In this article, we will discuss trigraphs and quadgraphs. In brief, they are letters’ combinations that make one sound. They can be a group of vowels, consonants, or a mix of both.

What is a trigraph?

We have taken on the previous article that digraphs are two letters that together they make one sound. like /ch/ /sh/ and /ph/. Trigraphs are actually three letters that commonly come together and make one sound. Trigraphs can be mere consonants or mere vowels or a combination of both of them. There aren’t many trigraphs as digraphs.

If you don’t know about digraphs, you can check this article…

How many trigraphs in English and what are they?

Actually, there are more than 120 letter combinations that can make different sounds. I tried as much as I can to find a source that can tell me how many are trigraphs exactly but I didn’t find any source that has counted or calculated the number. So, we may not know the right number but am sure we will mention approximately all of them here.

• Vowel trigraphs: 

     1- EAU: This trigraph does not occur natively in English, but it does occur in several French loanwords and words adapted from French.

it has four different pronunciations:

2- iou / eou : they always come with /s/ so I consider they are quadgraphs and should be dealt with separately so we will mention them later.

3- so if we didn’t count the above, /eau/ is the only vowel trigraph that comes in several words. Other than that, there are three letters vowel words that take y or w as their cntral vowel and they also make one sound using these three vowels:

1- awe (/ɔ/)
2- aye (/aɪ/)
3- ewe (/ju/)
4- eye (/aɪ/)
5- owe (/oʊ/)

• Vowel-consonant trigraphs:

  1 –  IGH: it produces the long /i:/ sound. 
  like insight, light, night, fight

    2- DGE: it makes a (/ʤ/) sound (letter J sound):

    like in the bridge, edge, widget, badge

•  Vowel-R trigraphs in British English:
    of course, these sounds coming from /are/ or /air/ or /ere/ are one sound made by three letters including the R sound which in British is reduced to be a shwa sound and is not pronounced as a consonant. These are considered trigraphs but we will not include them here in American English phonics.

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• Consonant trigraphs:

1- TCH: like in batch, catch, scratch, butcher, ketchup and others.

2- SCH: this combination is mainly used in English as a consonant cluster and not a trigraph like in the words school, schedule or schema.

but when we come to loanwords from german or Swedish we will find it used as a trigraph. We have examples like: schwa, schnitzel or schilling.

What are Quadgraphs?

Quadgraphs are four graphemes that produce one phoneme. These are:

1- EOUS: courageous – dangerous – gorgeous

2 – IOUS: precious – delicious – cautious

3- AUGH: it will always produce the sound  /ɔ/ except in these two words (laugh, draught) combination it will be /f/

like in daughter – caught – naughty – taught

4- OUGH: this is one of the trickiest because it can result in six different sounds.

• / ʌ / sound like in : cough -tough – rough
• /a:/ sound like bought – brought – thought
• /oʊ/: like in although – though
• /u/ : like in through – slough
• /aʊ/: like in drought – plough

5- EIGH:  this combination is pronunced as /eɪ/.except in two words it is pronounced as /aI/ like in (height and sleight)

• /eɪ/: eight -weight – neighbor – freight

6- AIGH: it is pronounced as /eI/ and it only appears in the word straight and all the words derived from it.

Trigraphs and Quadgrahs are very important to learn for teachers as they are putting the basic layers of understanding phonetics. We can teach them once we reach phase 5. which is the start of primary 1 at school.

Digraphs, Trigraphs, Graphemes, Blends, and consonant clusters are all unfamiliar terms for parents who want to teach their kids how to start reading and writing. So, do you think they are important to know? or you can find your way without mastering teaching your kid the letter sounds in the correct order?

Well, the short answer to that will be yes, you might find your way but still, you won’t get more than 70% accurate order for teaching the sounds. Before this article, We have introduced the phases and I’d like to tell you that teaching the digraphs starts from phase 3. So, we won’t be able to introduce our kids to digraphs before that. The most important question that you might be asking now is “What are digraphs?”. Well, I didn’t tell you!

What are digraphs?

Digraphs are sounds that unlike sounds produced by reading one letter, they are produced by two letters coming after each other. Is that clear enough? I guess not because this may lead us to think that any sound made by two letters will be a digraph. That is not true because /br/, /st/, /fn/, and others are not digraphs because they are not producing one sound. Not like when you try to read /th/. So what are the latter? that is the coming question.

What is the difference between digraphs and blends?

Blends are two or more consonants that blend together and make a kind of unique pronunciation but they don’t become one. They are also called Consonant clusters. They are br,cr,str,pr,ng,st,fr,pl, nch and more which the kids are supposed to study in phases 4 and 5.

What are the digraph’s letter sounds?

We can divide digraphs into two groups. Consonant digraphs and Vowel digraphs.

Consonant digraphs: 

Are mostly one vowel and a consonant or two consonants that make one single sound. They are not so many vowel combinations. We sometimes call them by the families. That is mainly because they sometimes make groups of words like the Wh-family( what – when – why – where – which……etc.)

Download the consonant digraph pdf free 

Vowel digraphs:

They consist of two vowels or one consonant and one vowel and they make together just one sound. They are the following:

ai, ay, ee, ea, ie, ei, oo, ou. ow, oe, oo, ue, ey, ay, oy, oi, au, aw.

Download the vowel digraph pdf free 

How to teach them? And which should be taught first Blends or Digraphs?

From my own experience following different patterns of teaching for 5 successive years teaching English as a second language for primary and kg students. I find that some people prefer to teach blends second but the majority do the opposite. Well, teaching blends for me should come first because although they are not as easy as one-letter graphemes, they are easier than the latter because they are repetitive and they are just a common combination of two letters or more making two or more different sounds coming usually together. On the other hand, digraphs are totally new sounds made by the two letters.

you might like to browse these:  Alphabet Letters with pictures flashcards

Let’s go back to how to teach part?!

I think that the phases program is a good one to follow it’s mainly created by the jolly phonics teaching methodology. It actually distinguishes each phase by the level of difficulty. That is the most important factor for children. So we aren’t going to teach them in a separate unit. Rather, there will be a mix based on the difficulty provided in each phase. The kids are not involved in the discrimination argument around educational terms. So I guess in the phases article you will find more about the right teaching steps. Here, in kids’ activities, we have developed all the steps and activities needed for all the letter sounds whether they are digraphs, trigraphs, or single graphemes.

You might like to browse our digraphs worksheets…..