teaching -ing spelling

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sultanee

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Nov 14, 2009
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hi everybody:-D
I'm going to teach my first lesson next week:cry:
I just have a question
In the book, it is mentioned that with verbs that end with one vowel and one consonant, we double the last letter and add -ing
but there are words that end with one vowel and one consonant but we don't double the last letter like open, listen and so on
so, what is the rule here?
many thanks in advance
 

Raymott

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Jun 29, 2008
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English
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hi everybody:-D
I'm going to teach my first lesson next week:cry:
I just have a question
In the book, it is mentioned that with verbs that end with one vowel and one consonant, we double the last letter and add -ing
but there are words that end with one vowel and one consonant but we don't double the last letter like open, listen and so on
so, what is the rule here?
many thanks in advance
Many (most?) monosyllabic words double the consonant in all dialects - "run/running; jam/jamming; sit/sitting; bet/betting ... " Also, they double the letter when the past tense or past participle are formed from them - "
pat/patted, ram/rammed, bit/bitten ..."
The reason for this is to prevent a change of sound which would otherwise occur when you place and /i/ or /e/ after a monsyllabic word ending in a vowel and consonant - " bit/bite, pat/pate, run/rune" etc.

It's rare to double the syllable in a multisyllabic word when the stress is not on the last syllable (as in your examples, open and listen).
However in BrE, words ending in /l/ like "travel, unravel, channel" change to "travelled/travelling/channelled, unravelled/unravelling/channelling", while in AmE, they don't double the letter.

That's a few hints that I can think of at the moment.

PS: Have you tried here:
http://www.google.com.au/#hl=en&source=hp&biw=1276&bih=600&q=doubling+consonants+rule&aq=1&aqi=g7g-m1&aql=&oq=%22doubling+consonants&gs_rfai=&fp=b1e33c5331d7cfef
 
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