Alliteration and Assonance
Alliteration and Assonance
Can you say the following five times fast?She sells seashells by the seashore.
How about this one?
How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
You may recognize the sentences above. They are both very famous tongue twisters. A tongue twister is a short phrase or sentence that is tricky to say. It is tricky because many of the words begin with the same letters or sounds.
While writers don't frequently add tongue twisters to their stories, poems and speeches, they do often a sequence of words that start with the same beginning sound. This is called ALLITERATION.
- The purple ponies pranced in the sunlight.
- My courageous kitty, Coco, climbed down from the tree.
Using alliteration makes a story, poem, or speech sound better to the reader and listener's ear. It can also draw a reader or listener's attention to an important part of the text.
There's also another type of sound device writers use for the same purpose. It is called ASSONANCE. Assonance involves placing two or more words with the same vowel sound near each other in a sentence.
- I will bake a cake to put on my plate.
- Stay low and go slow through the open field.
The video below will help you learn more about how writers use alliteration and assonance. Before you watch it, try your hand at some practice questions to get a feel for what you already know.
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