step#18: silent letters

English is a difficult language to learn, mainly owing to the inconsistent pattern of sounding letters. making it further more complicated, often the letters are not at all sounded in the word. they are silent in the word. this may be very confusing to a child, who would definitely sound that letter too while saying the word.

by grade 2, a child can be easily taught the concept of silent letters, by giving examples through appropriate sight words first, and then by teaching common units that have silent letters in them.

• few examples of sight words with silent letters that can be taught to a grade 2 child are:

would, could, should, answer,castle, know, what, when, where, why, when, whose, height, weight, knee, knowledge, honest, hour, doubt

• other words with silent letters to be taught phonetically at this level are:

1. ight: sight, might, light, right, tight, night, slight
2. ought: fought
3. aught: caught
4. ough: though
5. ough: through
6. atch: catch, hatch, latch, match, patch
7. atch: watch
8. udge: judge, smudge, budge