What Are Syllables?

Syllabication is the process of analyzing the

patterns of vowels and consonants in a word
to determine where the word breaks into
syllables. This enables readers and spellers to
identify syllable types and their vowel sounds,
recognize consonant diagraphs and blends,
and thus arrive at an approximate
pronunciation and spelling of the word.
 Understanding Syllables
A syllable is a unit of pronunciation containing
a single vowel sound. For students in second
grade and beyond, knowing how to decode
unfamiliar multisyllabic words is essential
because most of the new words they will
encounter in print are “big” words.
Research shows that when good readers
encounter a long, unfamiliar word, they
assign the word a pronunciation by chunking
the letter patterns into manageable units.
These units can be phonograms, prefixes,
suffixes, and syllables.
 PREFIXES & SUFFIXES
Just as phonograms are useful chunks,
prefixes and suffixes also help students
recognize and pronounce multisyllabic
words. To decode big words, students
need to recognize common suffixed and
prefixes, use as logical syllable breaks,
and pronounce them as whole units.
Most of the time, a prefix or a suffix will
make its own syllable.