English language is notorious for its weird phonetics. All too often learning
how to spell English words can be frustrating for non-native speakers. Being an
EFL teacher working with elementary and middle school kids, I learned it the
hard way. Many of my young students used to get bored or frustrated with all
this crazy phonics stuff. Indeed, it seems that there are as many exceptions as
there are rules in English phonetics. Even adult students find their heads
spinning when they learn that words floor, flood, food are pronounced
differently. There are plenty of such cases when the same letter or combination
of letters form different sounds and often inexplicably. It can pretty much
confuse kids who are just starting to learning English in non-English speaking
countries. It is also a big challenge for EFL and ESL teachers because they have
to add as much fun to their lessons as possible to make kids fall in love with
learning English from the very beginning. Unfortunately, there is not too much
fun in learning baffling English phonics rules and numerous exceptions.
Therefore I have designed another collection of printable phonics worksheets to
help my young students learn how to correctly write and pronounce a lot of
tricky English words. These worksheets are designed to make English phonetics
less boring and intimidating. The worksheets are also great for memorizing such
words and thus strengthening students' vocabulary thanks to many colorful pictures that I used to design these teaching printables.
I offer my students the
phonics worksheets after I introduce and discuss the key phonics rules including
how to pronounce English diphthongs, digraphs, blends etc. I use my printable sound charts and phonics posters for the introduction.
The collection includes
more than 170 printable phonics worksheets that offer mostly matching
activities. There is a set of worksheets that help my students memorize symbols
of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The IPA is very important for
non-native English learners as major dictionaries use the IPA for transcription
of words. The IPA phonetic transcription is frequently the only way EFL students
can learn the right way to pronounce this or another English word.
worksheets offer two types of matching tasks:
- matching API symbols to words;
- matching words having the same sound.
One of phonics worksheets offering students to match vowel sounds in words to corresponding IPA symbols. |
There are 18 phonics worksheets of this type for vowel sounds in the collection. |
One of phonics worksheets offering students to match consonant sounds in words to corresponding IPA symbols. |
There are 24 phonics worksheets of this type for consonant sounds in the collection. |
Another type of phonics worksheets offering students to match two words with the same vowel sound to IPA symbols. |
There are 30 phonics worksheets of this type for vowel sounds in the collection. |
One of phonics worksheets offering students to match two words with the same consonant sound to IPA symbols. |
There are 17 phonics worksheets of this type for consonant sounds in the collection. |
There is a version of matching worksheets without the IPA symbols offering students to match two words with the same sound (30 worksheets for vowels and 17 for consonant sounds). |
Odd One Out Worksheets
Another big set includes odd one out
worksheets. There are 40 worksheets of this type in the collection featuring 200 word groups designed to strengthen the phonetics literacy of my students.
There are 40 odd one out worksheets featuring 200 groups of words to learn English phonics. |
This collection of printable phonics worksheets in addition to my phonics charts, posters and flashcards helps me meet the following goals as an English
- making my lessons dedicated to phonics more fun an engaging;
- helping students memorize spelling of some tricky words;
- drawing attention to phonetic rules and exceptions;
- teaching kids how to read phonetic transcription in English dictionaries;
- testing students to identify the level of their phonetics literacy and what they struggle with in regards of English phonics;
- strengthening and expanding students vocabulary in multiple key topics.
If you find my phonics worksheets useful for your English classes, you are welcome to buy the whole collection in printer-ready high resolution PDF documents that also include keys for the task.
I have supplied my collection of phonics worksheets with keys to help my fellow EFL and ESL teachers introduce them into their teaching process asap. |