A study investigated the usefulness of six different but related phonics rules used to pronounce words. The phonics rules examined are: (1) When two vowels are adjacent, the long sound of the first vowel is pronounced and the second is not; (2) When two vowels are separated by one or more consonants and one of the vowels is a final e, the long…

To determine the usefulness in correctly pronouncing the vowels of three-syllable words of two commonly taught phonics rules and to assess whether their utility is inversely proportional to the number of syllables in a word, a study analyzed all of the over 100,000 three-syllable words in the "Scott Foresman Advanced Dictionary." As a reference,…

To determine the utility of the commonly taught phonics rule "if the only vowel in a word is at the end of that word, it usually stands for a long sound," a study evaluated all of the single syllable entries in the "New Grolier Webster International Dictionary of the English Language." When the letter "y" was considered a vowel, 72 words were…

To determine the usefulness of two commonly taught phonics rules concerning the pronounciation of two-syllable words, a study analyzed more than 138,000 words in the "New Grolier Webster International Dictionary of the English Language." The rules state that (1) a vowel is short when the only vowel in a syllable is not the last letter in…

In response to criticism of a previous study, this paper reports a revision of a proposed phonics rule "when there are two vowels, one of which is a final e, the first vowel is long and the final e is silent" (cradle), which is called the VCE (Vowel Consonant E) rule. Following an introductory section, the paper examines previous research, citing…

Research has shown that the commonly taught phonics rule "a vowel in the middle of a one-syllable word is short" is accurate only 68% of the time, given that a single-syllable word has been correctly identified. A recent research endeavor, which analyzed 138,000 words listed in the "New Grolier Webster International Dictionary of…

To determine the usefulness of the commonly taught phonics rule, "only pronounce the first vowel in words that contain adjacent vowels" (the VV rule, with the first "v" pronounced with the long vowel sound), two new studies applied it to words with adjacent vowels in several lists and dictionaries. The first study analyzed words containing…