4 Painless Tips to Improve Your English Spelling

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hi everybody my name is Alisha in this

lesson I’m going to introduce some

spelling tips these are a few tips that

I hope can help you to improve your

spelling I prepared these tips with

English in mind but I think some of

these tips could work for other

languages that you’re studying too so

let’s get started okay

the first tip and the most important tip

for improving your spelling is to read

reading is really really important

because you can actually see the words

on the page so especially in English

there are many words that are pronounced

differently from the way they are

spelled reading can help you familiarize

yourself can help you better understand

the correct way to spell a word not just

listening to the word but actually

looking at the word so reading is very

important when you read however there’s

one thing that’s good to keep in mind

there’s one thing that’s good to think

about so choose books or newspapers or

magazines for reading but what you

should do is make sure you read and

listen to things as well I’ll talk about

this read things that have been edited

edited means someone checked the text to

make sure there are no errors there are

no mistakes so make sure that you are

reading things that have been checked a

lot of native speakers especially on

like social media such as Facebook or

Twitter or Instagram they will post

messages sure but they’re not checked

like the English is not properly checked

or they’re using very informal English

so when you read and when you’re

practicing your spelling paying

attention to the words when reading make

sure you’re choosing things that have

been edited so that you can be sure

you’re reading proper English sometimes

when we’re speaking casually or writing

casually we don’t think very much about

our grammar or our spelling so please

make sure to use materials that have

edited for your spelling studies I

mentioned also listening if you like

another thing you can do as you read is

choose a book that has an audio version

so that means as you read the book you

can listen to the pronunciation at the

same time of course if you’re busy too

you can just listen to the audio and

learn the story but if you want to

practice your pronunciation and

listening skills in addition to your

spelling and reading skills you can

consider trying an audio book so you

read along and listen at the same time

so this could be another interesting way

to practice a few skills at the same

time but this is the most important tip

for this lesson is to read read read

lots and this is something you can do

every day as well if you find an online

magazine or a newspaper or something

similar that you enjoy you could read it

on your way to work for example or maybe

during lunch for example just a few

minutes here and there each day to

practice your reading skills and to

boost your spelling skills okay let’s

move along to the next tip the next tip

here is to play word games or to do word

puzzles we have a lot of these in

English I’ve given a couple examples

here so word games and word puzzles are

similar

I’ll introduce first what’s called a

crossword puzzle so this is what a

crossword puzzle looks like a blank

crossword puzzle this is a brand new one

a simple one I made is made from boxes

the boxes go from left to right and from

top to bottom when you play a crossword

puzzle or when you try to complete a

crossword puzzle your job is to read

Clues that are next to the puzzle each

clue matches with a row or a column of

boxes so your job is to find the word

that matches this clue and you have to

spell the word correctly to put the

letters into the boxes so I prepared a

very simple one here so I’ve numbered

these as one two and three going down so

here I have hints one two and three

again this is very simple usually

crossword puzzles are very

and they have lots of clues but just to

show you how a crossword puzzle works

the first clue here number one this says

a yellow fruit a yellow fruit so a

yellow fruit is a lemon so we place each

letter in the box l e mo n

or we can have a pretty good guess at

least that the spelling is correct

because it fits in the box then we look

at the next clue number two down here

number two oh sorry

I made a mistake number two should

actually be here number two is I

accessories I accessories so an

accessory is a small piece of clothing

or like jewelry for example in this case

it’s for your eyes so I accessories

that’s glasses so we write glasses with

one letter in each box

glasses and it fits here it also fits

with the L from lemon from our first

clue

so glasses is here finally the last clue

down here the clue is something that

costs no money something that costs no

money so a word we can use to describe

this is free free2play or job is to fit

the different vocabulary words together

like I said this is simple but there are

lots more challenging ones out there if

you’re interested in crossword puzzles

you can do a quick google search and you

can find beginner crossword puzzles more

difficult ones and there are some

extremely challenging ones that you need

to know a lot about like history or

science or pop culture to find the

answers but this is a really fun way to

improve your spelling because you have

to make sure to have the spelling right

in order to finish the puzzle you can do

this alone or with friends it’s fun

another thing you can play word games

word games so this is kind of a more

general thing I’ve listed a couple

examples of word games there’s one very

popular and very well known word game

called Scrabble it looks similar to a

crossword puzzle but the difference is

there are no clues

there are no hints you play with a group

of people and each person has to make

words from the letters so imagine you

have a lot of little single letters and

your job is to create words from those

letters you put the words on the board

and your friends make new words from the

words that you choose so this is a fun

way to practice spelling and to kind of

think about other things that you can do

with the letters that you have so this

is kind of a fun way to practice

spelling I think if however it’s

difficult for you to get this game or to

play this game you could try this game

words with friends this is a free

application so if you have a smartphone

you can find this online it’s called

words with friends

it’s basically Scrabble but it’s online

and it’s free so you can find a partner

somewhere in the world you don’t have to

talk to that person but you can play

this game

building words from the words your

partner makes and so on and you try to

compete you try to get the top scorer in

the game to win so if you want to

practice word games you can try these

there are other word games as well if

you do a quick Google search you can

find some other examples of word games

but these are quite popular okay finally

there is a spelling contest I included

spelling contests here because this is

something that we do in the USA at least

we have a spelling contest for kids

that’s called the Spelling Bee so you

might have something similar in your

country or you might be interested in

participating in the spelling bee if you

are a young person in the USA so with

spelling contest each contestant has to

spell a word correctly however the

person has to rely on his or her

knowledge of words so that means maybe

the root of the word the words history

like where did the word originally come

from how the word is used in a sentence

the part of speech and so on so this

could be an interesting way to practice

your spelling and to practice the

history of words so spelling contest can

be fun of course if you don’t have an

official spelling contest you could just

create a spelling contest with your

group of friends

okay let’s move along to the next tip

the next tip I have here is to memorize

some basic rules some basic spelling

rules so I’ve included a few examples of

just basic rules here for example words

that end in a tion sound we often use

this TI o n spelling to spell that sound

tion another example is words that end

in gh like enough or rough so this is an

example where the spelling is different

from the way it sounds you might think

we should use an F to spell this word

but enough actually ends with a gh there

are words that end in able or the

similar ible like possible for example

or capable so remembering these kinds of

word endings can help you because

they’re very very commonly used and if

you understand how to spell the word

roughly like this you at least have this

sort of rule in your mind it can help

you when you’re reading and when you’re

trying to spell the word however there

are some cases where you need to

remember that the rules are not perfect

so I marked it rules here because it’s

not like 100% a rule so a great example

is this really common expression I

learned this in school but this is

actually not 100% true it’s helpful

sometimes this rule is I before E except

after C this is a very common spelling

rule which means we should always put I

first I before E however when you’re

spelling a word and C is in the word we

should not follow this rule that’s what

this means so it’s kind of helpful in

some cases but there are some situations

where this rule is not effective it

doesn’t work so examples where it is

okay here receipt so here we have a C

and the e comes first the AI comes

second which is the opposite here that’s

correct

in this word fried it’s correct there’s

no C so the AI is

before II ie D we see the same thing in

this word here cried as well so in these

examples it’s correct however here are a

few examples where this rule is not

correct

like weird the e comes first the eye

comes second in this word weird means

strange another example the word height

referring to how tall something is the e

is first the eye is second here the word

science there’s a see here but the eye

still comes before the e so remember if

you hear a rule like this or some kind

of you know expression to help you with

your spelling try to remember that it’s

not always a perfect rule they’re very

helpful sometimes but you need to

consider that there are some exceptions

some things that don’t quite fit the

rule okay let’s go on to the next

spelling tip the next spelling tip is to

watch English media with subtitles to

watch English media with subtitles means

like movies TV YouTube videos as well so

read and listen to the pronunciation at

the same time so the words appear at the

bottom of the screen in English that

means not necessarily watching in your

native language but you’re listening to

the person speaking in English and

you’re reading the subtitles in English

so you can find a new word perhaps that

way or you can better understand the

spelling that way too so this can be a

fun tip if you know a movie very well

for example you’ve seen many times you

might try to watch it with English

subtitles to pick up some new things

that you never noticed in the movie

before so this is another fun thing you

can do and you can enjoy media while you

study okay so those are a few spelling

tips remember the most important thing

to do here is read read I really

recommend reading it’s fun too

but those are just a few things that you

can do to hopefully improve your

spelling if there’s something else that

you like to do that you think has helped

you to be a better speller please let us

know in the comment section of this

video if you have questions or comments

or just want to share something as well

please feel free to write it in the

comments

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much for watching this lesson and we

will see you again soon bye

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