Friendly Phonics 3: Bossy 'e' app for iPhone and iPad

Friendly Phonics 3: Bossy e helps with simple word building and silent “e” endings in the English language in a fun way.

This is the third in the award winning Friendly Phonics app series, and they just keep getting better, with more voices, more images and complex, hypnotic rotating animations.

Let us introduce you to a new character in our alphabet, Mr. “Bossy e” who has his own personality and sound.

What is commonly taught as the “silent e “rule is a really stupid and horrible feature of spelling to impose on our kids, and on foreigners trying to grasp basic English. But unfortunately its here, has been around a long time and …well…. we are stuck with it!

Most educational experts describe the difference between the vowels sounds in “hat” and “hate” by labelling them as “long and short vowel sounds”. As a result many students sit muttering to themselves in an attempt to decide, yet again, which sound is longer than the other; and secretly asking again, what a vowel sound is? Children naturally refer to the “a” sound in “hat” as the “sound of the letter” and the “a” sound in “hate” as the “name of the letter”. So this is how Dawn teaches them. If you are a parent helping your child this a good basic description to use.

Dawn observes how students naturally work out language for themselves and uses their system, instead of imposing some unnatural, “experts” explanation. Students will mostly sound out all the letters, as it does in this app, and then, with repeated practice, remember that when the bossy “e” is on the end the vowel sound changes from the sound to the name of the letter. It does not matter why the spelling is how it is or how you learn it. Just knowing it is good enough.

Again there are 2 subtle errors in the text, to keep you alert - so subtle that they development team have not yet found them; be the first to do so.

This app consists entirely of words, like “hat” and “hate” that spell two different words when adding an “e” at the end, and comes with a huge variety of images that are enhanced and subtly different when the “e” is added.

Dawn had trouble with this spelling rule right through school and developed her own little squiggle that she put on the ends of words when uncertain if it had an “e” on the end or not. But then computers came into existence, and although they help massively with spelling, there are just so many words that say something quite different when a “bossy e” is added on the end, and also so many words that have (like have) an “e” on the end for no reason at all. (These will be covered in a future app). So unfortunately its important we learn them.

By sounding out each word letter by letter this app also teaches basic word building skills. The letter and digraph sounds everyone has learnt in the first two apps are now put together to form actual words, sometimes with blends, so sceptics, and there are so many is Asia, who do not believe that English is made up of sounds as well as names, get to understand what phonics is all about. Its not good enough to merely know the sounds, one has to also know how to put them together (word building) when spelling and break them down when reading. We also cover breaking words down into syllables in the next app, already in production, as well as really stupid “tricky” sounds, like “tion” and eigh”. So don’t worry if you still get stuck on some words.

All images and concepts again by Dawn Matthews and developed by Dapper Apps.