Schwa

Schwa, the upside down “e”

When a vowel is not stressed in a word or sentence, it has an indistinct almost grunting sound. This sound is known as schwa and is shown as an upside down “e”.

The schwa sound often makes spelling words difficult because you can not hear all of the sounds distinctly. So, when you are learning to spell words, pronounce these vowel sounds clearly.

I use colour coding to help students identify which sounds are most common for letters or groups of letters – in order red, blue, purple, green. Pink indicates schwa and shows that the vowel sound is indistinct.

But, when splitting words into syllables to learn how to spell them, emphasise the normal pronunciation of the vowel sound. For example, the second “o” in crocodile is indistinct when the word is spoken normally, but it helps if you emphasise the long “o” sound (the name of the letter) when learning to spell it.