A Reason for Rhyming

Rosemary Westwell, UK

Rosemary Westwell is Australian-born teacher and writer who lives in Cambridgeshire, England. Her five university degrees are in music, the arts and education and she completed her PhD in 2007 on ‘The Development of Language Acquisition in a Mature Learner’( is available free on: http://eprints.ioe.ac.uk/48/) Other publications, including ‘Twenty Tips for Teaching IGCSE ESL’, ‘Teaching Language Learners’ and her first novel ‘John, Dementia and Me’, are available on www.amazon.com
E-mail: rjwestwell@hotmail.com; rjwestwell1@yahoo.com

When teaching language, using rhyme may appear to be relatively unimportant, but in this article I would like to encourage you to take a closer look at the advantages of using rhyme in your lessons, especially in the teaching of spelling.

Rhyming has an essential role in the way we store language. We know this, because when we make mistakes in recalling words, we often produce a word that sounds very similar to the one we are trying to use. For example, we may say the word ‘proposition’ instead of ‘preposition’. Both words sound very similar and this demonstrates how words are stored in our memories very closely together.

I suggest we should use this fact to help our students learn new words, especially words that ‘rhyme’ and have similar letter patterns. This idea came from my experience teaching a student who had problems with spelling and with her short term memory. I needed to introduce her to words that were easy for her to learn to inspire confidence in her that spelling was easy. I also needed to encourage her to hold the words in her short-term memory for a longer time than usual so that they would be stored for the long term.

Even before I knew that the theory backs this method, I devised a way for this to happen. I grouped a series of words together. Each group contained the same letter pattern, e.g.: ‘au’ as in ‘audit’ and ‘audience’. Note the pattern ‘au’ and its pronunciation.

After recognizing the letter patterns within a group of about 7 – 10 words, the student was then encouraged to relate the words a series of pictures. This was done by creating (and remembering) sentences containing one of the words to represent each of the pictures in turn until all the words had been used. After all 7-10 sentences were remembered, the student was then given the pictures only as prompts for her to write down the words she was learning to spell. To her joy she found she could write them all down, spelling them all correctly. My book ‘The Spelling Game’ (www.amazon.co.uk) provides a bank of words and pictures to use for this kind of exercise with individuals and in class.

Rhyming can be used positively in many other ways.
For example, students can be asked to correct sentences that contain one wrong word. This error is a word that rhymes with the word needed. This makes it easier and quicker for the students to succeed while helping them to retain words that may be new to them, e.g.: ‘One word in each sentence is the wrong one, can you replace it with the correct word?

My dog is very friendly, do bat him. (correction: replace ‘bat’ with ‘pat’)
Please except my apology. (correction: replace ‘except’ with ‘accept’)
I’m sorry but your preposition would be impossible to implement. (correction: replace ‘preposition’ with ‘proposition’)
The affluent from the pipe was disgusting. (correction: replace ‘affluent’ with ‘effluent’)

Similar exercises could be used to highlight similar-sounding words, for example students are asked to select the correct word e.g.:‘If you marionette/marinade the chicken in a rich sauce for a few hours before baking, it tastes delicious.’ (correct word: ’marinade’)

With advanced students, similar sounding words can be learned together, for example, innocence and insolence, ceremony and seminary or disparate and desperate. In discussing the distinct meanings of each word, students will not only focus on the words themselves, they will understand the difference between them and avoid the common mistake of inadvertently misusing them. The students’ vocabularies will be increased and they will remember them well.

What about words that sound the same but are spelt differently? By grouping such words according to sound students will observes how the same sound can be produced by many different combinations of letters. This will not only teach students pronunciation quickly and readily, but they will also be able to read unusual words more easily. A simple exercise would be for students to build up their own collection of words that sound similar, but are spelt differently, e.g.:

fort, fought, caught,
there they’re their
reed, read

A list may be found on: www.elyforlanguage.wordpress.com under the heading: Words that sound similar but are spelt differently

This not only teaches the students how to pronounce that particular letter pattern, but they will be able to recognize words containing the letters more readily when reading (e.g. bay, obey, weigh ...). Games which play with assonance can add to the fun, e.g.: A team game. Each team takes it in turns to provide a word that sounds very similar to the one given. (They will need to be able to explain the similarity and the meaning of the word they provide.). For example:

teacher: connection ___ ?
Team one: connection + correction
Team two: connection + contention

Or, for beginners, each team takes it in turn to provide a word that rhymes, e.g.

teacher: dry ___ ?
Team one: dry guy
Team two: dry fly

Ultimately, you can lead your students into the realms of rhyming poetry. The shape of the poem could be dictated by the letters of the subject. One way of starting to write this poem, is to write in prose first, e.g. with a subject like ‘The River’, this could be:
In the river there were long strands of thin leaves of underwater plants that moved to and fro in the current of the water. (24 words)

A team game could develop as the students produce a class poem: ‘River’, the first phrase beginning with ‘R’, so the first line could be: River reeds nod fragile strips Each team takes it in turn to provide a line beginning with the given letter until the whole poem is constructed. The lines of the poem could be:

River reeds nod fragile strips
In dark free-flowing streams.
Vast shoals of fish slip into
Every corner, lost in dreams
Revelling in ripples of this seamless river.

(The quality of the poetry is not necessarily an issue here!)
More ideas may be found in my book ‘Teaching Language Learners’ (www.amazon.co.uk)
Why not give them a try?

Please check the Methodology & Language for Primary Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Methodology & Language for Secondary Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.