Syllabication: Rules, Division Patterns, & More

Posted by Brainspring on 15th May 2019

Our next Orton-Gillingham lesson basic covers decoding of multi-syllabic words and syllabication. We recently posted on how to address spelling dictation words using a multisensory approach.

Back to the Basics – What is a Syllable?

A syllable is a word or word part that contains one “talking” vowel (a vowel sound). When we reach an unfamiliar multisyllabic word, it helps to chunk out the word by its syllables.

If you find your students are unsure of what a syllable is, or, cannot identify syllables in words, this may be due to a weakness in phonological awareness. Click the links below to learn more about Phonological Awareness:

Tying Phonological Awareness to Reading and Spelling

The Difference Between Phonological and Phonemic Awareness

What is Syllabication?

Syllabication exercises are a hallmark of multisensory phonics. Through these activities, students learn how to tackle unfamiliar multisyllabic words. Without this tool, comprehension can be significantly hindered for many students.

Why is Syllabication Important?

Imagine a struggling reader goes to read their assigned reading material and they come across a word such as this:

Constantinople

The student does his best to sound out the word but gets stuck on so many parts of the word. He then has trouble putting the chunks together and forgets where he even began with the word. He decides to skip the word, hoping the surrounding text can help him make meaning of what he reads. The quiz is tomorrow, he has a deadline and he must do well. Anxiety starts to build a little.

The student continues reading and comes across at least six more challenging words before he is done reading the page. His frustration is increasing, and his patience is decreasing. He attempts to take notes to outline the meaning of what he read and is at a loss. He cannot remember what he read because he was focusing so hard on even decoding the words on the page. He may give up at this point, become distracted, or let’s face it, bury his head in his book and take a nap.

The likely issue in this example is not that the student did not comprehend the material. Rather, he missed reading many of the words on the page and therefore could not gather the meaning. If someone read the page to this student, he more than likely would be able to better gauge the meaning and recap what the page was about.

The Impact of Syllabication in Reading

Syllabication is a step-by-step process that slows down the rapid process used by efficient readers and breaks down the steps for struggling readers. By breaking a word into small, manageable syllables, identifying the vowel sounds in the syllable, and sounding out a word syllable by syllable, the reader can decode (read) the word using syllabication.

Readers who cannot apply the syllabication process to more complex words become less efficient readers as material becomes more challenging, eventually compromising their ability to comprehend higher-level reading material.

To integrate syllabication into reading, you could have students scan the paragraph and identify any words that they cannot decode. Next, walk them through the process of syllabicating those difficult words. At this point, it might be necessary for you to also define these words. Now, the student is ready to read the paragraph.

Syllable Division Patterns

There are three main syllable division patterns that students will come across while reading:

VCCV (vowel consonant/consonant vowel)

As in the word cup/cake

VCV (vowel/consonant vowel OR vowel consonant/vowel)As in the word hu/mid OR rad/ish

VV (vowel/vowel)

As in the word vid/e/o

Syllable Types

If students learn how to break apart words based on their division pattern and explicitly learn the rules of each syllable type, they will have success in reading a large chunk of the words in this very unfamiliar English language.

Syllable types found in English:

Closed: a short vowel sound with a consonant after the vowel.

Open: a long vowel sound with a single vowel and no consonant after the vowel.

Magic -E: a silent vowel that jumps over the one consonant and makes the single vowel say its own name.

Consonant-le: a syllable that doesn't contain a sounded vowel (the e is silent, but when the syllable is pronounced there is a distinct schwa sound before the l.

Vowel Teams: Two vowels that work together to make a long vowel sound.

Bossy-R: A vowel-consonant pair also called R-controlled because the r controls and obscures the sound of the vowel immediately preceding it. The vowel does not make a long or short sound.

Diphthong: a pair of vowels making a new sound, neither long nor short.

Schwa: Syllable that occurs in an unstressed, unaccented syllable. The vowel (often but not exclusively the a) makes the short u sound when the word is pronounced.

Teaching Syllable Division

When a student reaches an unfamiliar multisyllabic word, have them try the following steps to break the word down. It is important to follow these steps in the order listed below: