As children progress through the upper primary school they are expected to understand syllables. A syllable is unit of pronunciation having one vowel sound, with or without surrounding consonants, forming the whole or a part of a word: e.g. the word robin has two syllables: rob and in. The key to this is that the number of times you hear the sound of a vowel in a word indicates the number of syllables, but just counting the vowels may not give the correct answer e.g. lemonade has 4 vowels but only 3 syllables as the last e is not heard as a separate sound. Knowing about syllables can be very helpful when spelling, reading or pronouncing words. We have just published three pages on syllables which can be found in our English, Grammar and Vocabulary category