The only English letter that normally represents two sounds at once. X is /ks/ at the end of a word, /z/ at the start, and /gz/ when the stress falls after it.
Letter sounds
x LETTER_X_01
Strong rule · High reliability · Occasional · Beginner · Reading and spelling
Where Wiggler teaches it: Skill 2: CVC Word Mastery
X is a letter that makes two sounds at once: /k/ and /s/. Say box slowly and you can hear both.
At the end of a word or syllable, x is /ks/ — two sounds from one letter. At the start of the very few English words that begin with it, x is /z/.
X is a grapheme mapping to a consonant cluster, which makes it unique in the English alphabet and slightly awkward in phoneme-counting activities — box has three letters and four phonemes. The /gz/ realisation occurs when the following syllable is stressed (exam, exist, exhaust) and the /ks/ realisation when it is not (exercise, excellent).
box, fox, six, mix, fix
wax, tax, ox, next, text, exit, taxi, extra
exam, exact, example, exercise, xylophone
Made-up words that follow the rule. A child who reads these has the pattern rather than the vocabulary.
blax, nux, prex
Worth naming explicitly during sound-counting work: box has four sounds and three letters, which is the opposite of everything else a child has met, where letters outnumber sounds or match them. Also note that x is never doubled and almost never begins a word — which is why it is late in most teaching sequences despite being easy.
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