Short Monophthongs are shortest vowel sounds. Learn to read them correctly here. Download sample worksheets or ALL 10 worksheets by sharing about this topic on our FB Page!

1. Languagelab 1.1
Discriminating Short
Monophthongs

2. Introduction
You can easily read and spell when you are
familiar with letter sounds.
Do you have these challenges?
1) Slow down when you have bigger words
2) Say out a big word when you spell
3) Confused between letter sounds, such as
'en' or 'on' , 'ir' or 'er', 'tion' or 'sion', when
you spell
This topic will help you avoid these
problems.

3. Letter Sounds
To be effective in reading and spelling, letter
sounds must be mastered.
Letter sounds are called Phonemes.
A Phoneme is the smallest sound unit
produced when you read a word.
These words all have 3 sounds.
'cat' - /c/ /a/ /t/
'tad' - /t/ /a/ /d/
'con' - /c/ /o/ /n/

4. Phonemes
In English, there is a total of 44 phonemes
from 26 alphabets – 5 vowels and 21
consonants.
5 vowels – 20 phonemes
21 consonants – 24 phonemes
They represent 95% of how words are spelt
and read.
The rest of the words must be memorised.
These words are called Sight Words.

5. Sight Words
Sight Words are words that you recognise
immediately as it is commonly used.
They don't need you to know phonemes.
yacht 6) like
eye 7) there
why 8) yes
this 9) boy
That 10) the

6. Phonemes and Graphemes
If phonemes are letter sounds, graphemes are
letters representing these sounds.
Example: 'cat' has /c/ , /a/ , /t/ phonemes
shown by the graphemes 'c' , 'a' , 't'.
Sounds of music are shown by the notes too.
Watch this video -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=1RW3nDRmu6k

7. Learning Activity 1
Read each phoneme one-by-one.
/c/ , /a/ , /t/ 6) /t/ , /o/ , /n/
/s/ , /u/ , /n/ 7) /c/ , /a/ , /n/
/p/ , /o/ , /t/ 8) /d/ , /o/ , /g/
/l/ , /e/ , /t/ 9) /g/ , /e/ , /t/
/h/ , /o/ , /t/ 10) /h/ , /i/ , /m/
What are the words you can make from each
question?

8. Vowel Phonemes
5 vowels can create 20 different phonemes or
letter sounds
For example, for the letter 'a', these are the
usual 6 different phonemes:
/a/ nt ban /a/ na sw /a/ n
b /a/ by zebr /a/ b /a/ ll

9. Learning Activity 2
Read each phoneme /a/ produced by the
grapheme 'a' in each word one-by-one.
You must be able to read all the vowel
phonemes correctly.
1) /a/ nt (short sound) 4) zebr /a/
(short)
2) b /a/ by (high and low) 5) sw /a/ n
(short)
3) ban /a/ na (long) 6)b /a/ ll (long)

10. Short Monophthong
All vowel phonemes are voiced the similarly.
Air goes through our vocal cords without
blocking.
Short Monophthong is the fastest and shortest
sound.

11. Learning Activity 3
Read and hear the sounds of these SMs :
/a/nt 5) b/i/n
/a/pple 6) fr/o/g
b/e/d 7) p/u/ll
li/o/n 8) b/u/s
Write the SMs from the Vowel Phoneme Chart in
your Learning Guide Primary 1A in Page 9.

12. Discussion
What are phonemes?
What are graphemes?
Why is it important to learn phonemes and
graphemes?
How do we apply this knowledge?

13. In Summary
Phonemes are letter sounds or sounds made
by letter/s.
Graphemes are the letters representing the
sounds. For example, for phoneme /f/,
/ph/ is another grapheme for the same
phoneme.
Being familiar with phonemes will help us
greatly in spelling and reading.
With this knowledge, we know the right
grapheme when spelling and we know the
right phoneme when reading.