Skip to main contentAccess keys helpA-Z index
You are in: Learning English > Grammar > Pronunciation tips
Pronunciation tips
phonemic symbolsSounds and spelling
It's important to note that the spelling of a word is not always an accurate guide to how it is pronounced. Similarly the pronunciation of a word is not always helpful when working out how that word should be spelt.

There are 26 letters in the English alphabet but there are many more sounds in the English language. This means that the number of sounds in a word is not always the same as the number of letters.

For example, the word 'CAT' has three letters and three sounds but the word 'CATCH' has five letters but still only three sounds.

If we write these words using sound symbols, we can see exactly how many sounds they have.

CAT is written - cat
CATCH is written - catch

In 'CATCH' the three letters TCH are one sound represented by one symbol tch


In this activity you have to work out how many sounds there are in a particular word, remember, the number of letters is not usually the same as the number of sounds.

The activity will open in a new window and requires Flash 6. Its size is 182k so it may take a while to load depending on your connection speed.

Sounds and spelling >>

Slow connection/Don't have Flash?
You can also download a version of these exercises (with answers) in pdf format.

Sounds and spelling exercise (53k)
DownloadDownload the exercise examples (260k)