Word breaking up words

Links to the Victorian Curriculum – English

Speaking and Listening, Language: Phonics and word knowledge

Foundation: 

• Identify rhyming words, alliteration patterns, syllables and some sounds (phonemes) in spoken words (Content description VCELA168)

Links to the Victorian Curriculum – English as an Additional Language (EAL)

Pathway A

Speaking and listening

Level A1:

• Imitate pronunciation, stress and intonation patterns
  (VCEALL027)
• Use intelligible pronunciation but with many pauses and hesitations
  (VCEALL028)

Level A2:

• Repeat or modify a sentence or phrase, modelling rhythm, intonation and pronunciation on the speech of others
  (VCEALL109)
• Identify and produce phonemes in blends or clusters at the beginning and end of syllables
  (VCEALL110)

Reading and viewing

Level A1:

• Recognise some familiar words in context
  (VCEALL048)

Level A2:

• Recognise a small range of familiar words in different contexts
  (VCEALL129)

Pathway B

Speaking and listening

Level BL:

• Use comprehensible pronunciation for familiar words
  (VCEALL182)

Level B1:

• Use comprehensible pronunciation for a range of high-frequency words learnt in class
  (VCEALL262)

Reading and viewing

Level BL:

• Recognise some common words or phrases
  (VCEALL206)

Level B1:

• Read some familiar words and phrases
  (VCEALL286)

Resources required

• Clave sticks 
• Pictures of objects or animals-enlarged for modelling and smaller for group work (sourced through an internet search)

Learning intention

We are learning to break words up into syllables.

Success criteria

• I can look at the picture and say the word that matches it.
• I can clap the number of syllables (beats) for that word.
• I can count the number of syllables (beats) for that word and write the number on the picture to show how many.

Lesson sequence

1. Revise what a syllable is (beats in a word). All syllables must contain a vowel or vowel-like sound in them. We break words into syllables to help us with our reading and writing.
2. Revise clapping the syllables in student names (e.g. Sa.may.sa-3 syllables, Parv-1 syllable, Si.mon-2 syllables)
3. Ask children to turn and talk to a partner to say their name and clap the number of syllables in it. Rove pairs to check.
4. Return to the main group. Select a picture for students to see (e.g. enlarge an example of an object with 1,2,3 and 4 syllables such as door (1), ta.ble (2), oc.to.pus (3), hel.i.cop.ter (4)). Say the word. Clap the number of syllables and count them. Write the number on the picture. Check with clave sticks. Repeat this process for all 4 examples. Reinforce the success criteria.
5. Students break into pairs. Each pair has one pair of clave sticks, a pile of small pictures and something to write with. Choose a picture from the pile, say the word, clap the number of syllables, record the correct number on the picture.
6. Teacher roves pairs and assists where necessary. 
7. Return to the main group and select some students to share. 
8. Revisit the success criteria and check student understanding. 
9. Model how knowing how to break a word up into syllables is critical to hearing and segmenting the words students want to spell. Use an example from one of the pictures to demonstrate (e.g. picture of a kangaroo — kan.ga.roo. Ask students to identify the sounds they hear in each syllable and use a think-aloud process to match those sounds to letters and record where all students can view).

test

Earlier, we talked about soft hyphens vs. hard hyphens (see my post on hyphens).

Hard hyphens are permanent (as in the word twenty-five); soft hyphens are used only at the end of a line to break up a word.

Here are some principles to keep in mind when breaking up words at the end of a line:

• don’t break up a word so that only one letter occurs by itself

not:

a-

bove

• try to break up a compound word where there’s already a hard hyphen without adding a second, soft hyphen

not:

three-quar-

ters

but:

three-

quarters

• never break up single-syllable words

not:

gasp-

ed

(even though it has two parts, gasp and -ed, gasped is pronounced as one syllable)

• break up words at a syllable break

not:
dram-
atic

but:
dra-
matic

Some dictionaries indicate where words may be divided. For example, the Canadian Oxford Dictionary uses dots:

eu•phem•ism

URLs

Because each character in a website address is crucial, URLs have their own set of rules for where you may break them. Here’s an overview:

1) for starters, never insert a hyphen in a URL

So, while you can break up a URL at the end of a line, you never add a hyphen when you do so. The reason is that it creates confusion whether the hyphen is part of the URL or not.

2) break a URL after a colon (:), a slash (/), a double slash (//), or @

Likely, people will realize that this is not the end of the URL address and continue reading on to the next line.

3) break a URL before a period or any other punctuation mark or symbol

This is to avoid giving the impression that the URL ends at the end of the first line.

4) if the URL already contains a hyphen, never break after the hyphen; you may break before the hyphen

Again, the reason is to avoid ambiguity whether the hyphen is part of the URL or not.

5) if you have a long stretch of text, break at a syllable break

Ready for a test?

Which of the following URLs have been broken up correctly? (The first line has the unbroken URL; below that is the URL broken up.)

(a) URL: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org

http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.

org

(b) URL: http://www.sil.org:8090/silebr/2012/silebr2012-007

http://www.sil.org:

8090/silebr/2012/silebr2012-007

(c) URL: https://reviewediting.wordpress.com/

https://review-

editing.wordpress.com/

(d) URL: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/?CTT=97

http://office.microsoft.com/en-

us/templates/?CTT=97

(e) URL: http://www.wycliffe.ca/wordalive/

http://www

.wycliffe.ca/wordalive/

(f) URL: http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/city/pages/bc-81_metric_e.html

http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/city/pages/bc-81

_metric_e.html

(g) URL: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=acts %2012&version=KJV

http://www.biblegateway.com

/passage/?search=acts %2012&version=KJV

Answers:

(a) is incorrect: break should come before the period

(b) is correct: break occurs after colon

(c) is incorrect: never add a hyphen when breaking up a URL (without the hyphen the break would be OK because it occurs at a syllable boundary)

(d) is incorrect: break should come before the hyphen, never after the hyphen

(e) is correct: break occurs before the period

(f) is correct: break occurs before the underline

(g) is incorrect: break should come after slash

Image at top courtesy of Free Digital Photos.

edit — Sorry I didn’t read the question. Hopefully this new answer does what you want.

> List.groupBy (x y -> y /= ' ') "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs."
["The"," quick"," brown"," fox"," jumped"," over"," the"," lazy"," dogs."]

The library function groupBy takes a predicate function that tells you whether you add the next element, y to the previous list, which starts with x, or start a new list.

In this case, we don’t care what the current list started with, we only want to start a new list (i.e. make the predicate evaluate to false) when the next element, y, is a space.

edit

n.m. points out that the handling of multiple spaces is not correct. In which case you can switch to Data.List.HT, which has the semantics you’d want.

> import Data.List.HT as HT
> HT.groupBy (x y -> y /= ' ' || x == ' ') "a  b c d"
["a","  b"," c"," d"]

the different semantics that makes this work is that the x is the last element in the previous list (that you might add y to, or create a new list).

Did you know that dividing words into syllables is one of the most powerful decoding strategies out there?

If your students are ready to read words with more than one syllable, then it’s time to start teaching syllable division rules!

When readers know the syllable division rules, it A) helps them successfully decode multisyllabic words and B) provides them with clues about the vowel sounds in multisyllabic words!

Knowing how to divide words into syllables gives your kids POWER to attack those longer words!

In today’s post, I’ll explain how to teach students to divide words into syllables!

…And I also have something to confess:

Despite being an English speaker, teacher, and avid reader, I did not know these rules until I’d already been teaching for years.

So if these rules are new to you, don’t sweat it! We’re all learning! All the time!

The 6 Syllable Types

Do you know the 6 syllable types? They are:

1. Closed
2. Open
3. Vowel-Consonant-E (also known as Magic E or Silent E)
4. Vowel Team
5. R-Controlled
6. Consonant-L-E

If you haven’t read my post that goes in-depth on these syllable types, you may want to read that first, and then come back to this post. My 6 syllable types post can be found HERE!

(And yes – there are a lot of terms and rules to remember when you’re teaching phonics. If you’d like a free PDF that has many different terms and rules in one place, grab this freebie!)

Finding the Number of Syllables in a Word

An important first step in dividing up a word into its syllables is knowing how many syllables the word has.

You may already know that 1 vowel sound = 1 syllable. If a word has 3 vowel sounds, for example, then it has 3 syllables.

(Notice that I’m saying vowel sounds, not actual vowels. The word “cupcake,” for example, technically has 3 vowels. But the e is silent. It only has two syllables because the vowel sounds we hear are the short u and the long a, 2 total vowel sounds.)

Syllable Division Patterns

There are only 6 syllable types, and there are even fewer syllable division patterns!

The syllable division patterns are as follows (V = vowel; C = consonant):

VC/CV

If you have two consonant sounds between two vowel sounds, divide the word between the consonant sounds.

In the word “sunset,” the vowel sounds are the short u and the short e. The two consonants in the middle, n and s, get divided up.

In the word “bathtub,” the vowel sounds are the short a and the short u. The two consonant SOUNDS in the middle are /th/ and /t/. The word gets divided up between the h and the second t.

If there are 3 consonants between the vowels, rather than 2, there’s going to be a blend in there. The sounds that get blended together stay together in one syllable.

For example, in the word “complex,” we divide between the m and the p.

V/CV

Moving on…sometimes there’s just one consonant sound between the vowels, rather than 2.

If this is the case, the first syllable division rule that we try is V/CV (dividing up the word BEFORE the consonant).

For example, in the word “robot,” we divide up the word before the b. This creates an open syllable, “ro,” that ends in a vowel. As a result, the o in that syllable is a long o.

VC/V

However, sometimes the V/CV division rule doesn’t work. This is where it gets a little tricky.

If we try the V/CV rule but discover that it creates an open first syllable that should NOT be open (aka it should not have a long vowel sound), then we have to revert to the VC/V pattern.

For example, let’s think about the word “comet.” It’s pronounced with a short o at the beginning, right? It’s not CO-met. But if we were to apply the V/CV division pattern, that would make the o sound long. Instead, we have to revert to VC/V in order to reflect the fact that the o has the short o sound.

Another example is the word “seven:”

V/V

Last but not least, we have the V/V syllable division rule! When there are two vowels next to each other that do NOT work as a team, then we divide the word between those two separate vowel sounds.

For example, we divide the word “diet” between the i and the e:

However, in a word like “coat,” we do NOT divide between the o and the a. There is only one vowel sound, the long o. Therefore, it’s a one-syllable word, and the o and the a work together to make a single sound. They cannot be divided up.

Tips for Teaching Syllable Division Rules to Students

Okay, so….that’s not too bad, right? Once you understand the four syllable division patterns, then you can teach them to your students!

As you probably noticed from the photos in this post, I have my students circle and label the vowels with red, underline and label the consonants with blue, and then cut or draw a line to divide the words. (Scroll back up through the photos in this post and have a closer look at what I did, if that helps.)

Here’s the procedure:

1. Look at the word. Circle the vowel sounds with red.
2. Underline the consonants BETWEEN the vowels (don’t worry about the other consonants).
3. Determine which syllable division rule (VC/CV, V/CV, VC/V, or V/V) applies. (Students may have to attempt to read the word to choose between V/CV and VC/V.)
4. Cut or mark the word accordingly.
5. Read the word.

You can also have students code the syllable types after Step #3 (closed, open, VCE, vowel team, r-controlled, or CLE—read more about the syllable types HERE!)

When we’re learning about syllable division and syllable types, we use strips of paper. Students can copy a word I write on the board (or I prepare the word strips for them ahead of time).

I don’t read the word to them, because the purpose of the division exercise is to get them to break up the word and read it.

Once they’ve copied the word, then we go through Steps 1-5 listed above, and students can cut the word in half.

The ultimate goal of this exercise is to get students to break up multisyllabic words as they read. So, as a bridge between this activity and reading, we use whiteboards or sticky notes to divide up tricky words they encounter in texts.

If I’m working one-on-one with a student and he/she comes to a tricky word, we can write it on a small whiteboard and then break it up.

If students are working on their own, they can write a tricky word on a sticky note, divide it up, read it, and then continue reading.

This does slow down the reading process a little, but I’m telling you…kids feel SO powerful when they can break up words and determine what types of syllables they have. This process also makes it easier for students to figure out the vowel sounds in a word too.

When to Teach This Stuff

You might be wondering, “When should I teach these rules? At what developmental stage or grade level are these appropriate?”

When to teach the VC/CV rule:

Whenever kids have mastered CVC words, they can read 2-syllable words!

Simple compound words are a great place to start. You’ll want to use words like “sunset” and “pigpen” that are 2 CVC words “put together.” At this point, you can teach students the VC/CV rule. You can also explain that both of the syllables in those words are closed and have short vowels.

I don’t normally teach this in Kindergarten, but if I have more advanced students who are truly proficient with CVC words, then it makes sense to give them “access” to these simple 2-syllable words.

Of course, if you give students words with consonant digraphs or blends in between, then it becomes a little more complicated—early first grade may be a better time for those more complicated VC/CV words.

When to teach the V/CV and VC/V rules:

I teach the V/CV rule first, because we always try the V/CV pattern before reverting to VC/V.

You can teach this rule once students know about the long vowel sounds.

They don’t need to have completely mastered long vowels and all their spelling patterns. But they at least need to understand the concepts of open and closed syllables (and how short and long vowels relate to open and closed syllables).

When we’re working on the V/CV rule, I intentionally only give them practice words that follow that rule.

After they understand the V/CV rule, then I explain that sometimes we have to use the VC/V rule instead.

I then give them VC/V words to practice.

Finally, I give them mixed sets of words where they have to choose between V/CV and VC/V.

When to teach the V/V rules:

I wait to teach V/V until students really understand vowel teams and diphthongs.

If students don’t understand vowel teams, then they may try to divide up words like “train” into two syllables, between the a and the i. If they don’t understand diphthongs, they may try to divide up words like “loud” into two syllables.

Once they know the vowel teams and diphthongs, however, they’re more likely to recognize that words like “fluent” have two vowel sounds, not one, and we divide up the word accordingly (flu/ent).

Conclusions

This was a lot of info, right?! And it’s a lot to figure out and teach on your own – if you don’t have lesson plans and materials for it. Because unfortunately, many phonics and reading programs don’t cover this stuff!

If you’d like to make teaching this EASY and FUN for you and your students, check out my step-by-step guide to teaching all the syllable division rules and syllable types.

I designed this resource to fit perfectly into any phonics program. (However, if you’re using my phonics program, From Sounds to Spelling, you won’t need this resource because we cover this info within the program.)

You set the pace for how quickly you progress through these lessons! 1st grade teachers may spread them out throughout the entire school year, while 2nd grade and up may progress more quickly. Here’s page 1 of the table of contents (this is only half of the lessons):

Here’s what a lesson plan looks like:

Also included are words to practice dividing, plus lots of hands-on games!

Everything is done for you, so you won’t have to invest time or energy in figuring all this out on your own and creating lessons!

However, if you already feel confident in teaching syllable division and have plenty of materials for it, you may just need a few practice activities for your students. If that’s the case, my digital practice games might be a better fit.

These activities give your students practice with dividing words up into syllables AND identifying syllable types. The games include audio directions that explain the syllable types and division rules!

I hope these resources are helpful to you! You can also pin this blog post to your Pinterest account so you can come back to it later:

Happy teaching!

While looking up a definition of a word or perusing our many language resources and articles on Merriam-Webster.com, you may have noticed that the centered dots in headwords do not always match the placement of the hyphens in their pronunciations. As a company, we have dealt with decades of correspondence concerning these suspected incongruities and feel that an explanation on the uses of what are commonly called end-of-line division dots or points and syllabic hyphens would be of interest to you, dear website visitor.

End-of-Line Dots vs. Phonetic Hyphens

No, the conventions for dividing a word at the end of a line of text and the conventions for dividing a word into phonetic syllables are not the same, and as a result a headword and its pronunciation may show different divisions. The centered dots/points in a headword—which are chiefly determined by considerations of morphology (the study of word formation, as by inflection, derivation, and compounding) and of pronunciation—indicate the places where it can be broken if all of the letters will not fit at the end of a line. They do not necessarily show syllable division (which is the common misconception); they are simply potential points of end-of-line division. Syllabication of a word is indicated by the hyphens found in the word’s pronunciation, where they exist as aids to the pedagogical command of «sound it out.»

Example of Word Divisions

Take, for example, the word dictionary.

At the head of its dictionary entry, it is divided as dic·tio·nary. This means that it can be broken at the end of a line as dic-tionary or as dictio-nary. It could not, however, be divided as d-ictionary, di-ctionary, or dicti-onary, mainly because it would make the word difficult to read. Note, also, that there is not a dot before the final y in the headword, even though there are four syllables in the word, as shown in the pronunciation ˈdik-shə-ˌner-ē.

This is because having a single letter divided from a word, at the end or beginning, can impede the reader’s decoding. Another example is the simple but multipurpose about. Although one might be tempted to divide it after a, as shown in its pronunciation ə-ˈbau̇t, leaving the letter stranded on a line is wrong.

Poker is an elucidating example of word division. There are two noun entries for the word: one for a metal rod for stirring a fire and one for various card games. The homographs of poker are pronounced the same, as ˈpō-kər. Yet, for the «rod» entry, the orthographic word division is pok·er, and for the «game» one, the division is po·ker. The reason for this is that the first homograph (the rod) is made up of two parts (or morphemes): the stem poke and the suffix -er. English spelling division rules require words to be divided between different morphemes so we get the division pok·er. However, the second poker (the game) does not have two parts. It consists of one morpheme (it is a modification of the French poque) so it gets divided as po·ker.

Example of Syllable Breaks

Taking a break from end-of-line division, there is the hyphen in pronunciations that we need to address, which indicates a syllable break that is based on technical phonetic principles, such as vowel length, nasalization, variation due to the position of a consonant in a syllable, and other nuances of the spoken word. Generally, it is placed so as to put as many consonants at the beginning of a syllable as English will allow at the beginning of a spelled word. Hence, a word like entrance is broken as ˈen-trən(t)s, rather than ˈe-ntrən(t)s or ˈent-rən(t)s, because tr is a possible initial consonant cluster in English, while ntr is not. Another example is explode, which is divided into two syllables, as ik-ˈsplōd. There is a four-consonant cluster in this word, kspl. Conceivably, the word division could be iks-ˈplōd or iksp-ˈlōd; however, ks and ksp are not the largest possible consonant clusters in the word. The largest cluster that can begin a word in English is spl, as found in the words splash and splurge. Thus, the placement of the hyphen is after ik.

If you have been taught that words can always be divided between syllables, you should now know that this is not always true. Remember, it is technically incorrect to divide a word such as ocean so that a single letter is left stranded on a line by itself, even if the hyphen in the pronunciation shows the syllable division as ˈō-shən. Look to the headword for the spelling division dot; look to the pronunciation for syllable division.

Word Break Problem: Given a string and a dictionary of words, determine if the string can be segmented into a space-separated sequence of one or more dictionary words.

For example,

Practice this problem

The idea is to use recursion to solve this problem. We consider all prefixes of the current string one by one and check if the current prefix is present in the dictionary or not. If the prefix is a valid word, add it to the output string and recur for the remaining string. The recursion’word base case is when the string becomes empty, and we print the output string.

Following is the C++, Java, and Python implementation of the idea:

There is a very famous alternate version of the above problem in which we only have to determine if a string can be segmented into a space-separated sequence of one or more dictionary words or not, and not actually print all sequences. This version is demonstrated below in C++, Java, and Python:

The time complexity of the above solution is exponential and occupies space in the call stack.

 
The word-break problem has optimal substructure. We have seen that the problem can be broken down into smaller subproblem, which can further be broken down into yet smaller subproblem, and so on. The word-break problem also exhibits overlapping subproblems, so we will end up solving the same subproblem over and over again. If we draw the recursion tree, we can see that the same subproblems are getting computed repeatedly.

The problems having optimal substructure and overlapping subproblem can be solved by dynamic programming, in which subproblem solutions are memoized rather than computed repeatedly. This method is demonstrated below in C++, Java, and Python:

The time complexity of the above solution is O(n²) and requires O(n) extra space, where n is the length of the input string.

 
Exercise: Implement a bottom-up version of the above solution.