"When 2 vowels go walking, the first one does the talking". Well, not really, but it sort of makes sense for some vowel combinations. First of all, "does the talking" means that the vowel will say its name. So when you see EA in a word it says "E", like in eat, neat, meat, team, cream. The problem is that it is misleading to think that it is true for all vowel combinations. Here are the only ones that I teach:
EE and EA say "E" (meet, meat)
OE and OA say "O" (toe, boat)
A-E, AI and AY say "A" (make, paid, play) *note: you won't see AE together in English words, they are usually separated by a consonant...see the "E rule".
So what about the other combinations? Think about it. I can't make the sounds here on the computer but I will give you examples.
AU and AW (taught, saw...the same as the short O sound like in not)
OO (has 2 different sounds...book and boot...did you feel your lips get rounder for the second one?)
OI and OY (boil, boy)
OU and OW (ouch, how) I teach this one first
OW (snow and grow...it sometimes says the name "O")
Spelling can be tricky. You will see W's and Y's at the ends of words (cow, boy), U's and I's in the beginning or middle of the word (out/pout, oil/soil). Is this always true? Of course not, we're talking about English here. (clown, town...those n's at the end are a tip off to use the ow)
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