Thursday, June 30, 2016

verb forms - When do we double the consonant before '-ing' affix?


My son is learning how to spell. He is doing a good job listening to sounds and working out spelling that way (which doesn't work for many words, but at least a lot of common ones), but although he's gotten the -ing chunk, he frequently misses doubling letters in these words.


Is there a guideline for when the end consonant is doubled? He's working on these sorts of words:





  • riding

  • sitting

  • skating

  • writing

  • getting




Answer




Are they still teaching the old 'long/short' vowels? If so, here's the rule:



If the syllable before the /-ing/ is pronounced with a 'long' vowel, leave the final consonant single (and delete any final silent /e/)
If it's pronounced with a 'short' vowel, double the final consonant.



It may help make this clearer if you explain that a vowel before a doubled consonant is (almost) always short. Then write the /-ing/ forms out 'wrong' and invite your son to pronounce them the way they look:


ride   ridding
sit siting
skate skatting
write writting

get geting

As Renan points out, it gets more complicated when the final syllable of the base form is unstressed; but it looks like your son hasn't gotten that far yet.


No comments:

Post a Comment

Simple past, Present perfect Past perfect

Can you tell me which form of the following sentences is the correct one please? Imagine two friends discussing the gym... I was in a good s...