Improve Spelling

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Have you ever wondered why spelling bee contestants are allowed to ask to have the word defined or used in a sentence?  What spelling bee champions know is these questions reveal clues about how a word is spelled.  Children can learn how to unlock the secrets of words by knowing what these questions disclose about spelling a word. 

The Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee rules state what a contestant can ask about a word.  Here’s what each question tells the speller.

1.  Please say the word again.  There are 40 phonemes (sounds) in the English language.  In order to spell a word correctly, a speller needs to clearly hear the sounds in a particular word.  Repeating the pronunciation of the word allows the speller to hear each sound uttered in the word.  The speller is then going to decode those sounds into letter combinations representing the sounds.  This would be relatively straight forward if English had an alphabet system that had a letter for each sound or a consistent method of combining the 26 letters it does have to represent the extra 14 phonemes that are not directly represented by a letter.  Nevertheless, there are many words that are spelled exactly as they sound and hearing the word correctly pronounced enables the speller to spell these words correctly.

2.  May I have the definition, please?  English is littered with homonyms (words spelled and pronounced alike) and homophones (words pronounced alike but differing in spelling, derivation, and meaning).  Just think of the complications introduced by words like dear (meaning beloved), dear (meaning costly), and deer (meaning the four-legged animal).  By requesting a definition, the speller identifies which word must be spelled.  There is also another factor which knowing the definition may unlock.  The definition may help identify the origin of the word.  Roughly 70% of English words appeared first in another language.  Pairing this knowledge with the next allowed question can help spellers enormously.

3.  May I have the language of origin, please?  About 30% of all English words come from Latin.  Concentrating first on learning Latin roots, prefixes and suffixes gives a great deal of insight into how words are spelled.  The next most important language of origin to explore is Greek.  Many of the words used in science and philosophy come to us from Greek.  After these two huge contributors to the English language come French, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese, Turkish, Persian, and Sankrit, in rapidly declining levels of adoption.

When a word is adopted from another language, its spelling is done according to rules which allow our alphabet to represent the sounds in the other language.  The process is transliteration.  Knowing where the word came from helps the speller know which rules were used in the transliteration process.  Of course, the speller must know what those rules are, but the fact that there are rules to apply, gives the speller a better chance of spelling the word correctly.  Put that together with the definition and a speller can be pretty confident they are on the right track.  For example, knowing the word pneumonia was originally Greek and is a disease of the lungs provides the speller with important clues to the correct spelling.  Words from Greek are most likely to have the /pn/ to represent the /n/ sound in the beginning of the word.  Also the definition points to something related to air (lungs).  Now for another question.

4.  Does this word contain the Latin combining form of “ante”, meaning before?  Knowing the root word (or base word) can be very helpful in correctly spelling a larger, more complicated word.  This question also clears up any possible confusion between roots that sound similar but are spelled differently.  In this example, asking if the combining form is “ante” as opposed to “anti” will mean the difference between a correctly spelled word and a near miss. Naturally, using this method means one must learn root words.  Spellers can approach learning root words, prefixes, and suffixes in a prioritized way by remembering the contribution level of each language listed in paragraph 3 of this article.

5.  Would you please use the word in a sentence?   Hearing how a word is used in a sentence tells the speller what part of speech the word is – is it a noun, a verb, an adverb?  It also may expose whether the word is pluralized, confirms word meaning, and is an opportunity to hear the word pronounced again.  Think about the confusing word pair of than and then.  Hearing the sentence:  “Gas costs more this year than it did last year” confirms to the speller that the word needed is the conjunction than as opposed to the adverb then.

Champion spellers know how to use these questions to their advantage when trying to correctly spell a word.  Every speller can use the information revealed by these questions to spell more accurately and consistently.  Understanding how our language is encoded into letters is critical to correct spelling.

Spelling English words can be challenging.  Schools and businesses expect correct spelling.  The better your spelling skills are, the more likely you are to do well in communicating your ideas whether you write scholarly papers, articles, or advertisements.

Apply these simple strategies to improve your spelling skills.

<b>Use mnemonics. </b>  Mnemonics are rhymes or phrases which make memorization easier.  A common spelling mnemonic is “i before e, except after c or when sounded as a as in neighbor and weigh”.  You can make up your own mnemonic for any word you find difficult or for remembering other spelling rules.

<b>Say it right. </b>  Many of us get a little lazy in our everyday conversations and do not pronounce words properly.  For instance, it is fairly common to drop the “g” at the end of the “–ing” suffix.  So running becomes “runnin”.  While people will understand what you mean, if you spell the word the way you say it, you would be incorrect.  Be sure you pronounce a word correctly and you are more likely to get the spelling correct as well.

<b>Play word games. </b>  Improve your spelling skills by playing fun word games.  Word searches, hangman, crosswords, Scrabble, and other word puzzles reinforce spelling skills.  You can buy books which contain collections of word puzzles or search the internet on any of the games mentioned here.

<b>Research. </b>  There are two areas you can research which will give you excellent practice material.  Search the internet for “spelling lists”.  Download those that interest you and use them to learn how to spell new words.  The other area to search is for Latin and Greek roots, prefixes, and suffixes.  More words in the English language are based on these two languages than are based on Old English!  Learning the Latin and Greek roots and affixes (prefixes and suffixes) will increase your spelling skills tremendously.

<b>Know which word you are spelling. </b>  Many “spelling” errors are actually problems with selecting the correct word.  Homonyms are often the culprits.  Homonyms are words that are spelled differently but sound the same (homophones) or words which are spelled the same but have different meanings and different pronunciations (homographs).  One of the most commonly confused group of homonyms is their, they’re, and there.  Spend time reviewing the <a rel=”nofollow” onclick=”javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/outgoing/article_exit_link’);” href=”http://pilinutpress.com/index_files/CommonlyMisusedWords.html”>most commonly misused words</a>.  Make sure you clearly understand when to use each word and what its meaning is.

You can be a better speller.  Faithfully practice every day using one or more of the spelling strategies presented here.  You will very quickly see your spelling is improving.

Improve Spelling and Grammar Tool technology claims to challenge what sounds impossible – proofreading and fixing our grammar writing. Writing is being used daily by most of us for a wide range of assignments – finding new jobs, writing personal or business Emails, writing essays and articles etc. If writing isn’t your strongest skill, but you still need help on improving it – read the following article.

Overview

Improve Spelling and Grammar Tool is actually a ‘virtual assistant’ that helps you to quickly identify and correct any writing problems while you type your digital text. Smart proofreading and grammar correction solutions rely on sophisticated engines and dynamic databases. They process your writing, compare it, and finally fix it. If we research these nlp (natural language processing) programs we will notice that most of them provide the following: proofreading content for correct grammar, punctuation and spelling.

Quick advantages

Finally, we need the bottom line, let’s see what benefits we get:

Helping us to avoid embarrassing grammar mistakes.
Improving our word choices with synonyms, adjectives, and adverbs suited to our text.
Improving our business communication with business partners and customers.

Looking closer on this technology, we could easily find other advantages that aren’t mentioned here, as this innovative technology keeps changing, bringing us fresh ideas and additional solutions that help us on improving our Writing abilities.

Conclusion

Improve Spelling and Grammar Tool is a great solution that assists both professional writers and average users write better and fluent English. Language processing technology is complex – that explains why there are very few solutions available today. Undoubtedly we can expect this innovative technology to further develop itself, for one simple reason: writing is among the most significant tools that help us fulfill our daily assignments.