The Value of Rhyming Word Families

Despite the flexibility of word families, and their potential diversity, there is one kind of word family which predominates in phonics work in community literacy programs. This is the rhyming word family. This is the kind of word family that was used in the East End Literacy example: fit, pit, sit, bit, spit.

We can specify exactly what a rhyming word family is by defining it as follows:

A rhyming word family is a list of one-syllable words that rhyme, and that have the same spelling for the rhyme.

It would be possible to create rhyming word families with multisyllable words, and with different spellings for the same rhyme, but experienced tutors and facilitators that I talked with told me that rhyming word families are more effective with one-syllable words and consistent spellings for rhymes.

Why, of all the possible kinds of word families, are word families of this particular kind so widely used? There are several explanations:

• Rhyming word families present sound information in a way that is noticeable and memorable.
  Although individual speech sounds are difficult to hear in the flow of speech, particularly for adults who do not use an alphabetic writing system, rhymes are relatively easy for most adults to hear, whether or not they can read and write in an alphabetic writing system.
• Rhymes are easy to articulate,
  unlike some individual speech sounds, which are difficult or impossible to produce in isolation. (In “bat”, it is easier to articulate “-at” by itself than to articulate “b” by itself.)
• Rhyming word families highlight individual consonants.
  In a rhyming word family, the only difference between the words is that they have different initial consonants, or consonant clusters.
  
  bake
  cake
  take
  make
  shake
  What makes “bake” and “cake” different words with different meanings is the difference between the “b” and“ c” as sound information and as articulatory information. Listing words of this kind together, as a word family, helps a learner to notice consonants as individual speech sounds, in hearing and articulation, and to pay attention to the exact differences between them.. So, in holding an easily noticed, remembered, and pronounced unit of language constant, the rhyme, rhyming families can be used to focus a learner’s attention on what is difficult to notice, remember, and pronounce, individual speech sounds, in this case, consonant sounds.
• Using the definition above, a rhyming word family matches a rhyme to a single spelling, creating a noticeable spelling pattern to match a noticeable rhyme.
  The look of -AKE, and the way it repeats itself as a handwriting pattern at the end of a word, calls attention to the rhyme in the same way that its sound and articulation does. Rhyming word families match patterns in different sensory/motor modalities which are easy to notice in each of the modalities. This maximizes the possibility of learners with different strengths and weaknesses in the different modalities noticing the pattern in at least one of its sensory/motor forms.
• Rhyming families help learners to focus on initial consonants visually and in handwriting, as well as in hearing and articulation.
  In a rhyming word family, consonants and consonant clusters are isolated visually at the beginnings of words. They are what visually differentiates the words in a rhyming word family. The are also the distinctive handwriting movements at the beginning of each word, before the repetitive rhyme.
• Following the above definition, rhyming families are made up of one syllable words, and one syllable words in rhyming families reappear as syllables in longer words.
  A student who has learned SAKE from a rhyming word family will be able to use the sound information and articulatory information for “sake” to sound out FORSAKE.