Pop quiz! Say "Bridle."

By the end of what grade should a student be able to read this word accurately? 

A. 1st grade

B. 2nd grade

C. 3rd grade

D. 4th grade 

Bridle follows basic rules for English phonics and orthography. If you know these, you’ll read it correctly. You don't need to know equine vocabulary to pronounce it correctly. To read “bridle”, you’d need to know the six most common syllable types:

1. Closed – Includes a single letter vowel spelling followed by a consonant. The vowel sound is usually short.

2. Open – Includes a single letter vowel spelling not followed by a consonant. The vowel sound is usually long.

3. R-controlled – Includes a vowel sound that is followed by an “r” that changes its sound.

4. Vowel team – Includes a digraph, trigraph, or diphthong (i.e., multiple letters that represent a single vowel sound, such as “ea”, “igh”, or "oi”).

5. Vowel-consonant-e – Includes a single vowel letter followed by a consonant and a silent “e” to indicate the vowel should be long.

6. Consonant-le – Includes a vowel sound that is clustered in the “-le” spelling and sounds like a schwa. The -le always pulls the consonant before it into the syllable.

When we look at “bridle” based on these six syllable types, we know the letter “d” gets pulled into the second syllable (a consonant-le syllable), so you’d pronounce the “dle” as one unit. This leaves the first syllable “bri”, which is an open syllable that gives us a long /i/ sound.

Why does this matter?

I know someone whose address includes the word “bridle”. They have to provide or verify their address frequently to health care professionals, postal workers, delivery drivers, insurance company professionals, etc., most of whom finished high school and likely college.

You might be surprised, but more often than not these professionals pronounce the word with a short /i/ sound (i.e., “briddle”) instead of a long /i/ sound. The word would have to be spelled with two d’s, so that it closed the first syllable.

When you’re a professional representing your business, you are making impressions on people. Does the average person care if you pronounce “bridle” correctly? Probably not. However, it shows that these professionals likely didn’t have the opportunity to learn some very basic functions of how to read and spell English. There’s a good chance this shows up in other aspects of their reading and writing.

At minimum, that could cause embarrassment if they ever got called out on it. Worse, it could cause them to lose job opportunities if they make spelling mistakes on their job applications.

Quiz Answer:

If you’ve made it this far, the answer to the quiz is B. A student should know how to pronounce this word accurately by the end of 2nd grade.

As parents, teachers, and school leaders: do you know if your 2nd grade curriculum covers these six syllable types? All of the best early literacy curricula do. It’s worth a look to make sure your students are getting what they need.