Here are some examples of short vowel words: at, egg, it, ox, up. The long vowels can be represented by a horizontal line above the vowel: ā, ē, ī, ō, ū. The short vowels can represented by a curved symbol above the vowel: ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ, ŭ. Before children can learn the rules for spelling and reading short and long vowel sounds, they must be able to recognize and produce these sounds reliably. The short o in pop sounds a lot like the short u in pup. Children generally find it more challenging to learn the short vowel sounds because many of them sound so similar to each other: The short i in pig sounds very similar to the short e in peg. For example, long a sounds like the a in able, long o sounds like the o in over, and long u may sound like the u in use or the u in blue. Of the two, the long vowels are easier for children to learn because long vowels basically sound the same as the letter names.

The first step in mastering the various vowel sounds is learning the difference between short vowels and long vowels. Vowels in the English language can represent a variety of sounds.

What is a long vowel