Phonics instruction: short vowel sounds /i/ vs /e/

[Pam H]

I'm trying to help my ds hear the difference between these two short vowel sounds. Our southern accent doesn't help. Do any of you have any tricks or resources that can help?

[petepie2]

I don't think I can help much, but I just want to say that I sympathize with you! I was born and raised in Mississippi, so I know a little bit about the nuances of a Southern accent. Also, my Midwestern husband is also quick to point them out!

 

My dd didn't have any problem learning to read and differentiating between those two sounds. When she was learning the sounds, I think I often said "e" as in "elephant" and "i" as in "igloo". However, as we're now moving into spelling, I have to be more careful in pronouncing words correctly. The word "pen" was in one of her dictation phrases last week. My "pen" is indistinguishable from my "pin" if I'm not careful.

[Oops, duplicate account :/]

PP recommends having the child say words wrong to get it. Like saying e words with the i sound and visa verse. icho, ixercise, ivergreen, idge and etch, egloo, etc.

[Guest muffinette]

If you live near a hardware store, you can get a small piece of pvc pipe. They sell them curved, and it looks like a telephone when you hold it up to your ear. This will magnify the sounds a little better. Also, have your child watch your face when you make the sounds. Your mouth should "smile" wider when you make the short 'e' sound. Exaggerate it! :)

[5LittleMonkeys]

Watch yourself in a mirror. When you say 'pen' your mouth should be open in a soft horizontal oval shape and your teeth should be apart far enough to stick your tongue through. When you say 'pin' your mouth should be almost a smile and there should be very little room between your teeth. In fact if you want to really enunciate the difference say 'pin' with your teeth touching.

[Ellie]

I don't know if there's anything you can do other than keep working at it. :tongue_smilie:

 

And there are many people who cannot hear the difference between "pin" and "pen" who aren't Southern. Some of my born-and-raised-in-California students had trouble with that, too.:001_huh:

[ElizabethB]

When we lived in Little Rock, many of my students there had that problem.

 

Here is a thread where I gave some ideas, there are also plenty of other good replies for you to try:

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=156270&highlight=Pin+pen+don+potter

[WiseOwlKnits]

short i: i, like ick.

short e: eh?, like what did you say.

 

It took me FOREVER to distinguish the difference between those two sounds.

[Embassy]

When I worked in accent reduction this worked well:

 

You need to train his ears before he can say them correctly. I'd make a minimal pair list where you have words with all the same sounds except one has the short i sound and the other has the short e sound like:

 

will - well, bill - bell, tin - ten, etc.

 

Say both words to your child and have him identify a picture or the word you said. Keep working at that until he can do that most of the time without trouble. Then you can work with him learning to say the same pair of words with the correct sound.

[Closeacademy]

I started putting my hand behind my ear for the "e" sound and shivering and making a bad taste look on my face for "i".

 

e--eh? what?

 

i--icky, yuck

 

:001_smile:

[Guest mrsjamiesouth]

I'm trying to help my ds hear the difference between these two short vowel sounds. Our southern accent doesn't help. Do any of you have any tricks or resources that can help?

 

We have used Phonics Pathways and they say E says "Eh, like I can't hear you." or E says eh like echo. I says ih like itch or igloo.

I just had him go back and forth saying eh, ih, eh, ih.

[Guest mrsjamiesouth]

If you live near a hardware store, you can get a small piece of pvc pipe. They sell them curved, and it looks like a telephone when you hold it up to your ear. This will magnify the sounds a little better. Also, have your child watch your face when you make the sounds. Your mouth should "smile" wider when you make the short 'e' sound. Exaggerate it! :)

 

I actually found a telephone at a learning supply store that is made for this. When you talk into it you can hear yourself.

[Researcher]

I actually found a telephone at a learning supply store that is made for this. When you talk into it you can hear yourself.

 

 

Hear Myself Sound Phone is the one we have. It worked very well for this purpose.

[Chris in VA]

Agreeing with everyone--one little trick is to tell him to drop his mouth slightly on Eh. Have him use a mirror to see the difference.

[Homeschooling6]

I don't know if there's anything you can do other than keep working at it. :tongue_smilie:

 

And there are many people who cannot hear the difference between "pin" and "pen" who aren't Southern. Some of my born-and-raised-in-California students had trouble with that, too.:001_huh:

 

This is my dd. She has always had trouble with i and e and she was born in CA:001_smile: She is 11yrs. old now and speaks much better but when she was younger people couldn't understand her.

[LizzyBee]

To say the /e/ sound correctly, you have to open your mouth further than with the /i/ sound. Practice that on your own, then teach it to your son.

 

You can also do what OG programs do. Teach /i/ and practice with it thoroughly. Do not teach /e/ until /i/ is mastered.

 

Also have a key word for each vowel that will help him remember the sound and self-correct. Teach him to chant the keyword, because that will help him remember it. Ex: itchy, itchy, /i/, /i/, /i/ and extra, extra, /e/, /e/, /e/.

Edited September 28, 2010 by LizzyBee

[Heidi]

/e/, /e/, eggs...

 

I write a lower case "e" on the chalkboard. I turn the "e" into a stick figure with the "e" as the head with an open mouth. The stick-arm is putting eggs into the open mouth of the e-shaped head. "e" says /e/ as in eggs.

The kiddos remembered it.

[Miss Sherry]

When my youngest daughter was little she was having some trouble hearing the difference between some of the short vowel sounds. I had her use the computer program called Earobics. It was great for that and is a lot of fun to use.

I just saw that the company I purchased Earobics from is now selling something else instead called HearBuilder. You may want to check it out.

Also, you could look around for Earobics if you are interested. Sometimes it shows up used. It really is a wonderful program.

http://www.superduperinc.com/about/faq/earobics.aspx

 

I just looked around and it looks like Earobics Step 1 is available at the link below.

http://www.k12software.com/view_details.php?PHPSESSID=e7ffcfa0b2b6e3980e1986ed639247f4&ID=3354

Edited September 28, 2010 by Miss Sherry
add a link

[LizzyBee]

/e/, /e/, eggs...

 

I write a lower case "e" on the chalkboard. I turn the "e" into a stick figure with the "e" as the head with an open mouth. The stick-arm is putting eggs into the open mouth of the e-shaped head. "e" says /e/ as in eggs.

The kiddos remembered it.

 

I remember a conversation from the old boards about the word egg and why is it listed with short e words? I couldn't figure out where else you'd categorize it, but as the conversation progressed, it became clear that in some regions, the word egg should be included in the long a section. :D

[petepie2]

I remember a conversation from the old boards about the word egg and why is it listed with short e words? I couldn't figure out where else you'd categorize it, but as the conversation progressed, it became clear that in some regions, the word egg should be included in the long a section. :D

 

That reminds me of my geometry class in the 10th grade....I'm not sure where my teacher was from, but she would always pronounce "leg" (as in a leg of a triangle) with a long 'a'. :D She was also allergic to chalk....funny the things you remember....

[Pam H]

That reminds me of my geometry class in the 10th grade....I'm not sure where my teacher was from, but she would always pronounce "leg" (as in a leg of a triangle) with a long 'a'. :D She was also allergic to chalk....funny the things you remember....

 

 

I had to reform my 'laig' to 'leg'. I was born in Louisiana. I don't know if that's what did it or what. :lol:

 

You guys are a wealth of information! Thank you for all the great tips! Can't wait to use them.

[Miss Sherry]

I'm trying to help my ds hear the difference between these two short vowel sounds. Our southern accent doesn't help. Do any of you have any tricks or resources that can help?

My husband is from Alabama and I've noticed that he seems to pronounce short i and e the same way. I don't see this as a problem, but I can see where it could be a hindrance to spelling.

[JessReplanted]

I love the Leap Frog Letter Factory DVD.. Each letter has a cute little song. I says 'ick', and I forget what word they have for 'e'. But both of my girls learned their letter sounds from this DVD (starting at ages 1 & 2).

[Farrar]

Perhaps I'll get flamed for saying this, but speaking as a southerner, the correct southern way to say many words is with /i/ and /e/ indistinguishable. In southern English, that's just the norm. It's not wrong. It's just an accent. It's annoying for spelling... but hey... it's also annoying that we dropped that /p/ in raspberry somewhere along the way. And those poor northerners don't say the /l/ in walk like I was raised to, so that sort of sucks for them for spelling.

[Snowfall]

I don't have any advice, but a funny story to share instead. One day DD wanted her daddy to help her write a sentence. He was raised in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, so he has a bit of an accent (although he is actually losing it after 14 years in the military). She told him the whole sentence she wanted to write, and one of the words was 'get'. He helped her with the first few, then they got to get and he said, "Okay, now this is an easy one. How do you spell git?" I just happened to hear him and I said, "How do you spell what?" He said, "Git!" Then DD, who speaks with my midwestern accent (that typical one people say is not an accent, but of course every dialect is an accent of some sort...anyway...) said, "Dad! 'Git' is not a word! It's get!" But the funny part was that he couldn't hear the difference at all. He really, truly couldn't hear the difference.

 

I had no idea that he couldn't hear the difference - I thought it was just an accent and that he could hear it, but apparently his ears were trained to hear whatever he was used to and that's all he could hear. I never realized that could happen within a language. I knew there were sounds people couldn't hear in languages that were not their own, but didn't realize it could happen with your native language.

[jenL]

I don't have any advice, but a funny story to share instead. One day DD wanted her daddy to help her write a sentence. He was raised in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, so he has a bit of an accent (although he is actually losing it after 14 years in the military). She told him the whole sentence she wanted to write, and one of the words was 'get'. He helped her with the first few, then they got to get and he said, "Okay, now this is an easy one. How do you spell git?" I just happened to hear him and I said, "How do you spell what?" He said, "Git!" Then DD, who speaks with my midwestern accent (that typical one people say is not an accent, but of course every dialect is an accent of some sort...anyway...) said, "Dad! 'Git' is not a word! It's get!" But the funny part was that he couldn't hear the difference at all. He really, truly couldn't hear the difference.

 

I had no idea that he couldn't hear the difference - I thought it was just an accent and that he could hear it, but apparently his ears were trained to hear whatever he was used to and that's all he could hear. I never realized that could happen within a language. I knew there were sounds people couldn't hear in languages that were not their own, but didn't realize it could happen with your native language.

 

Funny about your dh, as I was dictating to ds the other day, and the word get was in the sentence, so I said 'get' with the short e sound (I'm from the north, so this isn't a problem). Ds went ahead and spelled "git". I asked him what he wrote and he said "git". I pointed out the word was "get", and he was set on it being correct because he hears "git" down south where we live. When he was repeating it in his head, he was hearing "git" even though I said "get". It's funny how an accent can be heard even when the word is being said phonetically.

 

I had to really excentuate the /e/ and /i/ sounds by exaggerating the opening of my mouth as other posters have mentioned. We now go over the 2 sounds regularly throughout the day to practice. :)

[kathkath]

I taught 1st grade phonics for a looooong time, and e/i can be difficult no matter where you live. Something that helped my students was eating something for each vowel.

 

rEd JEllo

Inch of lIcorIce

lOllipOp

Animal crAckers

bUbble gUm

 

Then they can help you make a sign with the vowel and the jello box (or what have you) so that when they are confused they can check that for a cue.

[TKDmom]

/e/, /e/, eggs...

 

I write a lower case "e" on the chalkboard. I turn the "e" into a stick figure with the "e" as the head with an open mouth. The stick-arm is putting eggs into the open mouth of the e-shaped head. "e" says /e/ as in eggs.

The kiddos remembered it.

 

I remember a conversation from the old boards about the word egg and why is it listed with short e words? I couldn't figure out where else you'd categorize it, but as the conversation progressed, it became clear that in some regions, the word egg should be included in the long a section. :D

 

That reminds me of my geometry class in the 10th grade....I'm not sure where my teacher was from, but she would always pronounce "leg" (as in a leg of a triangle) with a long 'a'.

 

I have always pronounced both egg and leg with a long a. I grew up in CA, but my dad is from the midwest, so maybe that explains it? My dh (from the South) has been working on getting me to use a proper short e sound over the last 10 years....

 

Oh, and to the OP--that's a tough one. I have been talking a lot about igloos and elephants to my 5yo recently. I think he's starting to get it but it goes sloowwllyy.

[MerryAtHope]

I'm trying to help my ds hear the difference between these two short vowel sounds. Our southern accent doesn't help. Do any of you have any tricks or resources that can help?

 

Yes, this is a common issue (it even has a name!), check out this video on the pin/pen confusion for some ideas.

 

Merry :-)

[In2why]

A public school trick that might work is that the kids at a desk are taught that the short vowels follow the table.

 

e-edge

 

i--in

 

o--on

 

u--under

 

Can't remember A though? hmmm

 

 

But I think you could do it with a small box at the table since most of our kids don't sit at a desk. Now what part of a desk makes the short a sound?