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What is a syllable?

Syllables explained for parents, including details of

how primary-school children are taught to identify
syllables to help them with spelling and reading and
understanding poetry.

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What is a syllable?

A syllable is a single, unbroken sound of a spoken (or

written) word. Syllables usually contain a vowel and
accompanying consonants. Sometimes syllables are
referred to as the ‘beats’ of spoken language.

Syllables differ from phonemes in that a phoneme is the

smallest unit of sound; the number of syllables in a
word is unrelated to the number of phonemes it
contains. For example: /b/, /k/, /t/, /ch/, /sh/, /ee/, /ai/, /igh/,
/ear/ are all phonemes. The word ‘chat’ is made up of
three phonemes (/ch/ /a/ /t/). The word ‘light’ is made up
of three phonemes (/l/ /igh/ /t/). However, both the
words ‘chat’ and ‘light’ have only one syllable each.

The number of times you hear a vowel (a, e, i , o, u) in a

word is equal to the number of syllables a word has. A
good way to identify syllables is to think about whether
you need to change your mouth shape to say the next
bit of the word / the new syllable.

Learning about syllables in primary school

Learning about syllables is part of learning how to

decode and spell words. It helps children understand
the conventions of English spelling, including when to
double letters and how to pronounce the vowels in
wordsSchool
they might
Run not have seen before.

Teachers will often get children to clap out the syllables

of a word, to help them to understand the concept. (A
good game to introduce syllables is to ask each child to
stand up and say their name, while clapping out the
syllables.)

For example:

Cat has one syllable (words of one syllable are

monosyllabic)

Water has two syllables (wa / ter)

Computer has three syllables (com / pu / ter)

Category has four syllables (cat / e / gor / y)

Syllables in KS1 English

Children in Key Stage 1 will be expected to read

words of two syllables. They may be shown how to
split the words up into syllables, in order to help them
sound them out. For example: if they are shown the
word ‘thunder’ and get stuck, a teach may cover the
second half of the word (‘der’) and ask them to just
sound out the first syllable. Once they have managed
this, they uncover the rest of the word and ask them to
sound this out.

Children in Key Stage 1 will also learn to spell words

with two syllables, at which point they will be
encouraged to separate the two syllables themselves, in
order to learn the spelling of the whole word.

Syllables in KS2 English

During Key Stage 2, children will progress to learning

the spellings of words containing four syllables (or
possibly more). They also learn about the use of
syllables in poetry.

Children may learn about syllables through writing

haikus. A haiku is a Japanese poem with three lines, the
first containing 5 syllables, the second containing 7
syllables and the third containing 5 syllables.

This is a haiku about a frog:

Wet amphibian,
Gulps, blinks and flicks out his tongue
To snatch a black fly.
Writing haikus encourages children to think about
syllables, but also to think very carefully about their
word choices – it may be that one word has too many
syllables and does not fit, so they have to think of a
new, similar word that fits the given criteria.

Another poetic form based on syllable number is the

limerick (the first, second and fifth lines rhyme and have
the same number of syllables, usually eight or nine).

More like this

< >

What is a phoneme? Breaking words into Countin

syllables

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