How to Break Down Words: the 6 Types of Syllables (2024)

Breaking Words Down

When reading a long word, it is easy for students to feel overwhelmed. They will often guess at it, or skip it altogether — unless they are taught how to break the word down into smaller chunks, or syllables, that are more manageable. There are 6 types of syllables for students to learn.

What is a syllable?

A syllable is a vowel sound and all the consonants pronounced along with it. A vowel sound is an open sound that you can sing, because no part of your mouth (such as your lips, teeth, or tongue) is blocking the sound.

How to Count Spoken Syllables

Since your mouth must open to create a vowel sound, you can count the syllables in a spoken word by placing your hand beneath your jaw and feeling how many times it drops.

Why are syllables important?

Spelling Syllables

When students hear a word for the first time, the first thing they should do is break it into syllables. For example, “hatching,” has two syllables. By breaking the word down into syllables “hatch-ing” it is easier for students to hear the parts of the word. From there, students can segment the sounds within the syllable: /h/ /a/ /ch/ + /i/ /ng/. For students to spell a word, they must hear each sound in order to write down its corresponding spelling pattern.

Reading Syllables

When students see a word for the first time, the first thing they should do is break it into syllables.

1. Students should begin by looking for mutli-letter spelling patterns (such as [tch]) and underline them to identify which letters are working together to make one sound.
2. Since every English syllable must have a written vowel, students should then place a dot beneath each vowel spelling pattern to identify how many syllables are in the word.
3. Lastly, students should place syllable breaks. This is easier to do when you know the 6 types of syllables.

What are the 6 types of syllables?

In terms of written syllables, there are 6 types of syllables. When students can identify these, they are able to place syllable breaks, which is helpful for reading and spelling.The syllable type also dictates which sound a single vowel will say, which is very helpful since A, E, I, O, U, and Y all have multiple sounds.

Closed Syllables

The most common type of syllable in English is the closed syllable. In fact, about 50% of English syllables are closed. Closed syllables end with a consonant. An easy way to remember this is consonants are blocked, or partially blocked sounds (such as /b/ or /m/). Therefore, they “close” the mouth, effectively closing the syllable. For example, the word, “at.” /a/ is a vowel sound that opens the mouth, and you can sing it — until you say /t/, which closes your mouth and the syllable.

A single vowel will say its first sound (or short sound) in a closed syllable. There are many types of closed syllables: VC, CVC, CCVC, CCVCC, etc.

Examples of closed syllables include hat, pest, width, shot, slug, gym.

Basic Code

Basic Code is defined by the following:

1. Syllables only using phonograms 1-26 (the single letter spelling patterns + qu).
2. Syllables with every phonogram saying its first sound.
3. Closed syllables (which is what forces the vowel to say its first sound).

Some alphabets are simple to learn because they have a one-to-one correspondence between the letters and sounds. Examples of this would include Spanish and Italian. Linguists refer to these alphabets as transparent. When you hear a sound, you know what to write, because there is only one option.

English does not have a transparent alphabet — quite the opposite! English is an opaque alphabet, meaning for any given sound we hear, there are multiple options we could write. However, when teaching young children, we present them with Basic Code so that they learn English as transparently as possible before explaining advanced code.

The rest of the syllable types are categorized as advanced code because they require knowledge of rules and multi-letter spelling patterns.

Open Syllables

Open Syllables end with a single vowel (which is an open sound). In an open syllable, a single vowel will say its name.

Examples of open syllables include me, o-pen, ta-ble, pu-pil, pli-a-ble.

VCe Syllables

Silent Final E has 6 jobs in English, but its most common job is making a single vowel say its name. The E is not counted as a vowel in these syllables. The pattern will be

vowel, consonant, silent final E

Examples of VCe syllables include bake, theme, time, mode, cube, thyme.

Consonant -le Syllables

The ending -le often pulls the consonant from the syllable before it (trou-ble) so that it is typically C+le (consonant -le).

Here is an example of how I might talk through this during a spelling lesson with my class:

Examples of C+le syllables include maple, table, believable.

Vowel Team Syllables

Often we think of vowels as A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y. However, now that we have established vowels are open sounds, those sounds can be represented by multiple letters — sometimes known as “vowel teams.”

Just because two vowels are sitting beside each other does not mean they are working together to produce one sound. For example, “diet” is actually two syllables “di-et.”

Examples of Vowel Team syllables include team, meet, they, say, sail, group, build, veil, cook.

R-Controlled Syllable

Vowel teams followed by an R stay together to form the vowel sound in the syllable. These vowels are “R-controlled” because the /r/ sound is generated in the middle of your mouth. As the vowels move through your mouth toward the /r/ placement, the way we say them changes slightly.

Say “fare.” That is a VCe syllable, so the vowel should say its name. However, we do not hear a pure /A/ sound, because the /r/ pulls it down in our mouth. If you say each sound individually, you hear them clearly: /f/ /A/ /r/. But if you blend them, you can hear how the R affects the A. So is the case with all vowels followed by R.

Examples of R-Controlled syllables include her, first, early, work, hurt, for, far.

Additional Syllable Information

Compound Words

When you encounter compound words (such as pancake or butterfly), syllabicate as though they were single words first (pan-cake, butter-fly) and then into syllables (but-ter-fly).

Prefixes and Suffixes

Prefixes and suffixes usually form their own syllable. You will usually divide between the base word/root and the prefix or suffix (un-kind, north-ern, re-read).

Preserve the Base or Root Word

It’s good to be aware of the base or root when breaking a word into syllables. Syllabicate to honor the base, rather than speech. For example, in speech we say “ba-king” because we naturally pull consonants into the beginning of syllables. However, the base is “bake,” so in a spelling lesson, I would have my students syllabicate “bak-ing” to visually see that the base is “bake,” but we have followed the rule to drop the silent final e before adding the vowel suffix “ing.”

For a complete list of spelling rules, see The 44 Spelling Rules Every Student Should Know.