Please see our updated 2015 post here: http://blog.sproutenglish.com/christmas-word-puzzles-pronunciation-spelling-vocabulary/

I’ll never forget the day my son came home and told me all about how evil the letter ‘e’ can be. He taught me that the letter ‘e’ sometimes goes at the end of words and makes the vowels say their names. How rude! While I remember learning about Silent ‘e’ (worked for me), I’ve since learned that there are many other names for this trickster of a letter, including Evil E and Bossy E.

Are you using Sprout English’s Spotlight Phonics lesson in class this week? Have you reviewed Tanya’s pronunciation tips? Here are some fun songs and stories to share with your learners to get these rules to stick!

Evil E

“Say it Vowel! Say your name!”
Young kids act out a funny play with letters and demonstrate how ‘e’ hops over other letters and makes the vowel in front say its name. Evil E is bit of a bully, isn’t he?

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Do your students have difficulty with the pronunciation of short and long English vowel sounds? There are some spelling rules that can help young learners recognize when a long vowel sound is needed. One such rule involves the final, silent ‘e’ in a word, and this is the focus of this week’s Spotlight lesson: Silent ‘e’ Words 1.

This lesson is one of four involving four-letter words with a silent ‘e’ ending. There are 11 pages of spelling and writing practice in the first lesson, but what about audio? Listening and oral repetition is essential for a good pronunciation lesson. The teacher can certainly model the words, but it’s a good idea to have another source for listening practice too. (more…)

English spelling and pronunciation can be difficult to master, but we can help! Sprout English has four lessons on words ending in the unpronounced final ‘e,’ a little letter that greatly affects the pronunciation of the main vowel of a word. This week’s Spotlight lesson is Silent ‘e’ Words 1. (more…)

What’s the best way for students to learn English spelling?

Spelling in English is very difficult to learn. There are only 26 letters in the English alphabet, but there isn’t a one-to-one spelling/pronunciation system like there is with some other languages. For example, the  /i/ sound can be spelled as “ee,” “ie,” “ei,” “ea,” or “e” in English (cheese, thief, receive, leaf, impede). Even though English spelling involves a lot of memorization, there are some patterns and rules that can help. Today, let’s focus on the spelling rules for superlative adjectives.

Here are four easy spelling rules for adding -est to the end of adjectives. For more examples and practice, check out our Spotlight lesson this week on Superlative Adjectives. (more…)

Lest We Forget

On November 11, many countries have special ceremonies that honor the men and women who served during wartime. As teachers, it is important to help young learners understand this historic day. The famous saying “Lest we forget” means not only do we need to remember in order to honor the sacrifices of many people during past wars, but also to remember what happened so that history doesn’t repeat itself.

November 11 is called Veterans Day in the US, Remembrance Day in Canada, and Armistice Day in parts of Europe. At Sprout English, we’ve created two vocabulary lessons for you to use this year, Veterans Day and Remembrance Day. This led me to think about mistakes people often make with the titles of this holiday. Why is it Veterans Day and not Veterans’ Day or Veteran’s Day? Why is it Remembrance Day and not Rememberance Day? These punctuation, spelling, and capitalization rules can be tricky for native speakers as well as English language learners. I hope the explanations below will help your students keep these rules straight. (more…)

Sprout’s Phonics Cafe section offers many lessons to help improve low-level English learners’ printing, writing, spelling, and pronunciation. This section starts with the alphabet and works up to letter combinations and words that are difficult to pronounce and spell. This week’s Spotlight lesson is on the letters M to R. Your students will love the colorful illustrations and engaging activities!

This 20-page phonics lesson can be broken up and done over several days so that your learners get as much practice as they need. It starts off with simple printing exercises for the uppercase and lowercase letters M through R. The colorful images also give learners a chance to practice their pronunciation. (more…)

English spelling and pronunciation can cause a lot of difficulties for English language learners! That’s because English spelling often doesn’t match the pronunciation. English has gone through many sound changes over time, and we’ve kept some of the older spellings that don’t reflect the current sounds. Did you know that while many languages only have 5 vowel sounds (a, e, i, o, u), English has 26 vowel sounds? No wonder it’s tough to learn how to spell and pronounce English words correctly!

Two tricky sounds are those spelled with “ph” and “wh”. “Ph” is pronounced as an /f/ sound, and “wh” is pronounced as a /w/ sound, and neither include the /h/ sound! This week’s Spotlight lesson was on
“ph” & “wh” Words, so I decided to record the words from this lesson on the blog this week. (more…)

The English spelling system is one of the most difficult of all the world’s languages. Our spelling of a word often doesn’t match the sound of the word. Two such sounds are “ph” words and “wh” words, such as “phone” and “whale”. Luckily, we’ve got a lesson devoted entirely to the spelling and sound of “ph” and “wh” words! Your students will be writing and pronouncing these words correctly in no time.

This 16-page phonics lesson can be broken up and done over several days so that your learners get as much practice as they need. It starts off with writing/spelling and speaking exercises and moves on to other grammar points such as Prepositions and Wh Questions about time and place. The colorful images and variety of activities mean your students won’t get bored! (more…)

Simple present lessons are great for low-level students. In our featured lesson this week, Wendy introduces herself using simple present verbs, and she talks about her family and her favorite hobby, tennis.

All of the readings in our Library section can be done on paper or online, so teachers can choose how to present the reading and comprehension questions. Have your students do it on paper in class, or assign it for online homework and do the follow-up activities in class the next day. This lesson, Wendy, also includes a grammar exercise, spelling lesson, and twenty questions discussion activity.

Other simple present resources: (more…)