Tips for Students: Improving Your English Language Spellings in a few Simple Steps (Part- 1)

Perplexed with English spellings? Don’t worry. You aren’t the only person in the world who’s going through this problem. Most native speakers find the language difficult, and justiably so.

After all, a significant chunk of English has been borrowed from several languages in general, and hence, you get a fair share those weirdly-spelt words in your textbooks.

English spelling difficulty can be easily converted into a part of the solution, provided you show desire and practice your spellings the right way. The following tips can help.

1. Use mnemonics to your advantage

Mnemonics are nothing but a short cut technique to improving the memory as a whole. Many types of mnemonics exist, but a few of the commonest ones include things like acronyms, expressions, music, rhymes, images and connections.

For spelling practices, it’s more advisable to use the rhythm/songs and acronym-based mnemonics. Here’s how it can help:

• Rhythms & songs: This tactic can make it easier for you to remember words and information, in general. Here are 2 brilliant examples for you.

 

Plenty of similar examples are available on the internet. Refer to them as per your convenience.

• Acronym: An acronym is made by taking the first letters of a collection of words and putting them together to form a word in itself. For example,

LOL= Laugh out loud.

TY= Thank you.

BTW= By the way.

This tactic can really help you learn your spellings if you can use this innovatively to your advantage.

We’ll explain with an example for better comprehensibility:

Say, you want to learn the spelling of a word “FRIEND.”

The best way of implementing acronym, in this case, is to turn each letter into a word itself for easy remembrance.

FRIEND= Five Red Indians Eating Nuts Downstairs.

Another,

ANSWER= A Negative Score Will Equal Relegation (Tailor-made for all those football fans).

So you see imagination is your only limitation.

2. Learn all those commonly misspelled words in general

Certain words might not be too tough to spell, in general, but native speakers do get themselves wrong a whole lot of time. If you want to go through a comprehensive list of these words, this article can come in handy for you.

You may also resort to YouTube videos for this purpose of yours. The best thing about them is the fact that they won; even cost you a dime. Here’s an example-

3. Be consistent with the usage of using American and British English in your writing

While writing anything in general, it’s advisable to maintain a consistency in your choice of words as far as the usage of British or American English is concerned.

British and American English do differ from one another on grounds of certain words and phrases. For example, “colour” is a British word, whereas “color” is an American word in particular.

So if you use the word “colour” in your write-up, make sure it’s consistent all around (meaning, do not use “colors” and “colours” in the same article). Such overall consistency is needed to create a good impression on your audience on the whole.

4. Make a comprehensive list of spellings that trouble you a lot

Instead of learning a list of words made by somebody else, why don’t you just make up a comprehensive list of your own? It can do you more good than harm in the long run.

For example,

You might have a whole lot of issues with words starting with “per” or “pre,” such as percentage, presentation, preview, permanent, personnel and so on.

Now, this is a unique problem that’s quite rare all around. You might not get a healthy and read-made list of words that stresses a lot on the above issue. So why don’t you just make a list of your own? It does help.

5. The suffix trouble

Certain English suffixes (such as –able and –ible) confuse even the best of all spellers. So pay special attention to these while proofreading your work:

i) -able OR –ible; –ably OR- ibly; –ability OR –ibility

e.g. responsible/ dependable; responsibility/ dependability; responsibly/dependably etc.

ii) –tial or –cial:

e.g. influential/beneficial etc.

There are several other examples. This article can come in handy for you.

So that’s it then. It’s time we bring the first part of this article to a close for now. We will be coming up with a part 2 as soon as possible. Till then adieu!