Using The Syllabic Method In Class

Pedagogues Friedrich Gedike and Samuel Heinicke developed the syllabic method. Both focused on finding a technique that would allow children to learn to read much faster and more effectively. That’s why they came up with this method, which uses syllables and their combinations to make this process easier.

According to some articles, such as ‘Writing and reading: Social fact, not natural’ , the syllabic method is a derivation of the phonetic method. The reason for this is that before presenting syllables to children, it is vital that they understand how each word sounds individually. Only then can they make the corresponding combinations.

The syllabic method in the classroom

As the article “Initial writing and cognitive style” points out, this method allows children to recognize and correctly use the spelling of each letter of the alphabet, and to make combinations according to the rules of the language they are trying to learn. To put it into practice in the classroom, it is therefore important to follow the following steps.

Vowels and consonants

During the application of the syllabic method, all exercises that will be done with the students will first focus on the vowels. Working with the consonants comes later. Let’s illustrate this to understand it better.

• Learning Vowels: The vowels are learned with an emphasis on how they are read and written. In this way, the students will read them aloud and identify the sound with the corresponding spelling.
• Learning consonants: you should not learn these in isolation, but together with the vowels that the students already know. That’s why teachers often teach simple combinations first, such as ma-me-mi-mo-mu. Most importantly, each student becomes familiar with the sound of the consonants attached to the vowels.

These are the first exercises that teachers can use in the classroom, as they form the basis of the syllabic method. It’s also fine to use colors, especially in combinations of consonants and vowels, to make learning much easier. Once you complete this first step, you can move on to the next.

The syllabic method: working with syllables

Step one is done. The students are familiar with the vowels and consonants and with some of their combinations. Now it is important to go a step further.

As you can see, the syllabic method is progressive and the difficulty increases as students assimilate knowledge. Here are some important exercises for working with syllables in a more advanced way:

• Introduce a consonant into the vowel-consonant combinations. We are talking about exercises where the students work on pronouncing and spelling combinations such as bra-bre-bri-bro-bru.
• Work with syllables in reverse order. At this point, the students have already seen combinations where the consonant (or two consonants) went first and then the vowel. Now, however, the difficulty will depend on changing this order. So you can, for example, work with al-el-il-ol-ul or ar-er-ir-or-ur.

By working with the syllables in this way, the children can learn how the same consonant can change pronunciation depending on the vowel next to it. For example, the English pronunciation of “ch” in “cherry” and in “school.”

diphthongs, triphthongs and mixed syllables

At this point, if the previous lessons have been properly understood, it is time to move on. It is now useful to see other combinations that can occur between vowels and consonants. We are talking about diphthongs or diphthongs, triphthongs and mixed syllables. Let’s take a look at some exercises you can do for this purpose:

• Diphthongs: These are the simplest. The children are introduced to simple diphthongs, such as aw-oi-ou, in addition to a range of other possible combinations.
• Triphthongs : This one adds another vowel to the previous units. It is a semivowel from one vowel to another and to a third, for example iau (from meow).
• Mixed syllables: in this case, the syllables studied at the beginning (consonant + vowel) are combined with the reversed syllables (vowel + consonant). All this is the same word.

Sentence formation and expressive reading

When all the previous steps have been completed, students should be ready to begin building progressively wider sentences until they form whole sentences. In any case, the ultimate goal of the syllabic method is to allow the student to read and understand a text easily and without major complications.

This method has proven to work very well. Children can become acquainted with different spellings and sounds. As a result, they can ultimately not only read a text, but also understand it. It also encourages them to learn to write sentences and even short texts themselves.

This may not be one of the best known methods worldwide. However, teachers can integrate it into the classroom very easily. Most importantly, the difficulty of the exercises increases little by little to give the children the opportunity to learn at their own pace. It can bring very positive results!