Logic of English® phonograms and spelling rules are not unique to American English; they describe how written English works across the globe! Many people use Logic of English in English-speaking countries worldwide and find it helpful and relevant for their students. 

If you are using Logic of English materials and speak British, Australian, or other Commonwealth English we have some ideas that may be helpful!

 

This article covers the following topics:

• General Ideas
• The Phonogram OUR
• Apply Spelling Rule 12.4 to words like centre
• Final R: Overview and Background
• Final R: Suggestions if Students Struggle 
• Broad /a/ - How Many Sounds?
• Slight Variations of a Sound

 

General Ideas

Teach the way it's spelled and pronounced where you live.

• Phonograms: Always teach the sound each phonogram represents in your students’ speech. Use the sample words on the back as a guide. The basic phonograms are designed to work across accents; this is why we use sample words rather than IPA as pronunciation guides. Logic of English does not teach one "correct" pronunciation, but the relationship between the written phonograms and their sounds in speech.
• Spelling Words: There are not many words that are spelled differently, but when you come to one, teach it with the spelling you use. If it’s spelled the same, but the rules apply differently because of a difference in pronunciation, analyze the rules and phonograms as they apply.
• Phonogram Cues: whenever you are teaching a word with a sound that can be spelled multiple ways, provide a verbal cue to let the student know which option to choose. You may need to clarify sounds that are different in American English, but the principle is the same for any accent: If there is more than one choice for a sound, you need to let the student know which phonogram to use.

 

The Phonogram OUR

OUR saying /er/ is a rare American spelling. It is taught later in the curriculum as an Advanced Phonogram in Logic of English. However, this phonogram is used more frequently in the United Kingdom. It should therefore be taught as a basic phonogram when teaching words such as colour or neighbour.

 

Suggested Scheduling for teaching OUR as a basic phonogram:

• Foundations: Introduce in Foundations C, Lesson 84, after the other spellings of /er/ - or at any point before Lesson 112.
• Essentials: Introduce in Unit 8, before teaching the Level C spelling word harbour, or in Unit 12. Consider adding the word to your Spelling Journal and your lesson 12 spelling list to provide practice with this phonogram.

 

Apply Spelling Rule 12.4 to Words Like Centre

Logic of English Spelling Rule 12.4 says that we add a silent E because “Every syllable must have a written vowel.” In the curriculum, we apply this rule to words like table, purple, eagle, and puzzle. However, when you teach this rule, incorporate words where an E is added after an R, such as centre, fibre, and sombre.

 

Suggested Scheduling for words ending in -re:

• • • Foundations: Lesson 106
    • Essentials: Unit 18. You will find a teacher tip in Essentials about this when Rule 12.4 is taught.

 

Final R: Overview and Background

One of the most noticeable differences in pronunciation between American and British English involves a final R.

The American English pronunciation is rhotic, meaning that a consonant /r/ sound is heard when an R falls after a vowel.

However, many UK English dialects today are non-rhotic, meaning that an R falling after a vowel  is not pronounced as a consonant. Although a consonant /r/ will be heard if the next sound in the word is also a vowel (think foreign or boring), in most contexts the R will be silent (car, earn, bird), or pronounced as a slight schwa sound (near, care, soar). 

For example, compare the following words:

No Audible /r/	Audible /r/ (in many UK dialects)
soar	soaring
far beyond	far away
for	foreign
clear	clearer
fur	furry
virtue	giraffe

 

Dropping these /r/ sounds is a change in UK English speech. Many scholars think non-rhotic pronunciation developed and became standardized over the of the eighteenth century. But before this change, the post-vocalic /r/ was typically pronounced.

Regardless of when the change occurred, non-rhotic pronunciation is standard today in most of England, Australia, New Zealand, Wales, and South Africa, among other places.

This may make sounding out words that end in R, such as clear and more, slightly more tricky for some students so make sure to support your students in segmenting these words.

 

Final R: Suggestions if Students Struggle 

Final R in the phonograms AR, OR, IR, ER, UR, OUR, EAR

The R-controlled phonograms themselves need no modification. Simply teach students the sound they represent in your speech. If you use a non-rhotic pronunciation, teach the phonogram that way. Use the sample words on the back of the Basic Phonogram Flash Cards for guidance if you are uncertain of the phonogram’s sound.

However, you might want to consider adding additional information to the schwa rule to clarify how it applies to these phonograms if you find that students are having trouble recognizing the R-controlled vowels at the ends of words.

• Modification
  • • Spelling Rule 31.1: Any vowel may say one of the schwa sounds, /ŭ/ or /ĭ/, in an unstressed syllable or unstressed word. This includes the R-controlled phonograms AR, OR, ER, UR, and OUR.
    • Reason: In non-rhotic English dialects, these phonograms often say a schwa sound when found in an unstressed syllable. calendar, doctor, dancer, murmur, colour
• Modification
• • • Omit Spelling Rule 31.3: AR and OR may say their schwa sound, /er/, in an unstressed syllable.
    • Reason: Not needed because words to which it applies are explained by the modified form of 31.1.

 

Final R After a Long Vowel

When an R comes after a vowel that should say a long sound — whether a multi-letter vowel such as the phonograms EE or IGH, or a single vowel with a silent E — the /r/ is not simply silent. Instead, it often has an effect on the preceding vowel. It may change the shape (and thus the sound), or it may slightly lengthen the vowel. It is also somewhat audible in many cases, either with a subtle /r/ or by adding a slight schwa sound. Compare tea and tear or snow and snore, for example.

It may be worth helping students notice the pattern of what these silent R’s do to preceding vowels, so that it becomes easier for them to hear where it is present. If you find that they struggle to recognize the sounds when they are distorted before an R, you could lead them through an activity such as the following.

 

If Needed: Discover the Pattern

Provide students with the following list of words. (If teaching this lesson before students have learned all the multi-letter vowel phonograms used, provide only the pairs that include phonograms they have learned.)

1. Read the following pairs of words. Underline the vowels.
   1. • steak ___ bear
      • paid ___ pair
      • rein ___ their
      • cane ___ care
2. What vowel sound do you hear in the words in the first column? (Long /ā/).
3. What vowel sounds do you hear in the words in the second column? (Answers vary).
4. What do you notice about the vowels in the second column? (They are all spelled the same as vowels in the first column. They should say /ā/, but the sound is slightly different. They all sound similar to each other.)

Help students compare these vowel sounds. Notice what the "true" sound of the phonogram is, what it says before R, and how these two sounds are similar and different. Have them try saying the words that end in R with the "true" sound of the vowel. Notice that they are difficult to pronounce this way.  

1. Continue with additional vowel sounds.
   1. • heat ___ hear
      • cheek ___ cheer
      • protein ___ weird
      • athlete ___ revere
   2.  
      • white ___ wire
      • hide  ___ hire
   3.  
      • soul ___ pour
      • oat ___ oar
      • stone ___ store
      • cute ___ cure
      • south ___ sour 

 

Guide students to notice: the R shifts the pronunciation of each vowel. The shift happens no matter which phonogram was used to spell the vowel sound. The sound is related to the “usual” sound that the phonogram should say, but the R distorts it in a way that makes the word easier to pronounce.

 

Broad /a/ - How Many Sounds?

At Logic of English, we teach three sounds of the phonogram A: /ă/ as in mat, /ā/ as in table, and /ä/ as in father. Occasionally we get questions from UK English speakers who have noticed that the sound they say in father is not the same as what they say in wash, or perhaps in author or awe or caught — all of which we categorize as a broad a sound.

We categorize these as the same sound, broad A, and have found so far that students do just fine learning the sounds this way, both for reading and spelling. However, this sound indeed has several different variations in any given individual's speech. The variations are more distinct in some English accents than in others.

It is a normal part of human speech for sounds to change shape a bit in different words depending on what sounds are around them. In many cases we don't even notice. Our brains can automatically categorize these closely related variations (called allophones) into one phoneme.

For example, if you are American, you probably say a slightly different short A sound in hat and mathematics than you do in hand or sang. Linguists will tell us that we actually say a different variant of the /p/ sound in pin than in spin, even though most don't notice the difference.

But sometimes, as with broad /ä/ in most British and a few American dialects, the variation is more noticeable and even begins to seem like a distinctly different sound. In some British English accents, there are three subtly but perceptibly different shades of broad /ä/. And the short O sound sometimes adds an additional complication! Depending on where you live, you may perceive the vowel sounds in the words box, awe, and father (or the words father, wash, and walk to stick with the phonogram A only) as all about the same, or two the same and one different, or all three perceptibly distinct from each other.

To get very technical for a moment: for those who are familiar with or curious about the International Phonetic Alphabet, the symbols used to represent these three distinct sounds are:

ɒ - This is the British short O (as in box). It is formed low in the back of the mouth with lips rounded.
ɑ - This is the sound in father or palm. It is formed low in the back of the mouth with lips relaxed.
ɔ - This is the sound in some dialects' pronunciation of walk, caught, and awe. Lips are rounded, but the sound is not as low in the mouth as the previous two sounds.

 

Slight Variations of a Sound

We've typically found that when students notice slight variations of a sound, it helps to talk about the idea of “shades” of sound. Just as there are different shades of red that are still unquestionably red, there can be different variations of a sound that we can easily categorize as the same sound, just with a slightly different “shade.”

At some point, two sounds are so distinct for a given speaker that they should not be categorized as variations (or allophones) of one phoneme but as distinctly different speech sounds.  There’s a bit of a gray (or grey!) area as to when to draw this line. However, a good rule of thumb is to think about whether it would change a word to a different word if you swapped them.

From my observations so far, it seems like if you swapped which pronunciation of broad /ä/ you use in a word for another broad /ä/ sound, you would have an odd-sounding pronunciation of the same word rather than an entirely new word. For this reason, my instinct is that it's most helpful to think about them as shades of the same sound (just as different shades of red are still red) rather than have students memorize four or five sounds of the phonogram. We've generally found that even students who do pronounce these sounds slightly differently do just fine learning them as slight variations of the broad A sound that they may encounter in different contexts (for example, after a /w/ sound you are more likely to get one of the rounded ones, since the mouth is rounded for /w/), particularly once they understand that any sound may vary a bit in different sound environments.

However, if the distinction between these sounds is significant where you live and you want to teach the different variations as fourth (or fourth and fifth) sounds of the phonogram A for your students, that would be fine too. And we’d love to hear about how it goes!