When we speak, we don’t emphasise each of our syllables equally. For example, in the word ‘telephone’, we usually place the stress on the ‘te’ and ‘phone’, leaving the ‘le’ syllable in the middle un-stressed and weak. In ‘umbrella’, we stress the ‘bre’, leaving the ‘um’ unstressed and weak.

It’s common for young children to omit weak syllables. We call this weak syllable deletion.

This no-prep 7-page Weak Syllable Deletion resource features high frequency, functional words, with orthography and pictures.