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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