TeachingEnglish

Catenation is one of the ways speakers join words together. In catenation, a consonant sound at the
end of one word joins with a vowel sound at the beginning of the next word.
Example
The two words an + apple become 'anapple' in speech, with catenation of the consonant n and the
vowel a sounds.
In the classroom
Learners often have difficulty hearing individual words due to catenation. Specific listening tasks such as
counting the number of words heard, dictation, and reading with a cassette recording can help practise
this.