Choose a reading lesson

 

What is a Phoneme?

Phoneme

Phonemes are the smallest unit of sounds in the English language. They come together to form words, and breaking words down into phonemes helps kids understand how they’re sounded out. There are 44 different phonemes, and they’re represented using letters or groups of letters called graphemes.

What is a Phoneme?

Phonemes are the smallest units of sound within a language. They are represented in writing by symbols known as graphemes, and they help us to distinguish one word from another.

Children will learn about phonemes during phonics, the study of sounds. For instance, they might learn how the word ‘dog’ is made up of three phonemes: /d/, /o/ and /g/. Throughout phonics, children will explore how words can be broken up into their phonemes in a process known as segmenting.

How many phonemes are in English?

By now we know what phonemes are, but how many phonemes are in English?

You might assume that the letters have alphabet phonemes to complement them, but this isn’t actually the case. There are more sounds than there are letters in the English alphabet. This is why, despite there being only 26 letters in the English alphabet, there are 44 phonemes.

What’s more, many phonemes have more than one way of spelling them. For instance, the /f/ sound can be spelled out using the grapheme ‘ph’ and the ‘oo’ sound can be spelled as ‘ue’. So in short, there are more phonemes than letters in the alphabet, and many more graphemes to represent these phonemes!

Because there are so many phonemes and graphemes, and there’s no direct connection between the alphabet and phonemes, It’s only natural for some young learners to feel quite confused. As they begin reading words, they might not always know which phoneme is being represented by a specific grapheme.

Fortunately, phonics teaches children all of the 44 phonemes and their graphemes in a methodical way. As they learn these phonemes, kids will also learn how they act as the building blocks of language through which we can form words. Learning to spell words properly using the correct graphemes is also a skill that children will develop through key stage 1 and into key stage 2.

What are the 44 phonemes?

Now that we know how many phonemes there are in English, let’s take a look at all of the 44 phonemes that children will learn in phonics. They can make up their own phonemic alphabet.

The 44 phonemes can be divided up into two groups: there are 20 vowel sounds and 24 consonant sounds. Let’s start off by looking at the different vowel phonemes in the English language, some of their graphemes and a few examples of where these 44 phonemes might appear:

Short and long vowel sounds:

Short vowel sounds	Long vowel sounds
a - cat, bat, ant	ai - paid, way, stay
e - bed, red	ee - bee, heat, feet
i - big, sit	ie - sky, high
o - dog, log	oe - bpw, roe
u - put, book	ue - cue, moon

Other vowel sounds:

Vowel phonemes	Examples
ar	car, far, star
er/ir/ur	fern, bird, turn
or	born, core
ow/ou	now, cow
oy/oi	toy, joy
eer/ear	hear, fear, deer
air, ere	stair, chair, there
our	four, your
schwa (ə)	balloon, bottom, family

Consonant phonemes:

Consonant phonemes	Examples
b	box, black
c	cup, cake
ch	chop, change
d	day, dog
f	fast, feet
g	get, gap
h	hit, horse
j	jar, June
l	long, left
m	met, mat
n	not, next
p	part, post
r	rat, rest
s	seat, soft
sh	ship, shift
t	tip, test
th	thin
th	these, those
v	vest, vote
w	we, wore
y	yet, your
z	zoo, zip
ng	ring, sing
ge	collage

In some cases, letters of the alphabet and phonemes are quite closely linked, which is why is can be refered to as the 'phonemic alphabet'. For instance, the grapheme ‘f’ shows the pure /f/ sound, while the grapheme ‘a’ represents the short ‘a’ sound. However, you might have also noticed that some of the graphemes we use to represent the 44 phonemes are made up of more than one letter!

When two letters come together to represent a single sound, we call it a digraph. There are also some trigraphs, which is where three letters form one sound. In fact, a grapheme can consist of up to four letters.

What is phoneme segmentation?

By now, we know how many phonemes are in English, we’ve looked at all of the 44 phonemes and we’ve seen some of the combinations of letters of the alphabet that phonemes are represented by.

So in this next bit, let’s find out about phoneme segmentation, or segmenting. We touched on this earlier, but what is it and why is an important part of phonics?

Phoneme segmentation, or segmenting, is more straightforward than its scary-looking name suggests. It essentially means breaking a word down into its phoneme sounds.

Phoneme segmentation is a skill that helps children learn how to read and spell words. By segmenting words into phonemes, kids can see all of the different sounds and how they come together in the complete word. It’s a bit like taking a machine apart to see how it works!

How do you break words into phonemes?

So now that we know what segmenting is, what’s the best way to do it?

There are a few different methods that we can use when segmenting words into phonemes. One of the simplest ways is by orally segmenting, or ‘sounding out’, a word. Together with your learners, you could say a word out loud slowly and count the number of different sounds that you hear. Let’s use the word ‘book’ as an example:

Once we’ve orally segmented the word ‘book’, we can see that it’s made up of three distinct sounds: a short /b/ sound, a short /oo/ sound and a /k/ sound at the end. Using letters of the alphabet as phonemes, we can represent these sounds with the graphemes ‘b’, ‘oo’ and ‘k’.

Now let's have a look at the word 'window':

Window (w-i-n-d-ow)

By segmenting this word into phonemes, we can see that 'window' is slightly more complicated and includes five different phonemes.

Oral segmentation is a handy method for breaking words apart, but there are also other methods and tools that you could use. For instance, kids could have a go at writing down all of the sounds that they hear in a word using phoneme frames or Elkonin boxes. You could also get creative and use objects to help them understand the different phonemes in a word.

Once you and your learners have segmented a word, you could then practise reforming it in a process called blending. Once you’ve got all of the sounds in a word, pupils could practise blending them back together by saying the sounds fluently as one word.

When will children learn the 44 phonemes?

We now know how many phonemes there are in English, but how will children learn about all of them?

Phonemes are taught as part of the phonics phases 1-6, and are crucial in helping children learn how to read. Phonics links phonemes, or the sounds, with the graphemes, or letters, they represent.

During Phase 1, kids will gain a basic understanding of things like environmental sounds and voice sounds. They’ll also start to learn about oral blending and segmenting words into phonemes.

As they progress into Phase 2, kids will start learning about phonemes. They’ll learn the first 19 letters of the alphabet and phonemes that they might represent, like ‘p’ and ‘I’. These sounds are arranged across five separate sets, and children will learn the letters of the alphabet and phonemes in these sets one by one.

Once they start Phase 3 of their phonics education, children will learn the remaining letters of the alphabet and phonemes that they represent. In this phase, children might also come across some more complex sounds and graphemes such as ‘ee’ and ‘oa’.

Tips for Teaching Phonemes

There are many simple things that teacher can do to help their children get more comfortable with letters of the alphabet and phonemes. Here, we will go through some simple actions that will go a long way to helping children understand phonemes:

• Exaggerate the phoneme you want to highlight: this may sound simple, but putting some extra emphasis on the phoneme you're focusing on as a class will really help children identify the phoneme. Given how many phonemes are in English, this method is a great way to help children tell them apart. You could even encourage your students to copy you and to focus on the sensations they feel in their mouth when they're making the sounds.
• Use games and keep your lessons fun! Like with most topics, making your lessons fun will keep children engaged and, in turn, make them more likely to remember what they've learned! Use the games and activities mentioned below to get some inspiration on how to make your teaching on phonemes as fun as possible.
• Make clear distinctions: Help your students by stating the obvious. Asking them easy questions will help boost their confidence and let them know that they understand what you're teaching. On the flip side, this will also be able to tell you who may need some extra support with certain phonemes. For example, ask your class if they can hear the sound /m/ in the word 'milk', and if they can hear that same sound in the word 'cow'.
• Try segmenting words into phonemes and sounds that your child is confident with, so they don't seem as overwhelming.

Twinkl's Top Phonemes Teaching Resources

Now that we know how many phonemes are in English, it might seem like there’s a lot of ground to cover, and you may also be wondering where to begin.

That’s why our talented design team have come up with loads of fun, engaging and educational teaching resources that will help you teach phonemes to your learners. All of our high-quality materials, from activities to sound mats and more, have ben designed by experienced teachers, so they all adhere to curriculum and DfE guidelines.