Ah, the summer! It is hot. Summer is a time to spend it on the water, especially on a boat. It’s fun to go swimming, boating, and tubing. Then you return to school and have to write about your summer vacation. Well, you didn’t really get to do anything, because of COVID, but you did get to go boating. Maybe it was on a lake or on the ocean. Perhaps it was a speedboat, a sailboat, or even flexed your muscles with a rowboat. It could have even been a kayak boat. But what if spelling is hard and writing about your summer is the pits?

Some kids dread the, “Write about your summer?” prompt. Why is writing such a thorn in the side of kids? Let’s take a look at <boating>. So, this kid had so much fun on the boat, that is all he wants to talk about. It was THE FUNNEST thing he did all summer because it was the ONLY thing he did all summer. Did I mention it was COVID, where we had to stay inside for months on end and not see friends? And so, it starts.

“This summer we went boding…” Hmm, one might think, why would someone write, “boding” instead of “boating?” This kid was taught to sound it out…/b/…/ō/…/d/…/ĭ/…/n/…/g/ (educational symbols used here). That’s what he hears. That is what he writes. He did phonemic segmentation. He’s thinking, “I nailed this!” He continues on.

Generally, a teacher would assist him with this spelling by pointing out that the pronunciation is [boʊˈtɪŋg] with an emphasis on the grapheme <t> erroneously pronounced as /t/ including unusual stress and an extra final phone. This is what is generally referred to as phonics first instruction. This is the idea that spelling is primarily (and only) phonemes written in a sequence. This is why phonemic awareness and segmentation are so readily emphasized in this approach.

But what if we looked at this a little differently? What if we thought about the meaning of the word? We were all on a boat in the water, having fun! Ok, so the focus is the boat and that its base is <boat>. What was added to this base in your opening sentence to make your word? The suffix <ing>. So, it seems that your word sum to spell this word is <boat+ing> –> <boating>. Yes, that is the spelling, but let’s look at the phonology in more depth.

This student recited all the phonemes correctly. He has phonemic awareness and can segment. That is not where things went awry. When a <t> is intervocalic, between two vowel pronunciations, another pronunciation of the <t> often occurs. In this case, we get the flap or tap articulation [ɾ]. This is the reason that <medal> and <metal> sound identical for most native English speakers. The <t> here is intervocalic as well. Some will argue that they enunciate more clearly than the average English speaker and would never pronounce an intervocalic <t> as anything other than a /t/. I find there are certain people that do in fact enunciate all their intervocalic <t>’s but this is rather unusual in my experience, or people do this when asked for word clarity. This student and I pronounce <boating> as [‘boʊɾɪŋ] or /’boʊdɪŋ/.

Did this student need to know words such as “intervocalic?” No not the word, but I did explain the betweenness of the <t> and he got the concept. What this student really needed was to be validated that his hearing is not off, that his phonemic awareness is not immature, and that his phonemic segmentation is not wrong. What he needed to hear is that, “He’s got this!” He can understand the base spelling and its meaning. He can add a suffix and see no suffixing changes occur. He can see the ***why*** of his <d> grapheme choice in his original hypothesis spelling. He can apply this intervocalic concept to when he spells <d> for <t> in the future and know why.

Additionally, he can read about boating and sailboats. He can read about great boaters and their accomplishments of sailing around the world. He is not stuck reading about the goat on a boat eating oats. Who ever saw a goat on a boat anyways?

Morphemes matter and they are best not “saved” for “older” students. Students use them to describe and should be allowed to use them and learn about them. Unlocking this for them, free them to not hate writing. Spelling is so much more than just sound, and phonology is so much more than just phonemes.

References

The Intervocalic t. http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/elltankw/history/Phon/E.htm