On Eating Elephants and Teaching Syllabication (Shanahan on Literacy)

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On Eating Elephants and Teaching Syllabication - Shanahan on Literacy presents this informative blog on syllabication. Shanahan states that “syllables matter in English. The consistency of spelling patterns and their relationship to phonemes and pronunciations is determined, in part, by where particular letters appear in syllables rather than where they appear in words (Venezky, 1967). The syllable is an essential unit in phonological processing (Ecalle & Magnan, 2007) and explicit instruction in this area is one of the keys to literacy. 

Ecalle, J., & Magnan, A. (2007). Development of phonological skills and learning to read in French. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 22(2), 153-167. doi:http://dx.doi.org.proxy.cc.uic.edu/10.1007/BF03173519

Venezky, R. L. (1967). English orthography: Its graphical structure and its relation to sound. Reading Research Quarterly, 2(3), 75–105. https://doi.org/10.2307/747031