IE

Long i at the end of a short word — pie, tie, lie — and long e in the middle of a longer one: chief, field, believe.

Vowel teams

ie TEAM_IE_01

Useful pattern · Medium reliability · Occasional · Intermediate · Reading

• /aɪ/ long i: pie, tie, lie
• /iː/ long e: chief, field, believe

Where Wiggler teaches it: Skill 9: Vowel Teams (Long)

Child explanation

Ie says /aɪ/ at the end of a short word like pie, and /iː/ in the middle of a word like chief.

The rule

At the end of a one-syllable word, ie is long i. In the middle of a word it is usually long e. The position test does most of the work.

What is really going on

The position split is fairly reliable. The medial /iː/ group is mostly French-derived, and is the source of the ie/ei spelling difficulty that the i-before-e rhyme was invented to address — a rhyme with so many exceptions that it is not worth teaching for reading.

Position in the word

• End of a word — Long i. For example: pie, tie, lie, die.
• Middle of a word — Long e. For example: chief, field, piece, believe.

Examples

Easy examples

pie, tie, lie, chief, field

More examples

die, fried, tried, cried, piece, thief, brief, believe, relief, niece, shield

Pseudo-words

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

blie, shief, prield

Exceptions

• friend: friend. ie represents /e/ — a one-off.
• -ied from a y root: cried, tried, dried, carried. The y has changed to i and the -ed follows; the ie is not a team.

Contrast pairs

• pie versus piece — The two positions, the two sounds.
• tie versus thief

Do not teach it like this

"I before e except after c."

The rhyme is a spelling mnemonic, not a reading rule, and it has more exceptions than most rules have examples — their, height, weird, neighbour, seize, science, ancient, efficient. It gives a reader nothing at all.

"Where is the ie? End of a short word, /aɪ/. Middle of a word, /iː/." That is usable when decoding.

Teacher note

Do not spend lesson time on i-before-e. It is a spelling rhyme with a poor record and it does nothing for decoding. The position test is more useful and more honest.

Related rules

• EE — ee — Long e, in any position, with essentially no exceptions. The single most reliable vowel team in English.
• EI and EIGH — ei / eigh — Long a in eight, weight and neighbour; long e in ceiling and receive. Small, awkward, and best taught as two word lists.
• Y becomes I before a suffix — y + suffix → i — Happy becomes happier, cry becomes cried, baby becomes babies. A reliable change, and one that explains a lot of otherwise odd-looking words.
• The letter Y — y — The clearest case in English of position deciding sound. Y is a consonant at the start of a word and a vowel everywhere else — and which vowel depends on how many syllables the word has.

• Previous in Vowel teams: UI — ui — A small set — fruit, juice, suit, bruise — plus a group where the u is silent after g and q. Rare, and best learned as words.
• Next in Vowel teams: EY — ey — Usually long e at the end of a word — key, money, honey. A smaller group says long a: they, grey, obey.
• All reading rules

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