Spell
it Right
Spelling
materials for EFL students
Vivian
Cook
English
spelling is a crucial area for any EFL student. Even advanced students still
make spelling mistakes, as indeed do native speakers. Peoples level of
literacy and education is often judged by their correct spelling as much as by
their language competence.
Much
more has become known about how English spelling works, not just as a way of
writing spoken sounds, but also as a system in its own right. Research has
looked at how learners transfer from one overall writing system to another and
at the particular spelling problems that different groups of students have
with English spelling.
Yet
hardly no attention is paid to spelling in EFL teaching. It seems to be
assumed that students pick spelling up as they go along without any specific
teaching. Main coursebooks rarely mention spelling; there are few
supplementary practice materials for teaching spelling to non-native adults.
All that teachers can do is correct individual mistakes by the students or
hand on the rules of thumb they learnt as children. Spelling checkers with
word processing programs provide some help but are not available in precisely
those situations such as form-filling and written examinations where spelling
counts most.
There
is then a gap for a book that treats spelling systematically and that
practices and explains the features that EFL students continue to get wrong.
The book needs to be usable both by individual students worried by their
spelling and by teachers with classes to function for self-help as well as
for class use. It needs to allow teachers and students to dip into it for
relevant help with particular mistakes rather than go through it in a linear
fashion. The presentation has to be solid in that people expect spelling
to be a serious topic but light in that activities have to be
interesting and show immediate pay-off for the students. Choice of a title may
well be crucial.
Spell it Right is aimed at students from FCE upwards. It includes a range of
activities and tests that students can use by themselves and with others. Some
students or teachers may prefer practice-oriented ways of learning, others to
grasp the underlying explanation for particular general problems.
Coverage of areas of spelling
English
spelling has many different aspects:
i) the rules for relating sounds and
letters form one area of spelling; the written letter <a> for example
corresponds to 11 different phonemes, age,
arm, about, beat, many, aisle, coat, ball, canal, beauty, cauliflower, and
so on while the spoken diphthong
/ei/ corresponds to 12 different spellings lake,
aid, foyer, gauge, stay, caf, steak, weigh, ballet, matine, sundae, they.
Students need to acquire the complex and mostly unstated rules for getting
from sounds to letters and vice versa.
ii) the memory for whole word forms
makes up another area. Frequent words such as the and idiosyncratic items such as yacht are stored as wholes in the memory rather than linked to
spelling rules. Students need to be able to recognise or produce these without
thinking about rules.
iii) orthographic rules about
letters make up a third area. The letters c
and k occur at the beginning of
words such as cut, but ck occurs at the ends of words such as back. In particular there are common problems with the rules for
consonant doubling in words such as referred
or accommodation. Students need to
have their attention drawn to some of the trickier orthographic rules.
iv) the spellings of words are also
related to the grammar of the sentence. Function words can have one two
letters I, an or by; content words must have three or more, aye, Ann or bye. Proper
names that correspond to ordinary nouns use double letters or add <e>, hog/Hogg
and green/Greene. Again practice or
explanation of these grammatical aspects of spelling can be beneficial.
The
content of Spell it Right also reflects students actual mistakes, taken from a corpus of
errors made by adult EFL students from many countries and by native speakers.
Some of the mistakes are common to both students and native speakers of
English and derive from general properties of the writing system, for example
the transposing of letters in freind
for friend. Others are specific to the speakers of particular first
languages; for instance Greek students substituting d for t in Grade
Britain and Arabic students substituting c
for q in cuickly.
Contents
The book has several inter-related
sections.
1. word tests.
A set of tests checks whether the student knows the spelling of particular
words, some individual instances such as address,
some examples of general rules such as careful.
Each test has the answers at the bottom. If the students get a word wrong,
they look up the entry for the word in the section Remember the Right Spelling.
2. word lists
a) the 100 most frequent words in
English the, of, and, a, in, to
etcmake up about 45% of the words in the British National Corpus of
English. Students who get these right are secure in a high proportion of the
English words they write. Getting any of them wrong is likely to be very
noticeable.
b) the 100 most frequent spelling
mistakes from L2 learners. Taken from the database, these represent continuing
problems for many students, such as because
(spelt as: becase, becaus, becouse,
because, bacause, begause),
beginning (beggining, etc), business
(bussiness, etc), career (carreer/carrier),
knowledge (noeledge) and study/student (studing/stydies
etc). Getting these common mistakes
right improves the students English at comparatively little cost in terms
of time.
3. Individual exercises
The main section of the book
consists of sets of exercises on particular areas of English spelling,
covering aspects of the three general areas given above, such as:
y endings when y becomes ie
before certain inflections worried,
industries
doubling of consonants, e.g. careful
versus full of care, with some
British/American differences such as travelling/traveling
endings in ate and ite, definite
The exercises are varied in nature,
usually providing the correct answers and the reasons behind them. Some
exercises go outside spelling itself to get opinions and reactions from the
students.
4. Remember the right spelling
This provides the follow-up to the
word tests. With idiosyncratic words, students are given only an example
sentence to study; with other words, students are given brief explanations and
are guided to the relevant exercise in Section 3.
5. Group exercises
This section provides activities
that can be done usefully within a group. Mostly they are traditional word
games such as Ghosts and word
puzzles such as Boggle. The
intention is that these should be done competitively within the group or by
pairs of students. They are general practice with English spelling rather than
being focussed on specific points.
6. Background
This provides background information
on topics that may be useful to particular individuals and groups such as:
i) language specific information
This lists specific points for
particular groups, namely speakers of Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Greek,
Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish and Urdu, guiding them towards the words
and exercises in the exercises seection or the Remember
the right spelling section that may be of most use to them.
ii) differences between British and American spelling
This lists the major differences in
spelling in North America and England.
iii) learner strategies
This suggests ways of learning
spelling that different students can adopt.
iv) the history of English
spelling
This provides a short historical
explanation of how the current English spelling system came into being
SAMPLES FROM THE SECTIONS
Section
1. Word Tests
This section
tests particular words that often give problems. Decide which spelling is
right, look at the answer and then follow-up any mistakes you made.
All the mistakes you see have really been made by students.
Test 1
1. He is a
very (a) careful driver.
(b) carefull
2. Hes a
(a) freind of mine
(b) friend
3. She (a)
payed the bill.
(b) paid
4. Ive
lost her (a) adres.
(b) address.
(c) addres.
5. They put on (a) theyre boots.
(b) there
(c) their
6. I dont
know (a) witch
to choose.
(b) which
(c) wich
7. She has done well in
her (a) career.
(b) carreer.
(c)
carrier.
8. He (a)
studys too hard.
(b) studyes
(c) studies
9. My (a) knoledge
is small.
(b) knowledge
(c) knoeledge
10. She was very (a) definite about it.
(b) definate
(c) difinite
(d) definete
11. His
attitude was (a) proffecional.
(b) proffessional.
(c) professional.
(d) professinal.
12. They are (a) analysing the
data.
(b) analizing
(c) analising.
Answers
First check which you got wrong. The
right answers were:
1 (a); 2 (b); 3 (b); 4 (b); 5 (c); 6 (b); 7 (a); 8 (c); 9 (b); 10 (a); 11 (c)
Now look at the Remember
the Right Spelling section on pages 000-000 and work on the words you got
wrong in test 1.
Section 3. Exercises
Y endings
Which of these English words have
unusual spelling?
salary
m
safari m city m play
m
boy
m
Monday
m
try
m
ski
m
spaghetti m
deny m
buy m
Reason: very few words in English end in the letter <i>. Usually the
final letter <y> stands for the unstressed sound // as in city and the letters <ay> and <oy> stand for the
diphthongs /a/ and //
as in play and boy; sometime
the letter <y> stands for /a/ try.
Answer: ski, safari, spaghetti
studied
m
tryed
m
played
m
copyed
m
satisfied m
defied
m
volleyed
m
prayed
m
carryed
m
stayed m
denyed
m
annoyed m
Reason: when a verb ending in a <y> with no vowel in front of it
adds a past tense ed, or a
present tense <s>, the letter <y> changes to <i>, copy > copied, try >
tried; if there is a vowel in front
of <y> there is no change play
> played
Answer: tryed,
copyed, carryed, denyed
enjoy annoy
try simplify
study
Answer: copied, denied, stayed, varied,
displayed, enjoyed, annoyed, tried,
simplified, studie
Which past
tense in each pair is spelt right?
paid
m
payed m staid m
stayed m
layed m
laid m
prayed m
praid m
sayed m said
m
decayed m
decaid m
Reason: a small group of verbs have irregular past forms with
<aid> in written English; paid,
said, laid. Be careful about these verbs; English people often make
mistakes with paid.
Answer: paid,
stayed, laid, prayed, said, decayed
Turn
these verbs into the past tense and then tick which group each verb belongs
to:A) ayed/oyed/eyed, B) ied, or C) aid
A B C
pay r r r
stay r r r
copy r r r
|
destroy r r r
study r r r
defy
modify r r r
annoy r r r
play r r r
pray r r r
say r r r
carry
betray r r r
enjoy r r r
employ r r r
destroy r r r
vary r r r
display r r r
obey r r r
Answers:
B. ied: copied, studied, defied, modified,
carried, varied, simplified
Peter
Brown say delivring jewellry when large man chase him. Try to run but man lay
into him with bat. Fell into heap of trollies. Many injurys. Not know him or
recognise him. People carry him into pub. Police say two rubys taken. Police
looking for man who carry out many robberys in area.
Answer
Peter
Brown said he was delivering some jewellery when a large man chased him. He
tried to run but the man laid into him with a bat. He fell into a heap of
trolleys. He has many injuries. He didnt know him or recognise him.
People carried him into the pub. The police said two rubies were taken. The
police are looking for the man who has carried out many robberies in the area.
Choose the right endings in these
sentences, then say if you agree with the sentence (y), disagree with it (n)
or you dont know (dk).
a.
Shakespeares tragedies/tragedys are more popular than his comedies/ comedys
Yr
Nr DKr
b.
Monkies/Monkeys are more intelligent than
donkies/donkeys.
Yr
Nr
DKr
c.
Diapers for babies/babys are called nappies/nappys
in England.
Yr
Nr
DKr
d.
Manufacturing industries/industrys are the kies/keys to modern economies/economys.
Yr
Nr
DKr
e.
Detective stories/storys are called mysteries/mysterys in the USA.
Yr
Nr
DKr
f.
Supermarket trollies/trolleys are
badly designed.
Yr
Nr
DKr
g.
Journies/journeys by air are safer
than journies/journeys by car.
Yr
Nr
DKr
h. Robberies/robberys are more
frequent in cities/citys. Yr
Nr
DKr
Reason: final <y> changes to <ie> before <s> except for words in <ey>
Answer:
c. babies, nappies: d. industries, keys, economies
e. stories, mysteries: f. trolleys: g. journeys
Section
4. Remember the Right Spelling
This section gives you some sentences to remember for particular words you get wrong and directs you to more information for more general mistakes. Only look at the words you got wrong in the tests. Try to remember the example sentence with the right spellings; some people find it helpful to write them down. If there is a particular spelling point in a word, it is given in small capital letters. The sentences are intended to be easy to remember so they do not usually mean very much; you may remember them better if you make up some sentences of your own.
Test
1 Words
1
careful
[one <l> in words that end in <ful>, two <l>s in the word full
itself; see p.000]
One careful man is worth two
full of care.
2 friend
A friend in need is a friend in the end.
3
paid
[a small group of irregular verbs in <ay> have <aid> in the past tense: see p.000]
He paid the
fine out of his pay.
4
address
[doubling; see p.000]
An address to go to is not a dress to wear.
5
there/theyre/their
[choosing the right spelling for
these sounds depends on the grammar of the sentence; see p.000]
Theyre putting their boots over there.
6
which
[the sound /t/
is sometimes spelt <tch>, sometimes <ch>; see p.000. witch
is a noun, which a function word]
Which witch is bewitching?
7
career
One R is enough for a career.
8
knowledge
[the sound /n/ is spelt as <kn>
in a small group of words: see p.000]
No knowledge, no future.
9
studies
[words ending in <Cy> usually change <y> to <ie> before <s> or <d> endings; see p.000]
A history
student studies dates.
10 definite
[adjective
endings vary between <ate> and <ite>; see p.000]
Definitely I is in definite.
11 profession
[for doubling of <f> and <s> see p.000]
One f for profession
keeps the professor happy.
12
analyse
[some Greek-derived words have <y> rather than <i>; see p.000]
Why do people need to analyse.
Section
Ghosts In the game of Ghosts you add letters together to make words. It can be played by
any number of students from pairs upwards. Ghosts
(simple) The first player thinks of a
word and writes down the first letter; the second player tries to think of a
word starting with the letter and adds another letter; the next player adds
another letter; and so on. The rule is that you must NOT finish a word. So the
player who finishes a word longer than three letters is eliminated. If you
think the word the person is building does not exist, you may challenge and
they are eliminated if they cannot give a possible word; if you are wrong and
the person has a real word in mind, you
are eliminated. Player 2 thinks t
starts travel and adds r:
tr Next player thinks of trip
and adds i:
tri Next player cannot think of a
word and challenges; he loses because trip
is a word. Ghosts
(complicated version) The rules are the same but each
player has three lives. Each time someone is wrong, they lose a life. When
they have lost three lives, they become a ghost. Ghosts cannot be seen or
heard so if a ghost makes you acknowledge them, you
lose a life. Lives can be scored on the whiteboard by having three stick
figures against each persons name and wiping out one each time a life is
lost Superghosts. In Superghosts letters can be added not only at the beginning of the
word but also at the end and, most difficult of all, in the middle of the
word. So the example might be: This is pretty difficult to
play. How many words can you find?
Try to find as many words as possible in this word-square, left-to-right,
top-to-bottom, and diagonal (left-to-right). You can do this in pairs and see
which pair gets the most. There are more than 50 words here. s
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s
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d
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p S
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B
s
a
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s
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An example:
Player 1 thinks of time and writes
first letter t on the whiteboard:
t
t > tr > ttr > uttr > utter