Home > Lesson 7: Adding Sounds > Unit 7.2 VV connections
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Quiz
#1. VV connections are less common than the other connections because:
#2. Many common function words end with a vowel sound, e.g., ________. (Choose up to five.)
Select all that apply:
#3. We need words with a ________ shape following one another in order to get ________ connections.
#4. Words with the suffixes -a, -er, -ure will be followed by ________ in a VV connection, while words with the suffixes -ly, -ry, -y will be followed by ________, and words with the suffixes -oo and -ue will be followed by ________.
#5. These six short vowel sounds cannot connect to other vowel sounds, because they do not appear at the end of a syllable next to another vowel sound: ________.
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Practice
- Spend a few minutes looking through a dictionary. Notice how English words more often begin and end with a consonant sound than with a vowel sound. Why do you think that is?*
- Write down ten words that begin with a vowel sound and ten which end with a vowel sound. Then write ten words that both begin and end with a vowel sound.
- Look at slide 8. Read the list of high-frequency words that end with a vowel sound out loud. Notice that many have our preferred syllable shape: C-V.
- Learn the table on slide 9, so that you know more instinctively whether to add r, y, or w after these very common high-frequency words.
- Practice making VV phrases with the words on slide 9, e.g. ‘for a’. Say them out loud, then put them into short sentences and say them too, e.g. ‘I went for a walk.’ In this sentence, ‘for a’ is contracted to the monosyllabic ‘fr’.
- Practice saying the phrases on slide 11 out loud. Try putting them into sentences and saying them too, e.g., ‘They ate a lot of eggs.’
- Learn the list of high-frequency words on slide 13. Many of these are V-C-shaped words, e.g., ‘of’, ‘and’, ‘in’, ‘on’, and ‘at’, which is the worst possible syllable shape to be, because we cannot create a good VC connection with them on either side. We have to make at least two corrective actions – guaranteed!
- Write down ten content words with a V-C syllable shape, e.g., ‘old’. Put them into phrases or short sentences and practice them out loud. Notice how you have to perform at least two actions to create good connections, e.g., ‘The old man.’ = add y in first VV connection, and delete d in the blend to rest on a friendly consonant sound = THE YOL MAN.
- Focus on the words which are made up of one single sound on slide 14: ‘a’, ‘I’, and ‘our’. Can you think of any more?
- Learn the table of suffixes and which sound they connect with in VV connections (slide 16). Practice saying the phrases out loud. Get used to the patterns so that these connections become second nature for you.
- Read slide 17. Learn which English vowel sounds connect with which sound in VV connections: r, y, and w. Learn also which vowel sounds cannot connect in VV connections, i.e., the six out of eight short vowel sounds on slide 18.
- Learn the short vowel sounds which are exceptions: ii and the schwa sound. ii connects with y (e.g., ‘the [y] end’) , while the schwa sound usually connects with r (e.g., ‘teacher [r] ate’), but also sometimes with w (e.g., ‘to [w] agree’).
- Practice and commit to memory connections that repeat regularly, e.g., the ones on slide 19. Practice them out loud, put them into sentences, record yourself saying them… get to know them. You already say them again and again every time you speak English, so it would be much better to say them with VC connections – having added r, y, or w – than as bad VV connections.
*Tip: remember that twenty-one out of twenty-six letters in the English alphabet are consonants, while only five are vowels.