Since the ability to be able to proficiently read and write are all tied into most English Language requirements in school it was a simple task to find articles to defend the importance of learning about vowels. There were articles professing the importance as well as methods to further improve students’ understandings of what vowels are and how they can be used. Along with this came interesting research of techniques not currently used in schools that can increase students’ abilities to identify, read and write vowels correctly.
Various research has been done to demonstrate the importance of vowel recognition in reading and writing. According to Taylor (1995), “The terms vowel, consonant and syllable are crucial in all discussions of English pronunciation. Despite this, the meaning of these terms is often not clear. In particular, it is frequently unclear whether they are being used in a phonetic or a phonological sense” (p. 1). Keeping this in mind it comes to question whether teachers in school now truly know the depth in which learning and teaching about vowels goes. Taylor continues to reach further into the misunderstanding that when asked how many vowels are in the English language most would say five. When in reality there are five letters that represent vowels but far more sounds that accompany these letters that are considered to be vowel sounds. When teaching the primary grades this idea can seem almost impossible to convey.
Taylor (1995) argues that by opening up this explanation to students may allow them to understand the logic behind it more easily. If they are taught from the youngest of ages to believe there truly are only five vowels when they are introduced to the extent of sounds vowels can make they may find it overwhelming. Taylor does not believe you should teach these ideas right away but believes it should be incorporated into vowel education early on.
With the importance of vowels visited it is important for future or current educators to have a plethora of ideas of how to teach vowels to children to produce successful readers and writers. Gates and Yale (2011) argue that by using five main rules a student can start their journey to understanding vowels and consonants as a whole. Their rules are as follows; (1) Single vowels usually have their short sound. (2) Final single vowel-consonant-e (VCe) patterns usually have a long first vowel and a silent final e. (3) Vowel digraphs usually have one or one of two sounds. (4) Single consonants usually have one or one of two sounds. (5) Consonant di/trigraphs usually have one or one of two sounds (Gates & Yale, 2011, p. 336). These key ideas are a great stepping-stone for teachers to fall back on when figuring out how to explain vowels.
Branching from the five basic rules that Gates and Yale (2011) laid out is the idea of using visual imagery as a tool to teach vowels to Kindergarten age students. Azar (1985) writes, “Children often have difficulty distinguishing the short vowel sounds even after much practice with pictures of words containing the sound. But combining pictures with the written symbol of short vowels maximizes learning” (p. 926). The idea behind this research was to see if having an image to accompany a vowel sound would assist in the students’ understanding of the vowel. Azar (1985) uses a series of techniques to accomplish his end result. His techniques include, (1) Group collages, where the students fill an oak tag with pictures of things that have the same vowel sound as the vowel you have written out for them. (2) Scrapbook, an adaptation of the collage lesson in which the learners draw pictures for each letter and vowel sound. At the end the student puts their work together to create a scrapbook. (3) Symbols, each vowel sound should have it’s own symbol. Creating a stamp with the vowel symbol on it so it can be placed on each page to coincide with the vowel sound to reinforce the learners’ exposure to it.
Thus far the research has discussed how to teach fully functioning students’ about vowels but what do teachers do when they encounter a student with learning disabilities. Reid (2003) and Bertucci, Hook, Macaruso and Bickley (2003) discuss their methods and research to resolve this predicament. Bertucci, Hook, Macaruso and Bickley (2003) state, “Significant differences were found between good readers and students with reading disabilities in both vowel perception and production; the RD group displayed shallower slopes in the perception task (indicating less well-defined perceptual categories) and more overlapping and close categories” (p.189).
This research leads to great question as to how to reach those students in the group that contained students with reading disabilities. Reid (2003) took an approach on a method that had been found to work on these particular students. Reid used the idea of a “vowel house” to teach students with learning disabilities vowel sounds. This study has three major points. (1) To develop a child-friendly representational framework for vowels, base on core features of the system of spoken vowel contrasts, but incorporating link to written vowel patterns. (2) To improve children’s phonological awareness of vowels in spoken words. (3) To develop awareness of, and strategies for dealing with the complex relationship between spoken and written vowels (Reid, 2003, p. 156). The idea behind the Vowel House was to construct an object that is familiar to all students with up/down and front/back dimensions. Each vowel is placed strategically in the vowel house to serve a purpose. The vowels that are placed next to each other are considered neighbors, which means they may have similar sounds but are different letters. For instance /i/, /I/ and /u/ are all in line with each other.
Concluding Reid’s research it was found that by putting a visual image to these difficult vowel sounds in this manner significantly improved the identification of vowels in students with reading disabilities. Although this is only one example of how to help those students it can be adapted and changed to reach each individual student.
Research has proven that the teaching of vowels is not only a crucial part to a students’ literary education but it can also be quite dimensional on how it can be taught. An overall theme throughout all of my research is that the importance of thoroughly understanding vowels can be a difficult but necessary task for teachers in schools.
References
Azar, O. T. (1985). Teaching the short vowel sounds using visual imagery. The Reading Teacher. 38(9). 926-928.
Bertucci, C., Bickley, C., Hook, P., & Macaruso, P. (2003). Vowel perception and production in adolescents with reading disabilities. Annals of Dyslexia, 53. 175-200.
Gates, L. & Yale, I. (2011). A logical letter-sound system in five phonic generalizations. The Reading Teacher 64(5). 330-339.
Reid, J. (2003). Child language teaching and therapy. Child Language Teaching and Therapy 19. 152- 180.
Taylor, S. D. (1995). Vowels, consonants and syllables in Enlgish: An English teaching perspective. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 33(1). 1-8.
Vowels Can Be Fun! 