Tag Archives: Spelling

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What’s Schwa Got to Do with It?

Ooh, schwa. Sounds exotic. What is it?

Unless you teach elementary-aged kids, sing chorally, or are a word nerd (word nerds, unite!), you may not know what in the world a schwa is. Why should you care? Well, if you play Wordle, it’s a fantastic word to know (you’re welcome). And if you’ve ever thought that English is a ridiculously hard language to learn, you can thank the schwa—it’s a big part of why this is such a difficult language to read and spell.

Merriam-Webster defines schwa as “an unstressed mid-central vowel (such as the usual sound of the first and last vowels of the English word America),” wherein “mid-central” refers to the placement of the vowel in the mouth. The Oxford Dictionary definition is, “the unstressed central vowel (as in a moment ago), represented by the symbol /ә/ in the International Phonetic Alphabet.”

What does all this mean? Even though we know there are five vowels (a, e, i, o, and u) and sometimes a sixth (y), the schwa sound can be made by any of them. The key is identifying where it falls in a word (unstressed syllables in multisyllabic words). What, to the naked ear, may sound like a short u or i could actually be spelled with any of the vowels—and often not the ones you expect.

Learn from My Mistakes

It was time to teach the schwa sound to my students, and we practiced “calling words home” (a trick that helps them identify stressed and unstressed syllables), and then I set them loose with a worksheet to find the schwa in a bunch of different words. I’m not proud of it, but it was one of those lessons when I just needed an activity to fill the time, so I did what (some) teachers do in this type of situation: I looked for a free worksheet online. One that didn’t require my students to cut out and glue anything because, even though I have a very cute chicken-shaped receptacle for my glue sticks, I absolutely abhor using them. More glue gets on the table than on the paper, and what little does get on the paper doesn’t hold, so there are scraps of paper everywhere and a sticky table. But I digress.

The nice lady who created the worksheet explained that she had vetted every single word to ensure they all had a schwa syllable. Indeed, all were schwa words. But many of them are what I call hiding-in-plain-sight schwa words, and I did an inadequate job preparing my students for these. Within a few minutes of turning them loose with what should have been an independent activity, I was getting called to help them left and right because they were able to find the unstressed syllables, but then it appeared that many of the unstressed syllables had the vowels they were expecting. So how could they be schwas? I had missed one important detail about the schwa, which was right there in my teacher’s manual. UFLI Foundations defines schwa as a “quick, unstressed neutral vowel pronunciation, noted by the symbol /ә/. The purpose of schwa is to allow unstressed syllables to be said more quickly” (p. 371, emphasis added).

I had neglected to tell my students that, sometimes, the schwa vowel is, in fact, the one you think it is (depending on regional pronunciation, of course). What I mean by this is that I can sound out a word like muffin and figure out that its vowels are u and i (in that order). Does this word have a schwa? Yes, it’s the i. Say it. Which syllable gets the stress? muf Now, say the whole word, and when you do, really listen for that second vowel. Does is sound like a pure i (“ih”), or do you say it so quickly that its sound is indistinct? (I hope you said it’s indistinct, but if you think differently, I’ll get to that in a sec.)

Every multisyllable word has at least one unstressed syllable, and chances are, that unstressed syllable has the schwa sound. Try some more words: across, chicken, dentist, dragon, upon. Unstressed syllables make the schwa lazy; the vowel is kind of taking a nap and not doing its proper job. This was a hard concept for me to grasp because I am a trained singer, and when singing, I often modify the schwa sound to make it more palatable to the ear.

For example, when singing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” I pronounce the i in perilous as the pure short /i/, not /ә/. Even though no one goes around saying per-ih-lous, this is a choice that many singers make because the schwa sound is, quite frankly, ugly when it’s sung (especially when a note/vowel is sustained for any length). Because I’ve been singing for a lot longer than I’ve been teaching, I sometimes (unintentionally) speak in an affected way, making the schwa hard for me to detect. This happens even more when I’m sounding out a word in isolation with my students. Note to self: when teaching, take off your singer hat. When my students were trying to find the schwa in a syllable that clearly sounded like /ә/ and just as clearly was spelled with a u (like until), it’s no wonder they were confused. They thought that the schwa could never be the vowel that typically makes that sound. It’s important to teach that, even though it may sound like a short u (or i, as the case may be), the schwa prevents it from having its purest sound. In other words, when trying to be a schwa detective, be the opposite of a good singer.

How to Teach Schwa and Why It’s Important

First, being able to identify which syllables are stressed and unstressed is a great tool for readers to have in their literacy toolboxes. Because I have a very long last name that starts with an unstressed syllable, I’m familiar with people attempting to lead with a stressed syllable. And once they start pronouncing it incorrectly, they get stuck. I teach my students what stressed and unstressed syllables are by using their names. I pretend they’re very far away, then call them in a sing-song voice. When I do, which syllable do I naturally stretch out? That’s the stressed syllable. (Kids love this because they discover that many of them have one or more schwa sounds in their names.) We can use this same exercise with multisyllabic words. If emergent readers are decoding a word for the first time and it sounds wrong, they’re likely emphasizing the wrong syllable. They need to “call” it the other way, with the stress on the other syllable. Then all kinds of light bulbs start to go off. (To see exactly what I mean, here’s a FREE video of me teaching the schwa sound.)

Second, if students don’t learn about the schwa, they might be prone to spell words like nickul (nickel) or baskit (basket). And while spell check is out there to fix a lot of these mistakes, it can’t help when someone is wildly off. I teach with the simple view of reading approach, in which sounds (phonemes) and word parts (syllables) are taught in an explicit, systematic manner. The spelling patterns are more important than the individual words because they’re like keys, and once readers have the keys to decode, they can “open up” all kinds of new words. Once I’ve taught a spelling pattern (like the schwa sound), I include it in word work, games, and texts, and students gain reading comprehension. It’s a formula that looks like this:

RC = D x LC

in which Reading Comprehension is the product of Decoding and Language Comprehension.

Why It Matters (My Soapbox Moment)

The more students engage with and experience these words, the better they will understand and retain them. The better readers they will be. The better spellers and writers. But what about those students who struggle? They may have the reading strategies down cold, but they just can’t get the hang of spelling, no matter how hard they try. They are the kids who routinely fail spelling tests (in the schools that still give them) or who lose a letter grade because their essays, while including all the right content, look like they were written by a three-year-old. If you’ve read my blog before, you know how I feel about tests (don’t like them one bit), although I grudgingly understand why we do have to have some way to quantify what students know.

I am a formative assessment kind of gal, and one great way to give this kind of assessment was introduced to me in a math workshop, of all things. While I was attending in the hopes of helping my kiddos who struggle with math (and I did get a lot of great tips for that—never fear!), I came away with a much stronger sense of how to help all my students in any subject.

When we throw concepts at students and expect them to swallow (and regurgitate) them with no opportunity for reflection, how much are they getting out of the lesson? How much do they retain? The answer is often just enough to get them through the unit test—if that. What I learned from Dr. Yeap Ban Har from [Math]odology is that the answer does not matter nearly as much as the journey to searching for the answer. He uses the analogy of going to the airport. Some students are on their way there (need assistance). Some have arrived at the airport and are ready to board (emergent). Others are at cruising altitude (independent). One way to gauge which level of “airport” readiness students have achieved is by giving them the opportunity to show their learning through reflective journals. These can take many different forms, from simply describing what they learned to turning it into a story or letter to a friend to… well, whatever way a student needs to express him- or herself. If education across the board could shift in this direction, I think great things could happen for our young minds.

Bringing it back to the schwa sound, I would much rather a student explore and find words in texts they’re reading, write them out, and play with syllable stresses than memorize a list of words for a spelling test. If they get the vowel wrong, at least they’re thinking. We’ll read some great literature together, and they’ll suddenly start seeing words with schwas everywhere, and the dots will start to connect. If you’re a teacher, wouldn’t you much rather spend your time reading great texts to your students than drilling them for a test? If you’re a parent, doesn’t that sound like the kind of education you’d like your child(ren) to have? With the right exposure, the right techniques, they’ll become much more competent and confident readers, writers, learners, and thinkers.

For more about schwa and all kinds of other spelling patterns, check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store, Mrs C Loves to Read. For two days only (August 6-7, 2024), get up to 25% off everything in my TpT store using the code below.

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Call Me the Grammar Nazi

English: Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth Presid...

Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of the United States. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.

Opinions differ about who originally said the above maxim. Many think it was Abraham Lincoln, and there’s a slightly different version attributed to Mark Twain. Whoever it was, I think he (or she) would throw his hands up in despair if he saw what’s happening in social media these days. And in this instance, I’m speaking particularly of grammar.

Here’s the thing: a properly spelled and punctuated status update could very well contain nothing but idiocy; however, it appears better informed than a good argument that expresses itself poorly with terrible grammar. The ones that really drive me nuts are the school teachers who post things with really bad (and obvious) spelling errors. And you’re teaching our kids? I think. No wonder everyone complains about American education.

Not only do I take speaking and writing properly as a personal responsibility, but I also consider a thing of pride. And pride goeth before a fall; yes, I know. But I don’t want to be a poor representative of my education or my upbringing. English is my first language; it’s my job to know it.

Maybe I’m taking this a little too seriously. It could be that spelling comes to me naturally or that I have a gift with tongues. I fondly remember our spelling bee games in elementary school, which not only weeded out the bad spellers but prepared those of us who were going on to the real thing. In the fifth grade, the word that stumped me was “souvenir,” and although I spelled it wrong (I think I put an “i” instead of the “e”), I asked for the correct spelling and have known it ever since.

I wonder, though, about the other kids that didn’t make it. When they misspelled whichever words got them out, were they relieved that they didn’t have to do it anymore? Did they shrug it off and never give it another thought? Or did they do what I did and learn the proper spelling?

I know there is probably a certain percent of the population who don’t care one bit but still spell correctly because they’ve unconsciously absorbed and retained the information. So where does that leave the bad spellers who really want to get the words right but can’t ever seem to quite make it? I think that this minority is shrinking and being taken over by the shruggers, the people who think that it doesn’t much matter anyway.

Those of us who call ourselves writers should know better. More than that, we should do better. Especially considering the ease with which our words make it into one form of media or another, we should set ourselves apart by making our prose as clean and intelligible as possible.

I know of some famous authors who, without the aid of excellent editors, could never spell their way out of a paper bag. And I suppose I can believe that a bestselling author does not a good speller make. After all, there was a time before writing, when traditions were kept orally, through storytelling. There must have been countless storytellers in our world’s history who never needed to know teem and team are spelled differently.

On the other hand, this should not be a cop out. We do have a system of writing now, proper sentence structures and various forms of punctuation that have developed over the centuries as it became more common for people to read, and reading material became more accessible.

From road signs to advertisements, from books to newspapers, Internet columns to menus to instruction manuals. . . and the plethora of other ways we use words to get meanings across to others, I’m here to say it does matter. And no, I’m not going to pass by a restaurant for advertising “from scratch pizza’s” (I’ll pass by for dietary reasons instead), but I’ll be embarrassed for the person that created the menus. . . and even more embarrassed for the majority of the patrons who simply don’t notice. But as someone who reads cover letters on an almost daily basis, I always mentally move a candidate down a notch when he says he hopes his writing exceeds expectations, and the first sentence greets me with a big ol’ typo.

What in the world is the solution? Education is a big part. Caring is another, and I’m not quite sure how to make people care. In a culture where idiocy is applauded and can make you famous (just visit YouTube, and you’ll see what I mean), it’s a tough fight.

But while I’m preaching and feeling pessimistic, there is someone out there who put a little bit of a humorous spin on the whole “Grammar Nazi” thing. So check it out Why It’s Hard Being a Grammar Nazi, have a laugh, and then use a dictionary the next time you’re even the tiniest bit unsure about how to spell the plural of “hero.”

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Sometimes I Like to Be a Wee Bit British

English: British versions of the Harry Potter ...

Bloomsbury editions of the Harry Potter series

When my husband and I saw the movie The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, we joked that if we ever had a daughter, we’d have to teach her to speak with a British accent because Lucy Pevensie was just so darn cute. As fate would have it, we had two boys instead, so I guess we’ll never know if we would have stuck to the plan. But there are still many things British that we love.

We’re Harry Potter geeks, so much so, in fact, that when I found that some of the language was Americanized in the Scholastic editions, I searched far and wide and finally purchased the Bloomsbury (British) editions of all seven books. There’s something about reading the words the way J.K. Rowling wrote them (not to mention that the title of the first book was changed in the American version) that makes me feel like I’m getting a more authentic experience.

I have to extend my love to the entire United Kingdom. I recently saw Disney Pixar’s Brave, and anything with bagpipes stirs my soul. (And I still say that real men wear kilts.) Being Presbyterian, I am Scottish by denomination, although my heritage is mostly Irish.

I guess the biggest give-aways about my occasional British affinity are a couple spelling choices that I make. I cannot make myself write “gray” or “theater,” unless, of course, those spellings are used in proper nouns. I’m more of a “grey” and “theatre” kind of girl. I can’t ever remember a time when I chose to write these words the preferred American way, nor did any teachers ever try to correct me—nor should they. I suppose I’m inconsistent, since I still write “color” and “labor” instead of adding the optional “u,” but I’m not the only one out there doing these kinds of things, am I? Come on, somebody, admit you like to break out of the mold a little, too. (And not capitalizing doesn’t count! e.e. cummings already took that one.)