Lessons · Teaching · the six syllable types
Six syllable types, and where to cut a long word
English has six syllable types, and the type a syllable is tells you what its vowel says; dividing a long word turns it from unreadable into several short readable pieces.
Hone is a place to practise a career, one idea a day. This is one of its lessons, written out in full and free to read without an account.
What it is for
A child who reads cat and ship confidently stalls dead at fantastic, and it is not a decoding failure. It is a length failure, and nobody ever showed them where to cut.
How to think about it
Find the vowels. Look at what sits between them. Two consonants between two vowels usually split between the two; one consonant usually joins the second vowel; a consonant followed by le takes the last three letters as its own final syllable. The six types are closed, open, silent e, vowel team, r-controlled and consonant-le.
Worked example
fantastic: fan / tas / ticTwo consonants between vowels, split between them. Three closed syllables, three short vowels.
napkin: nap / kinThe same rule, and both parts closed.
table: ta / bleConsonant-le takes the last three letters, and what is left is open, so the a says its own name.
garden: gar / denThe first part is r-controlled: the r owns the vowel, which then says neither long nor short.
Your turn
Divide basket into syllables and write how many it has.
bas / ket = syllables
Solve one, graded on the server
The trap
Counting syllables by counting vowel letters. Table has two vowel letters and two syllables; rain has two vowel letters and one. It is the vowel sounds that are counted, which is why the sound work comes first.