LEARNING WITH PHONICS - LESSON 13 VIDEO
MONA'S QUICK GUIDE
If one consonant is doubled, the preceding vowel is short. Often also if a vowel is followed by any 2 different consonants it is short as in afloat, but there are many exceptions to this such as Adrian.
In the "Doubling" section of Step By Step, Mona introduces us to the rule that any vowel can act like a magic e by affecting the sound of a previous vowel. In other words, "Any vowel can act like a magic e." For example: acorn, pupil and duty. She stresses that while this is a useful rule, it is not as strong as the magic e rule as there are many exceptions. This ambiguity has been dealt with in recent years by replacing "Any vowel can act like a magic e" with "Any vowel can say its name."
This new rule heads up a trio of previously learned strategies for decoding words that contain a long sounding vowel. As a reminder, and In order of distinction these are :