Powerful Vowels - The English Alphabetic Code

The English Alphabetic Code

The English language commonly uses 44 speech sounds, but there are only 26 letters in the alphabet.

Due to a fascinating history, the English language employs more than 280 letter combinations to represent 44 speech sounds. No wonder spelling can be tricky to learn!

Vowel phonemes (sounds) and their graphemes (letters) are arguably the trickiest part of the English spelling system. This is why our kits place a heavy emphasis on mastering the vowels in words.

Powerful Vowels - The English Alphabetic Code

A vowel sound can have many letter representations.

Did you know the /or/ sound can be spelt 14 different ways?

Powerful Vowels - The English Alphabetic Code

A single vowel grapheme can represent many different sounds.

Have you noticed the letter <a> sounds different in ant, ago, ask, was, water, baby and balloon?