Teachers who have been teaching rules, syllable types etc for years might think there's 'something missing' from That Reading Thing. What's missing is the burden on memory that prevents students from learning to read quickly. We ask our tutors to ask themselves, am I tearing down a barrier to reading or building one up?

Dyslexia tutors who are trained in programs like Orton-Gillingham are showing an interest in linguistic (speech to print) phonics and this has led to more frequent questions about TRT's approach to syllables which firmly rejects teaching syllable types or boundary rules.

A recently trained TRT tutor emailed to ask:

I'm wondering about how pupils break up a word into syllables. On your training video you show them breaking up the word 'habit'. Personally, I would go 'hab' and 'it', whereas the pupil on your video said 'ha' 'bit'.

Does this particularly matter? Or have I been doing it wrong all these years?!

This is what we do instead:

Student says the word the way they will remember: ha/bit or hab/it - either is fine with this word because habit is a single morpheme that can't be broken down any further.

In words where there are clear meaningful parts (everyday morphology), the tutor nudges for meaning. For instance, they'd nudge 'tom/orr/ow' to 'to/morr/ow'or 'to/mo/rrow' if they prefer (usually accent dependent).

In words like 'habit', they don't require a syllable type rule to decide whether there is a long or short vowel. Instead, ask them to say it both ways and check for meaning in context. (This is NOT the same as making meaning from context.)

If you're working at word level and your students says 'hay-bit', ask if they know a word 'hay-bit'. If it's a word with a plausible incorrect answer like saying 'biter' for 'bitter', write a quick contextual phrase. The coffee tastes bitter.
Read more about biter/bitter words in this post: The Long and Short of Vowels.

We've always had this approach but now there is research to back it up:

“Does English Have Useful Syllable Division Patterns?” (Devin Kearns, Reading Research Quarterly, 2020). Here's a very helpful post by Dr. Joanne Pierson summarising the research.

The Kearns research is behind a paywall here.