SoundEnglish loves Green Eggs and Ham. It's a perfect supplement to 7 Sound Steps to Reading. The table at the right lists each of the 50 distinct words in the book and demonstrates how Green Eggs and Ham is in perfect alignment with our structured phonics program in Step 2--Learn the Sounds.
Limited Vocabulary, Mostly Phonetic
The first column simply lists the 50 words. You'll notice that they are in alphabetical order, which is really of no importance. The second column indicates whether each word is phonetic. That means that all the letters in the word produce a predictable sounds based on the 44 sounds of English. If there is no "x" in that column, it means the word on that line is a sight word. Sight words cannot be decoded; they must be learned as a whole.
The Benefits of One-Syllable Words in Green Eggs and Ham
The third column shows the number of syllables in each of the words. This is where the brilliance of Green Eggs and Ham really shines. It's why this book is so appropriate early text for beginning and struggling readers. Any novice reader will have the greatest possible degree of success with a book of one-syllable words for a number of reasons.
- First, one-syllable words have only one vowel sound. This matters because vowel sounds are the trickiest part of the 44 sounds of English. That's because there are 18 vowel sounds that students must learn, and some of them are a little tough. Thus, having only one vowel sound is a word simplifies the decoding process.
- Second, one-syllable words have fewer letters than multisyllable words. After all, one-syllable words are our most common words. They are the "glue" that holds the language together. It's hard to find a solid source for the average number of letters in a one-syllable word. An approximation if between two and five letters per word.
- Okay, but let's do some research on our own: The second paragraph of this post has 81 words (not counting "x" and 44). Of those 81 words, 59 have one syllable. That's 73%. And, those 59 words contain 197 letters. That's an average of 3.3 letters per word. Come to think of it, that's just about the equivalent of "between 2 and 5." Just for fun, check out this list of the longest one-syllable words.
- Third, one-syllable words are indivisible. Because they can't be divided, they don't require any previous knowledge of syllabication or stress application for correct pronunciation. It makes them so much easier to learn and remember.
- Finally, all of the benefits above are amplified by Dr. Seuss's use of rhyme. The rhyming of ending words just makes the reading easier and more fun for a student who is just learning or one who struggles with reading.
Green Eggs and Ham Lines Up with SoundEnglish Step 2
Lastly, the fourth column of the table illustrates how Green Eggs and Ham lines up with the 12 parts of SoundEnglish's Step 2. That's the structured phonics part of the reading program. However, because of the way our program works, the references in the fourth column seem to skip all over the place. That deserves an explanation.
Specifically, our phonics instruction begins working from A to Z, teaching each short vowel sound with accompanying consonants. Step 2.1 focuses on the sounds of A through D, Step 2.2 is E through H, and so forth. Each lesson builds on the previous lessons with vocabulary and reading limited to only the sounds learned so far.
Thus, the word "box" is aligned with Step 2.6. The student learns B in Step 2.1 and learns short O in Step 2.4 but doesn't become familiar with X until Step 2.6. The diphthongs OI/OY and OU/OW, which we call "cowboy vowels," aren't learned until Step 2.12. Therefore, the words "house" and "mouse" are learned long after the other sounds in those words.
Yes, for all these reasons, SoundEnglish loves Green Eggs and Ham!
