Lessons Unit 4, lesson 6
Silent letters: knight, island, climb
The band English is infamous for: letters you must not say. On your sheets they're struck through with ∅ — the sheet does the remembering, you just skip them. knight is simply nite.
What do the marks mean?
Want the full walkthrough? Read the map explains every mark, with practice.
Now say it yourself
Read each word from its sheet, out loud, three times. Where there's a play button, listen first and copy what you hear. Slow is fine — speaking clearly matters more than speaking fast. Tap a word's microphone to record yourself and see which sounds landed.
Check your pronunciation, on this device. The first use downloads a small AI listener (about 40 MB, one time, then it's cached). Your voice is analyzed here in your browser — it never leaves your device.
The band English is famous for
Knight, island, climb, write — English spelling keeps letters around long after they stopped being pronounced. The sheets strike these through with ∅ so you never have to guess: knight is just nite, write is just rite, lamb is just lam. Read the letters that remain and ignore the rest completely, exactly as the sheet shows it.
What your ear should listen for
Notice how short these words actually are once the silent letters fall away — hour collapses to our, know collapses to no, half loses its l entirely, and climb loses its b. The trap is trying to honor every letter out of respect for the spelling; English does not reward that instinct here. Say the word by its sheet, not by its alphabet, and these words get easier, not harder, the longer they look.
Notice how short these words really are once the silent letters fall away: hour is just our, know is just no.