Background

Final blend endings present a definite pronunciation challenge. Sometimes students only pronounce the last consonant in a blend, ignoring the others, resulting in a nonsense word ("dup" for "dump"). Other times, they sound out the blend slowly, saying the correct individual sounds, but not blending the ending into a smooth, fluent sound. Some students will focus on the initial sounds in the word and ignore the difficult blend at the end. Final blends that do not commonly appear at the beginning of words are especially difficult to master.