CELTA Online Unit 24 Task 9: Sound/Spelling Relationship

Below are ten words. Tick the appropriate column for the vowel sound for each underlined part of the
word.

Commentary

cup nose orange blue

under dough cough knew

tough no bottle through
coat too

It is clear that because in English there is a complex sound/spelling relationship in English, there is no
one relationship between spelling and sound. One sound may be written using various different spelling
patterns, for example, can be written as ea (beach), ee (see), e (me), ie (chief) and ei (deceive) .
Likewise, one spelling pattern can give rise to a number of different sounds, such as ough , ,
and . Therefore, it can be difficult for learners to know how to pronounce written words or
how to spell words correctly.