A New Approach to Bilingual Sound-Spelling Cards—Free to Download

What Are Bilingual Sound-Spelling Cards?

The Bilingual Sound-Spelling Cards linked here are designed for use within a dual language program model, in combination with instructional materials that follow a speech-to-print methodology for explicitly and systematically teaching English foundational literacy skills. Within a speech-to-print approach, phonemes* serve as the principal organizing unit for much of the instruction. Once a target phoneme is introduced, the corresponding grapheme** is explicitly taught and reinforced through instructional activities that integrate encoding (spelling—the translation of phonemes into graphemes) and decoding (the translation of graphemes into phonemes). This bidirectional approach to foundational literacy instruction has been shown to foster stronger and more durable word representations in memory than approaches that place less emphasis on spelling (Conrad et al., 2019; Møller, Mortensen, & Elbro, 2021).

*Phonemes are the minimal linguistic units that mark differences in meaning. For example, the words [mat] and [sat] are distinguished as different words with different meanings because of their initial phonemes--/m/ and /s/ respectively.

**A grapheme is a letter or combination of letters that represent a phoneme. 

In addition to their organizational structure, our bilingual sound-spelling cards incorporate articulatory gestures as part of the routine for explicitly introducing phoneme-grapheme correspondences. Research has shown that instruction incorporating articulatory gestures helps strengthen the connection between phonemes and graphemes in memory—more so than instruction that lacks this support (Boyer & Ehri, 2011). This added layer of support may be especially important for Multilingual Learners (MLLs), who are often required to learn and distinguish phonemes that do not exist in their native languages.

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Reimagining Sound-Spelling Cards Through a Bilingual Lens

Although sound-spelling cards have become a staple in many literacy programs, few resources have been explicitly designed to leverage cross-linguistic transfer between English and Spanish. For example, when introducing the phoneme-grapheme correspondence /m/ – m, many monolingual curricula use the keyword mouse. While this is an effective keyword in English, it misses the opportunity to highlight that the phoneme /m/ is shared across both languages, since mouse translates to ratón in Spanish. In contrast, our sound card for /m/ uses the keyword monkey or mono—two words that are equivalent across languages and feature the same phoneme in the initial position. This approach reinforces both sound and meaning connections for bilingual learners.

All shared phonemes and graphemes are marked with a turquoise border to help both teachers and students easily identify areas of overlap across English and Spanish. In contrast, phonemes and graphemes that are unique to Spanish are marked with green, while those unique to English are marked with blue. These color distinctions are designed to support cross-linguistic comparison; however, they do not always capture the full complexity of how these sounds function across both languages.

Navigating Phonological Differences Across Languages

For instance, while we classify /b/ and /p/ as shared phonemes and mark them with a turquoise border, we acknowledge that important phonetic differences exist. Specifically, in English, both /p/ and /b/ are produced with a small burst of air—what linguists refer to as aspiration. In Spanish, this aspiration is absent, resulting in a slightly different articulation of the same phoneme.

A similar simplification occurs with /t/ and /d/, which are also coded as shared phonemes. In English, these sounds are typically articulated with the tongue on the alveolar ridge (just behind the upper front teeth). In Spanish, however, the tongue makes contact further forward—against or near the upper front teeth—resulting in a softer articulation.

Despite these differences, we maintain that these phonemes are sufficiently similar across languages to allow for positive transfer. That is why we have chosen to identify them as shared within this resource, while still acknowledging the underlying phonetic nuance.

So far, the examples requiring nuanced interpretation have involved consonants. Now, we shift the discussion to vowels. In our bilingual sound-spelling cards, we chose not to identify any vowel phonemes as shared across English and Spanish. Technically, this is accurate: no Spanish vowel phoneme is identical to any English vowel phoneme, and vice versa. While some similarities exist—for example, the Spanish vowel /e/ is somewhat similar to the English / ĕ/ as in echo, and the Spanish /i/ can approximate the English /ī/ as in eagle—there are no exact one-to-one matches.

Another reason for this decision lies in the disparity in the number of vowel phonemes in each language. Spanish has five vowel phonemes—a relatively small and consistent set—while English has 18 or more, depending on the dialect. English ranks high among world languages in terms of vowel complexity. This, combined with the opaque nature of English orthography, presents a significant challenge for early readers that simply does not exist to the same extent in Spanish.

Because Spanish vowel phoneme-grapheme correspondences are typically mastered early in formal literacy instruction, whereas English vowel correspondences often take much longer to internalize, we opted to keep them separate in our resource. This decision reflects both linguistic accuracy and instructional practicality.

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Phonemes vs. Syllables: Instructional Implications

In the introduction to this article, we noted that this resource is intended for use within a dual language program in which English foundational literacy skills are taught explicitly and systematically using a speech-to-print methodology. This approach organizes much of early instruction around phonemes, and there is strong evidence supporting its effectiveness for teaching reading and spelling in opaque writing systems like English.

We also acknowledge that, due to the transparent nature of Spanish orthography, foundational literacy instruction in Spanish is often structured differently. Once vowel phoneme-grapheme correspondences are introduced, instruction typically shifts to focus on open syllables rather than phonemes. Unlike in English, the syllable is the most salient linguistic unit in Spanish (Defior & Serrano, 2017), and we support this traditional organizing principle for early Spanish literacy instruction.

For this reason, although our bilingual sound-spelling cards include phoneme-grapheme correspondences in Spanish, we recommend that they be used in conjunction with open-syllable families (e.g., ma, me, mi, mo, mu; sa, se, si, so, su) and that subsequent instruction follow a systematic scope and sequence aligned with evidence-based practices in early Spanish literacy instruction (see Salceda & Alonso, 2015).

The Nature of Phonemes: What We’re Really Teaching

With the recent surge of interest in reading research, more educators are being introduced to evidence supporting the use of articulatory gestures in phonemic awareness instruction. Additionally, the adoption of speech-to-print methodologies—where instruction is organized around speech sounds rather than letters—has gained momentum in teaching foundational English literacy skills. We view this as a positive development for the field. However, it is important to acknowledge a key consideration when implementing this approach: understanding what phonemes actually are.

Phonemes are abstract linguistic units—they do not physically exist in the speech stream but are mental representations formed and refined through reading and spelling in alphabetic writing systems. In real speech, phonemes do not occur as clearly segmented units. Even advanced scientific tools cannot precisely mark where one speech sound ends and another begins, due to a phenomenon known as coarticulation.

Try this experiment: begin to say the first sound in the word cute, but stop just before saying the full word, and look at your mouth in a mirror. You’ll notice that your lips are rounded. Now do the same with the word key. This time, your mouth will take on more of a smiling shape. Even though you're attempting to pronounce the same initial phoneme (/k/), your mouth forms different shapes depending on the vowel that follows. In Spanish, you can try the same experiment with the words gorila and guiar, and you’ll observe a similar effect. This variation occurs because the sounds that follow influence how the initial sound is articulated. This phenomenon illustrates that while phonemes are useful instructional units, they cannot be fully isolated or made concrete.

Bringing It Together: Scaffolding the Abstract

With this understanding, our task as educators—particularly in bilingual settings—is to support students as they construct the elusive mental abstractions we call phonemes. We do this by providing a range of concrete—though imperfect—scaffolds, such as articulatory gestures, which, when used alongside letters and spelling patterns, have been shown to help students develop stable internal representations of sounds—representations that are critical for building a strong foundation in early literacy.

Unfortunately, the recent enthusiasm for phonemic awareness has, in some cases, led educators to withhold one of the most effective concrete supports for developing phoneme awareness—letters. This has often stemmed from a misinterpretation of the research, leading some to believe that students should not be exposed to letters until they can accurately produce and manipulate individual sounds. As a result, phonemic awareness is sometimes taught in isolation, disconnected from the phonics patterns students will encounter later in the lesson. This contradicts well-established research findings showing that phonemic awareness instruction is most effective when it is explicitly connected to graphemes—the letters that represent those sounds (National Reading Panel, 2000). 

Our sincere hope is that these bilingual sound-spelling cards will help you better integrate evidence-aligned supports into your classroom—not just in one language, but through a truly bilingual lens. By reinforcing phoneme-grapheme correspondences across English and Spanish, these tools honor both linguistic systems and provide a meaningful bridge for cross-linguistic transfer, especially for emergent bilingual readers and spellers.

Put these principles into practice—download the full Bilingual Sound-Spelling Card set now.

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Principia Learning specializes in distilling theories and research from cognitive science, philosophy, and linguistics into effective instructional principles and practices that support a diverse range of learners across educational settings. We offer professional development to help educators implement these practices with confidence and impact.

Resources

Boyer, N., & Ehri, L. C. (2011). Contribution of phonemic segmentation instruction with letters and articulation pictures to word reading and spelling in beginners. Scientific Studies of Reading, 15(5), 440–470. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2010.520778

Conrad, N. J., Kennedy, K., Saoud, W., Scallion, L., & Hanusiak, L. (2019). Establishing word representations through reading and spelling: Comparing degree of orthographic learning. Journal of Research in Reading, 42(3), 397–420. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9817.12256

Defior, S., & Serrano, F. (2017). Learning to read in Spanish. In L. Verhoeven & C. A. Perfetti (Eds.), Learning to read across languages and writing systems (pp. 270–298). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316155752

Møller, H. L., Mortensen, J. O., & Elbro, C. (2022). Effects of integrated spelling in phonics instruction for at-risk children in kindergarten. Reading & Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties, 38(1), 67-82. https://doi.org/10.1080/10573569.2021.1907638

National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction (NIH Publication No. 00-4769). National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Salceda, M., & Alonso, J. (2015). Enseñar a leer: Cómo hacer lectores competentes. Editorial Graó.