Everyday Grammar TV: Poetry and Syllables, Part 1

JR: Hi Dr. Jill! I think we should continue our exploration of poetry. Dr. J: That’s a great idea. In recent lessons, we talked about poetry and parts of speech. But we can also talk about poetry and syllables. JR: A syllable is a natural division of a word. For example, the word flower has two syllables: flow- and –er. Dr. J: The number of syllables depends on the vowel sounds. In the word “flower” we have two vowel sounds. JR: English has many vowel sounds. But we write these vowel sounds with a smaller number of letters – a,e,i,o,u, and sometimes y. Dr. J: We can use more than one of these letters to write a vowel sound. For example, consider the word “boot.” JR: Although there are two vowel letters, o and o, there is only one vowel sound: -oo. Dr. J: We can practice counting syllables by clapping our hands together when we hear vowel sounds. JR: Let’s do my favorite season: winter. We clap our hands together twice, like this: win – ter. Dr. J: We can repeat the word several times: win-ter, win-ter, win-ter. JR: This exercise comes in very useful when you are writing or reading poetry. You can count syllables to create specific kinds of poems. We will explore these poems in future videos. Dr. J: And that’s Everyday Grammar TV.