Mind your language: 8 easy tips from a teacher to remember spelling of English words

Why is the letter ‘g’ silent in “design”? Or why is “know” spelt with ‘k’? When it comes to English words, spelling can be tricky, and therefore difficult to remember. A wrong spelling can leave a bad impression even if a student writes the best answer. So, how can he or she learn difficult English words? More importantly, how do they remember the spelling?

Sonu Punni, TGT English, Apeejay School, Mahavir Marg, Jalandhar, shares some simple tips for students who are struggling to memorise English spelling: 

1. Watch out for prefixes and suffixes in English words, recognise them, and spell them out loud.

2. Read more books and make a note of new words.

3. Jot down the commonly misspelled words and revise them from time to time. Examples: “apparent”, “believe”, “separate”, and “weird”, to name a few 

4. Playing word games like Scrabble is a good way to improve spelling and learn new words.

Also Read: Mind Your Language: Easy essay writing tips from an English teacher

5. Learn the standard pronunciation for frequently misspelled words. Some examples are “colleague”, “conscientious”, “pixel”, and so on. 

6. Make note of silent letters. These are the ones that do not correspond to any sound in a word’s pronunciation. So, ignore them while speaking but include them while writing.

7. Beware of the difference between American and British spellings. For instance, “recognise” with an ‘s’ is British while the American equivalent is “recognize”. 

8. Use mnemonics, a memory device that aids information retention. This is a way of turning information into a picture, sentence, rhyme, or anything that is easier to remember.