AW

The end-of-word partner to au. Saw, draw, law, crawl — reliable for /ɔː/.

Vowel teams

aw TEAM_AW_01

Strong rule · High reliability · Common · Intermediate · Reading and spelling

• /ɔː/ aw: saw, draw, law

Where Wiggler teaches it: Skill 10: Diphthongs & Variant Vowels

Child explanation

A and w together say /ɔː/ — saw, draw, law.

The rule

Aw represents /ɔː/ at the end of a word, and before l and n.

What is really going on

Reliable. Aw also appears before l and n inside words — crawl, shawl, lawn, dawn — where it keeps the same value.

Position in the word

• End of a word — The usual position. For example: saw, draw, law, jaw.
• Before a consonant — Before l and n. For example: crawl, shawl, lawn, dawn, hawk.

Examples

Easy examples

saw, draw, law, paw, jaw

More examples

claw, straw, yawn, dawn, lawn, crawl, shawl, hawk, awful, awesome

Pseudo-words

Made-up words that follow the rule. A child who reads these has the pattern rather than the vocabulary.

blaw, shawn, fraw

Contrast pairs

• saw versus sauce — End-of-word aw versus middle-of-word au.
• draw versus drop — Team versus single vowel.

Teacher note

Teach with au. Note also the -aw / -all overlap: saw, ball and talk all carry the same vowel with three different spellings, which is worth showing in a sound-to-spelling view rather than explaining word by word.

Accent notes

• General American — Many speakers have merged /ɔː/ with /ɑː/, so caught and cot sound the same. The spelling rule is unaffected.

Related rules

• AU — au — The /ɔː/ of haul and sauce, used inside a word. Pairs with aw, which does the same job at the end.
• The -all, -alk and -alt families — -all -alk -alt -alm — After a, the letter l changes the vowel to /ɔː/ — and in -alk and -alm the l goes silent as well.
• Silent L in selected word families — alk / alm / alf / olk — L is silent in a small set of established families — walk, calm, half, folk — and in almost nothing else. Milk, silk, help and salt all keep their l.

• Previous in Vowel teams: AU — au — The /ɔː/ of haul and sauce, used inside a word. Pairs with aw, which does the same job at the end.
• Next in Vowel teams: EW — ew — Two closely related sounds — /juː/ in few and /uː/ in flew — split by the consonant before, and by accent.
• All reading rules

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