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Recent Article from Winter/Spring 2003:
The Long and Short of It — Vowels, That Is
As those of you who use the Stevenson Language Skills Program know, it begins by teaching the reading and spelling of long vowel words. Over the years we have seen a few other programs that use long vowel words in this manner, but it is certainly unusual for a phonics-based method, as Stevenson is, to take this approach. So we thought we would make a few brief points about teaching long vowels first and short vowels later. On our website you will find a lengthier discussion of this subject, which you can also request in print by using the coupon on the back of this newsletter.We teach words with long vowel sounds first because author Nancy Stevenson, during her many years of teaching both reading disabled and young beginning students, found that long vowels sounds seemed easier for her students to process. Her pupils were usually able to discriminate, isolate, retrieve and blend the long vowels more accurately than the short vowels. When she first made this observation, research on dyslexia was limited. Since then, however, research has determined that students who are dyslexic, or otherwise at high risk for reading failure, often have difficulties with phonological and/or phonemic processing. In other words, these students are more likely than other pupils to have difficulty discriminating, isolating, re-trieving and/or blending the sounds that make up words (phonemes). Recent research has also confirmed the value of explicitly teaching high-risk students to decode (sound out words). In Nancy’s experience, students are more likely to decode accurately if they can discriminate, isolate, retrieve and blend letter sounds successfully.
We have searched for, but have not found, research that proves that long vowel sounds are easier to process than short vowel sounds, or vice versa. During the early development of her method, however, Nancy Stevenson made some basic observations that seem to be supported by common sense. These points are described in detail in our web site article.
If, indeed, Nancy is correct about long vowel sounds, why do so many phonics programs begin by teaching short vowel words first? For good reason. While long vowel sounds may be easier for certain students to handle, long vowel spellings usually are not. Long vowel words usually contain vowel pairs (also known as double-vowel digraphs) and silent letters. With these words a new problem arises; how do you know what letter to sound out?
The Stevenson Program handles the vowel pairs and silent letters by using special mnenonic clues. Most of you are familiar with our crunchy peanut butter and jelly sandwich words and our layer cake words. (If you are not, request an information packet or visit our web site.) These clues make it easy and fun for students to remember which letters make which sounds and when. If Nancy had not come up with these special clues, she probably would not have continued to use long vowel words first either. Since the sandwich and cake clues came easily to both her and her students, however, Nancy was able to develop a word attack strategy that takes advantage of the strengths of long vowel sounds. And her approach has consistently helped students who were not able to learn to decode effectively in other phonics programs.
If you would like to read more about long vowels, short vowels and the Stevenson Program, look under "News" on this website or check off the box on the coupon on the back page of printed newsletter, and we will send you a hard copy. As always, you can reach us at:
Stevenson Learning Skills
8 Commonwealth Avenue
Attleboro Falls, MA 02763
1-800-343-1211
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2002 Stevenson Learning Skills, Inc. All rights reserved.
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