Au and Aw are quite similar sounds for kids. Let’s look at each of the sounds and distinguish them with the help of examples.
‘au’ sound is never used at the end of a word. It is always in the beginning or the middle. These words are simple to understand because they have an ‘aw’ sound to them most of the times. For example, the word ‘sauce’ is pronounced as ‘s-aw-s’. Let’s see some uses of the sound in words.
AU Sound Words Phonics
Following are few examples of words with ‘au’ in them.
| Sauce | Exhaust | Vault | Launch |
| August | Fault | Audio | Taunt |
| Aunt | Astronaut | Pause | Naughty |
| Staunch | Haunt | Cause | Nausea |
| Maul | Automatic | Laugh | Flaunt |
Sentences using AU Words
Let’s explore sentences using words having ‘au’ in them.
| Words | Examples |
| Maul | Yesterday I read in the news that a man was mauled by a tiger. |
| Laugh | Laughter is always the best medicine. |
| Staunch | His beliefs are staunch. |
| Nausea | I didn’t go to the office today because I had nausea. |
| Launch | I ordered this phone just a few months after it was launched. |
| August | In India, it rains heavily in the month of August. |
| Astronaut | When I was a child, I dreamt of being an astronaut. |
| Audio | She thinks this mic’s audio is not working. |
| Sauce | I dislike sauce because it covers the flavour of food. |
| Taunt | Taunting an animal when you are in a zoo is a very insulting thing. |
| Pause | I paused the movie for just talking to my friends. |
| Naughty | Children are very naughty but at the same time equally innocent. |
| Cause | John apologized to the teacher for the mess he caused. |
| Automatic | ATM is the short form for an automatic teller machine. |
| Aunt | It felt really very good because I met my paternal aunt after almost 10 long years. |
The sound of ‘aw’ is similar to the sound used to pronounce ‘or’. Other than this, the aw sound is mostly used before consonants like ‘L’ and ‘N’ because they are usually spelled that way. Few examples are draw, brawl, yawn, dawn etc.
AW Sound Words Phonics
Following are few examples of words containing ‘aw’, most them are ending in ‘aw’ sound.
| Claw | Spawn | Crawl | Straw |
| Flaw | Hawk | Raw | Brawl |
| Draw | Prawn | Yawn | Lawn |
| Saw | Fawn | Dawn | Pawn |
Sentences using AW Words
Let’s explore sentences using words having ‘aw’ in them.
| Words | Examples |
| Claw | As an act of self-defense, the girl clawed them with her nails. |
| Flaw | Everybody as flaws, but we should learn to correct them, |
| Raw | You shouldn’t eat raw meat because it is hard to digest. |
| Straw | A drowning man will always catch a straw. |
| Draw | Mike likes to draw but he doesn’t get time. |
| Saw | Even though I saw him pass by, I didn’t call him. |
| Spawn | I love this game because I can spawn at any point. |
| Hawk | A snake can kill a frog but a hawk can kill a snake. |
| Prawn | Prawns are my favourite seafood but after crabs. |
| Fawn | A young deer is not a cub, it is a fawn. |
| Yawn | The teacher asked me to not yawn. |
| Dawn | It is dusk in Japan when it is dawn in Canada. |
| Brawl | It was scary, but I just saw a real-life back-alley brawl. |
| Pawn | I used to own a pawn shop. |
| Lawn | My mom wants me to mow the lawn but I’m lazy. |
| Crawl | They were very happy when they saw their baby crawl. |
Summing up the Article
So, these were a few words and examples of the AU and AW Sound Words for Kids. Learning phonics can be really easy for kids if they pronounce the word out loud, then break the sounds letter by letter, and then combine it.
Let’s have some worksheets to practice AU and AW phonics.
Keep exploring EnglishBix to find resources related to phonics.
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