Decoding difficulties


 * This article is about difficulties trying to say a word while reading it. For difficulties to repeat a word see Possible pronunciation difficulties

Decoding difficulties are the difficulties students may encounter with the idiosyncracies of English spelling. In other words, students with decoding difficulties have problems when sounding out some words, either because the don't know the rule (e.g. pronouncing "authorize" as ) or because they don't know the exception (e.g. pronouncing "knowledge" as ).

Magic "e"
The exceptions to the so-called "magic e", as in pin vs pine, give rise to numerous mispronunciations, including words like determine being pronounced as if they ended in /maɪn/.

See also Silent e.

Schwa
Special time should be spent practising the schwa sound. The natural tendency of many foreign language students is to pronounce unstressed vowels with their so-called “short” sound, such as "accept" as instead of /əkˈsept/ or "lesson" as  instead of /ˈlesən/.