding the /oo/ sound to phonogram u is because it does stand for an /oo/ sound in words like truth, flu, lucid, fluid and many others. The reason it is designated with the number 3 is that a child is better off trying the /ue/ sound and then immediately trying the /oo/ sound if he doesn’t automatically drop into that sound when the /ue/ sound proves difficult to enunciate. It is a fact that we use the /ue/ sound when enunciation is easy, but drop to /oo/ when enunciation of /ue/ proves to be a bit of a tongue twister.

Phongrams c and g

Notation change: While the rule governing the proper pronunciation of the phonogram c is quite reliable in the U.S., it is less so in England, and the rule governing the phonogram g is not so reliable even here. For that reason, the second sound of each should be numbered. And, again, this reinforces a young child’s perception that these phonograms can each represent two distinct sounds.

Phonogram n

Sound change: In almost all words where the sound /ng/ is followed either by the sound /c/ or the sound /g/, the sound /ng/ is spelled with the phonogram n. That is, we do not write ingk, thangks, angkle, angchor or Ingca, nor do we write fingger, angger, longger or hungger. In each and every case we use the n phonogram. This should be taught and the second sound of phonogram n should be numbered with a 2 as usual.

Phonogram y

Sound changes: The addition of the /ee/ (happy) sound was discussed on a previous Guide Page. The reasoning behind dropping the teaching of a consonant /yuh/ sound when a word begins with the phonogram y is that a child can easily be taught to say a quick /ee/ sound and when he blends the result, he will easily get the word. For example, take the word yard. If a child says /ee/…/ar/…/d/, he will get the correct result as long as he is instructed to say the first sound in a quick, short burst rather than dragging it out. He should also be told that this quick /ee/ is a consonant sound.

Notation change: When the ending /ee/ sound in words like happy and silly are acknowledged, they then vastly outnumber the words where the phonogram y represents the /ie/ and /i/ sounds, so the numbering should reflect that. Conveniently, it can then be pointed out that the phonogram y represents the same sounds as the phonogram i, but the order is reversed (/ee/ie/i/ versus /i/ie/ee/)

Phonograms ar, or and er

Sound changes: Spalding already acknowledges the sounds /ar/, /or/ and /er/ by teaching the phonograms ar, or and er. I advocate introducing an /err/ sound as well (pronounced in the Midwest as air, but I also realize that in some areas of the U.S. and in other English-speaking countries, an /err/ sound is either confusing or unnecessary. The way to tell if it should be used is to compare the words marry, merry and Mary. In the Midwest, if someone says he is going to marry merry Mary, he pronounces all three words nearly identically, if not exactly identically.

So, assuming the use of an /err/ (merry) sound, the phonogram ar has four pronunciations as indicated by the suggested changes and they should be numbered as such. The phonogram or has two and the phonogram er also has two. The main reason for doing all this is to encourage a young child to see the spellings ar, er and or as phonograms at all times, rather than one sound here but two sounds there, which can be exceptionally confusing both to learn and to teach. As with many of my suggested changes, these come directly from my experience working with young children considered learning disabled. Clarity and consistency are important with these children.

Phonogram wor

Sound change: There is no good justification for the spelling wor being designated as a phonogram. It stands for two sounds, not one, and the only reason for emphasizing its existence at all is that the combined spellings w+or result in a consistent pattern where the phonogram or is always takes on the /er/ sound. The same case could be made for designating the spellling war as a phonogram, and for that matter patterns like ack, eck, and ick could also be phonograms if the purpose of a phonogram becomes one of indicating patterns of English print.

Phonogram ed

Sound change: As indicated, at times the spelling ed is two sounds, not one. This usually occurs when the ending of the word is spelled ded or ted, but also occurs infrequently in words like rugged and wicked. The suffix ed is definitely a confusing one for young children, and this is one of the hardest suffixes for them to learn to decode reliably. The main reason for suggesting this change is to preserve the consistency of the definition of a phonogram, that is, that it represents one sound, unless a strong reason exists to do otherwise as is the case with the phonogram qu.

Phonogram ew

Notation change: The reason for changing the order of preference so that the /ue/ sound is designated as the initial choice is that, as discussed here earlier, a young child is far better off attempting to say the /ue/ sound first because in most cases if the actual sound is /oo/, he will probably end up at the right sound anyway. This is definitely not true if the child starts with the /oo/ sound and needs to get to /ue/.

Phonogram ui

Sound change: The reason for this change is that suit, fruit and juice are now pronounced with /oo/ sounds, not /ue/ sounds in U.S. English. It’s possible that this is not the case in other English-speaking countries.

Phonogram ough

Sound changes: Teaching a child two extra “sounds” for the phonogram ough is justified by the four words, rough, tough, enough and cough plus their derivations. This is an insufficient reason to confuse the meaning of phonogram by again designating as phonograms print patterns with two sounds, rather than one.

Notation change: The reason for the suggested notation change is to parallel the sounds of the other two phonograms for the /ow/ sound. The phonogram ow is /ow/, /oe/ and the phonogram ou is /ow/, /oe/, /oo/, /u/. This makes the phonogram ough /ow/, /oe/, /oo/, /aw/.

Phonogram ey

Notation change: The reason for the sound change was given on a previous Guide Page. Once the /i/ sound is dropped and replaced with an /ee/ sound in words like valley and hockey, the words in which the phonogram ey represents the /ee/ sound far outnumber those where it represents the /ae/ sound, such as they and obey. This notation change reflects the fact that a child should try the /ee/ sound first.

Phonogram ie

Notation change: Again, the reason for the sound change was given on a previous Guide Page. Here the reasoning behind the notation change is a bit shaky because there are probably more words where the phonogram ie represents the /ee/ sound. However, referring to it as /ie/,/ee/ reflects the actual spelling of the phonogram, easing the task of memorizing it, and that is the rationale being used here.

Phonogram ei

Sound change: The reason for changing the third sound to /e/ (heifer) from /i/ (forfeit) is two fold. First, the change makes the word heifer fit the structure; it is no longer an exception. And second, all of the examples where the phonogram ei is taught as an /i/ sound actually contain schwas, rather than /i/ sounds. As with all words containing schwas, the child is just taught to say the precise sound represented by the phonogram rather than an /u/. Thus, patient is pati/e/nt, not patiunt and review is r/ee/ward, not ruward. Similarly, it would be a trivial task to explain that forfeit is forf/e/t, not forfut or forfit.

Summing Up

All of this is just an effort to get down in one place changes that have occurred to me over the years of using Phono-Graphix and Spalding in a combined method for remediation. I seriously doubt that any of the above changes will ever be employed by a teacher in a full classroom, though I would make most of them if I ever found myself in that situation.

Moreover, I would make two more major changes, the topic of the next page or two. First, I would get rid of Spalding’s exceptionally cumbersome way of describing the final e common to so many words in favor of the approach used by Phono-Graphix. Second, I would teach 84 phonograms compared to Spalding’s 70, partly to effect the first change and partly to clean up a few loose ends. As I said on another page, once a reading instructor begins to tweak….

Next: Explaining the Ending “e”, or return to the OnTrack Reading Home Page.