Liza’s Guide to teaching vowel discrimination

1. Make sure that the student names the vowel sounds correctly. If he is ‘sounding out’ the word
‘cat’ does he consistently remember how to say the ‘a’? Is he using the letter name “A”?? Do a
lot of practice reading the vowel letters and saying the vowel sounds. Decide if you are doing
‘short vowels’ vs ‘long vowels’ or if you are making all your vowel sounds long. Stick to that. If
the student has another teacher for reading, make sure they are doing the same. Many of our
students have been taught by different staff with different accents and different reading
programs. So establishing consistent letter sound correspondence is the first important step.
2. It can be helpful to teach the student a picture-sound association for the vowel sounds (e.g. ‘a’
looks sort of like an apple, ‘e’ looks like a cracked egg, ‘i’ has a dot of ink, ‘o’ looks like a orange,
‘u’ can be made to look like an upsidedown umbrella. So if the child sees an ‘a’ he say the word
‘apple’ to himself to remember what sound it makes.
3. Over-articulate the vowel sounds with the students and look at mouth shapes.
4. Practice identifying the sound by itself – in isolation. Say the vowel sound and have the student
point to which one it is. Start with 2 vowel sounds that have a high contrast, and then get more
complex. At first, overarticulate the vowel sound so the students can SEE and HEAR the vowel.
Then gradually make your mouth movements more natural. Then work with your mouth
covered.
5. Once the students can identify the vowel sound in isolation, work towards identifying the vowel
sound in VC AND CV positions. Say the nonsense words and ask the student to point to the
vowel sound they heard. Start simple - only contrast 2 vowel sounds and then increase. Allow
the students to see your mouth shapes for additional cues and then gradually work towards
identifying the sound just by listening.
6. If the students are struggling to identify the sounds, start by working on ‘same’ or ‘different’
contrasting 2 vowel sounds at an isolation level. For example teacher says “a” …. “e”. Student
indicates if they sounded the same or different. Build up the difficulty in a similar way as above.
7. Start to work on identifying the sounds in CVC words when you say them. I like to work in pairs
(e.g. contrasting pan/pin/pen). Start with words that are definitely in the child’s vocabulary –
even if it’s only a few. This is to teach the concept that the different vowel sounds have
different meanings.
 When you are working on vowels, encourage the students to pronounce the words like you
do – so that they can hear the vowels as you say them. However, when they say the words
naturally, they won’t say them like you. This is not wrong. It’s just their accent. You are
not aiming to change their accent. You are aiming to help them to hear the difference in
vowel sounds so they can identify them and learn them.
 Some students will be able to hear the difference in the vowel sounds, but will really
struggle to identify which vowel sound to use unless the teacher says it in a really over-
articulated way. This is especially common for ESL students who also have learning
difficulties. They understand the concept, but they struggle to remember and retain it. No
matter how much you practice, they don’t generalize the skill when they are spelling words
for themselves. In this case, practice and repetition of spelling common words is probably
the most useful – drilling the spelling as if it is a sight word. If they really aren’t getting it,
then persevere, but also work on teaching some compensatory strategies – eg how to use a
spell-checker on the computer.
I have uploaded some vowel identification pictures that I have created over the years. Unfortunately
the new boardmaker will only let me upload them as PDFs so they are not editable. BUT if you want any
activities like this, or need any changes – just let me know – they are quick and easy for me to make on
boardmaker.

Liza eedrich@qf.org.qa