American English vowels are represented by 6 letters: “a, e, i, o, u, y.”

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These 6 letters create 14 different vowel sounds.

How do you know which sound a vowel letter represents?

There aren’t any spelling rules that work 100% of the time, but there are some that work most of the time.

There are ways to identify when the two major vowel groups of short/lax and long/tense will be used in words. These will help you make good guesses for words that you’ve never seen before.

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