how to spell: ESL Spelling Strategies

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8 spelling strategies for ESL students and native speakers.

1. Strategy 1 is see a word within a word
believe is a tricky spelling with the ie or ei pattern.

Can you see the word in believe that means to not tell the truth?
The word within believe is lie, so use this in a sentence to remember it "Never believe a lie"

"young" has the tricky 'ou' pattern. Can you see a word in young?

There's 'you' in young. We have a sentence to remember it - "You are so young".

You can relate memory tricks and words within words to your language. Use anything to help you remember tricky spelling
Use pictures, photos, drawings. Write sentences.

2. Strategy 2 is use sayings to help with tricky letters.
Native speakers find necessary hard to remember, especially how many c's and s's there are. So we use a saying to help: "It's necessary to cut some services." This helps us remember there is 1 x c and 2 x s's.

We can also use another saying: "It's necessary to have 1 collar and 2 sleeves."

3. Strategy 3 is noticing how words are built with root words, prefixes and suffixes.
This is a very important strategy, especially if your language doesn't build words this way.

uncomfortable = not comfortable = un + comfort + able, irregularly = ir + regular + ly,

unhappily = un + happy (using our knowlege of spelling rules we change the 'y' to 'i') + ly

4. Strategy 4 is know common spelling rules and exceptions
Knowing spelling rules is great to help you figure out why spelling is the way it is. For example,

We add 'es' to words ending in x, ch, sh, s, z to make plurals and third person verbs: box - boxes, mess - messes, he teaches.
We have the 'y' to 'i' rule when adding some suffixes: happy - happiness, happily; crazy - crazily, craziness.
We drop the 'e' with -ing: write - writing, have - having, believe - believing.

5. Strategy 5 is see letter patterns
Letter patterns are a reliable way to learn spellings.

-ight- light, bright, tight, might, flight, fight, uptight, lighter, sightseeing...
-tch- match, hutch, butch, notch, catch, watch...
pl- play, plan, plastic, plenty, plain, plonk...
spr- spring, sprung, spritz, sprat, spray, sprinkle...

Good spellers know letter patterns and use them to help recall spellings or guess the spelling. Knowing common letter patterns is a fantastic strategy to help you improve your spelling and
to spell well. So make a letter pattern dictionary.

The -ight- words are some of the most common words in English and tricky to spell.
-ight- light, bright, delight, fight, flight, night, might, right, tight, eyesight, sightseeing...

Write sentences to help remember the patterns: It's good to have a bright light at night or your
eyesight might not be right.
My friend took a flight to New York and went sightseeing and was delighted to see the bright lights.

6. Strategy 6 is know word families that are linked by meaning and pattern.
This is a very interesting strategy and can help spelling by helping you love words and taking in interest in them.

-ject- (from Latin- throw) reject, rejection, projection, projectile, dejection, objection, adjective, injection...
terr- (from Latin terra for earth, land, ground) terrain, territory, subterranean, Mediterranean, extraterrestrial, terrier (a dog that digs in the earth!)
-rupt (from Latin for broken) rupture, interrupt, disruption, eruption, bankrupt, corrupt, abrupt...

7. Strategy 7 is use syllable breakdown
We can break words into little spoken chunks with a vowel sound to help spell long words: Wed/nes/day,
un/com/for/table, ex/tra/va/gant. Or break them into words - un/comfort/able, extra/va/gant.

8. Strategy 8 is know the history of words and spelling.

Knowing why words are spelt the way they are helps you stop getting frustrated with spelling. For example, most silent letters used to be pronounced, but are left in the spelling because the
pronunciation changed and the spelling remained fixed. This is the trouble with a lot of English spelling - pronunciation is always changing but spelling is left as it is. And that's why
we have so many "strange" spellings, and silent letters!

What are the silent letters in knee, knock, sword, answer?

Silent 'k' in knee, knock. Silent 'w' in answer and sword. The silent letters all used to be pronounced! So most spelling shows the history of how words used to be said/pronounced centuries ago. They are the ghosts of past pronunciations, showing us a once spoken letter but now they're there to show us the history and origins of words.

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Thanks for reading this, and your support
Kind regards
Joanne