The English Sounds
It's important to keep in mind that letters are actually written symbols and not sounds. They are used to represent spoken sounds. To help make the distinction between letters and sounds in print, we use /_/ marks to indicate the sound and the letter symbol to represent the letter.
Some words have more letters than sounds.
Some words are easier to identify the sounds than others. When a word has the same number of sounds and letters, it's pretty straightforward. Things can get a bit trickier when a word has more letters than sounds because some sounds are represented by multiple letters. When trying to identify the sounds in words, try using “The 44 Sounds of English” handout to remind you of the sounds you are looking for. Remember, you’re counting sounds not letters. Below are a few examples of different types of words and their sounds circled on the handout then a sound box showing how many sounds that word has.
