19 September 2026 · Sara Marugan
The school year opens with syllables on the board
This article was machine-translated from Sara's Catalan original. The writing is hers; the translation has not been reviewed by a person. Read the Catalan original →
The school year has only just started, and the first thing I took into the classroom was «La teoria de la síl·laba ®», the method I have been using for years to teach syllable division without having to memorise a single rule. I taught it to all my Year 9 and Year 11 groups.
Four letters and the mystery is over
O for onset, N for nucleus, C for coda and Ct for closed coda. With that in hand, a word stops being a riddle: pa-ta-ta, e-le-fant, a-vi-a-ci-ó, cons-ci-en-ci-a-ci-ó. And once they have the knack, along come rising and falling diphthongs, triphthongs and hiatus, which is where everyone tends to stumble.
We filled the boards with lists: Paraguai, aiguaneu, palau, dinou, farmàcia, niu, guineu, següent, ambigüitat, quitxalla, aqüífer, guerrejar, guerra, guitarra… and the ones that always put up a fight: qüestió, extraordinària, lingüística, boira, cuina, estoig.
What I was not expecting
That they would want to come up to the board. One after another they did, and the boards ended up covered from top to bottom, with the onsets, nuclei and codas marked in three colours.
But the best part is the notebooks. Someone has made their own cover page for the method:
I have been teaching Catalan for more than eighteen years and it still happens: you explain something you think of as just a tool and, all of a sudden, they make it their own. It was a hit — so much so that I am getting a bit of a reputation at school.
