As mentioned earlier, there are 26 letters in the alphabet; however 44 phonemes in the English Language. This is achieved by the use of digraphs. Digraphs are two letters in which are used to represent a single phoneme, such as the examples:

th, ch, ai, wh, etc…

Digraphs can come in many different forms. These are listed below:

Obligatory digraphs

These are the typical digraphs in which can not be achieved by a single letter. Examples include, ng, th, sh, etc.

Extras

Some digraphs take the job of a single letter for instance. f/ff/ph is an example of this. These are referred to as extras, in which single consonants could do the same job.

In some cases, digraphs can also represent a specific word type just like wh indicating interrogatives – what, where, why, etc, although there are some exceptions (white, whale..).

Doublets

When the same phoneme is replicated as a doublet, this can imply whether the preceding vowel is short or long. In hopped, the digraph infers that the vowel is short; whereas in hoped, it is long.

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When digraphs are present in words, the child must tell it apart from a single phoneme. It is helpful to print out the graph of phonemes present in the “learning the phonemes” page. It is useful to colour code the digraphs to help children distinguish them from the single letters. Get teaching!