Wordchain Game

Wordchain is a complete digital resource that independently, systematically and progressively builds all skills involved in decoding and spelling words, from the simplest words to the most complex, from cat to catalogue, or from sat to saturation.

Wordchain Senior is different. It is about multisyllable words and how to break them up; it is about Latin, Greek and French spelling patterns, and it is especially about complex suffixes.

Wordchain trains users to listen to the individual sounds in a word and match these to letters or letter clusters.

It develops the ability to distinguish between similar sounds, such as p and b, or sh and ch.

It demonstrates how good spellers hold sounds in their head, as reason rather than reasin.

It teaches how to efficiently and effortlessly blend sounds in longer words, and trains users to hold these words in memory as competent readers do.

It does all this in a New Zealand accent.

It provides countless hours of practice, at school, at home, or both.

In many of these words, the letter – sound matches of the Old English strand of orthography are joined by multiple other options. i makes an ee sound in senior; a makes an o sound in quantity, the first a makes an u sound in abandon, as it always does when u (sound) is a complete syllable. ch makes the sh sound in machine but the k sound in mechanical. ea is a short e sound in measure, and ou is a short u sound in famous. e’s become part of final consonant digraphs in ge, ce, se, gue, que and others, unrelated to the previous vowel. Or mostly unrelated.

But for all this disruption of traditional associations, at the larger chunks these words are highly, highly regular. ution can only be pronounced as in pollution; it is always the same in hundreds of other words. Always ution, with the stress always on the u. usion is always as in illusion, the same in well over 100 other words, no exceptions, the same stressed u, with si making a zh sound. ussion is always as in discussion, a short u and a soft ss. Always. ation, always the same pronunciation, the a always the primary stress in the word, appears in approximately 3000 words, a mix of common and uncommon. To turn all these words, several thousand of them, with ation, ution, ition, ention, eption and so on, into an adjective, add al, as in educational. le or el are never options.

ential, as in potential, is always the same, the same pronunciation, the primary stress in the word on that e, always. There are no exceptions. Know it for potential and you know it for essential, presidential, influential, confidential, consequential, existential and well over 150 other words. It is always the adjectival form. It is consistent. No exceptions. None.

Recognise these large chunks and any prefixes, and there is not much else to work out. Identify the common chunks and inconsequentially is easy to decode and spell. Two known prefixes, the ential pattern and ly; that leaves just sequ to figure out. Decoding, including getting the stress patterns correct, is simple. Look at the word and see consequent in the middle. See resident in residential, or prudent in prudential. Figuring out a probable meaning with a little help from context becomes easy, once this pattern is established in the reader’s mind.

So, it may seem odd to break words up the way I have in Wordchain Senior’s fluent blending component, one letter, a couple more, then a couple of syllables in one chunk. But it is how competent readers approach unfamiliar words like these. Students are learning to recognise these large, repeating components and put the word together at speed. As they must. Taking the time to figure out words any other way is slow, laborious and unreliable. Students need to focus on content when reading, they must not lose the thread of the text, and this will be compromised if recognition of unfamiliar words and their probable meaning is not almost instant.

The fluent blending component of WCSenior focusses the students’ attention on these patterns, so it is even more important than in previous levels. There are multiple sheets, giving a great deal of exposure to these patterns to establish them in the student’s thinking. Many of the words will be unfamiliar vocabulary. Students are learning that this does not matter, that they can easily figure out these words too by analysing them in this way.

We have used the pronunciation guide extensively., a small grey letter at the top of the tile. p means prefix, s for suffix. Learning that p’s go at one end of the word, s’s as the other, makes it instinctive thinking for the students. An unmarked a is the short a of cat, a with a grey a means the long vowel of table, with a u it is the first sound of about. Students must choose the correct pronunciation, not merely the correct letter sequence.