Spelling

Spelling is one of the most important aspects of written English to master. Without good spelling, a text can instantly lose credibility. Although there will be no specific questions related to spelling in the exam, you will be assessed on this throughout, so it is a good section of English to devote some of your time to.

General Rules

 Below are some general rules that you can follow to help improve your spelling (beware that there are certain exceptions to every rule):

• ‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’: you may remember hearing this rule throughout school. Although this rule is applicable to many words (‘believe’, ‘receive’, ‘field’, ‘piece’, ‘perceive’ etc.), it is not applicable to all words so you must use your judgement when you are unsure of how to spell these words. Here are a few examples of the words that do not follow this rule: ‘ancient’, ‘feign’, ‘vein’, ‘neighbour’. A tip to know is listening to the sound the two letters make together; if it is a long ‘a’ sound (like the pronunciation you use for the letter ‘A’ when reciting the alphabet) then the chances are that it is spelt ‘ei’ even if it is not after ‘c’. A few examples of these are: ‘sleigh’, ‘weigh’, ‘neighbour’, ‘beige’.
• Changing ‘y’ to ‘ies’: this is a rule concerning plurality and it is commonly misunderstood by students. This rule is if a word ends in a consonant before the ‘y’ then you change the ending to ‘ies’ to make it plural. For example: ‘activity’ changes to ‘activities’; ‘baby’ to ‘babies’. However, if the ‘y’ in a word is preceded by a vowel then we just add an ‘s’ to change a word to its plural form: ‘key’ to ‘keys’; ‘trolley’ to ‘trolleys’.
• Adding ‘es’ to pluralise words ending in either ‘s’, ‘ss’, ‘z’, ‘ch’, ‘sh’, ‘x’: here are a few examples: ‘lens’ to ‘lenses’; ‘business’ to ‘businesses’; ‘fizz’ to ‘fizzes’; ‘scratch’ to ‘scratches’; ‘crash’ to ‘crashes’; ‘box’ to ‘boxes’.
• Dropping the silent ‘e’ when changing word endings: when we are required to change the form of a word that has a silent ‘e’ then we drop it and replace it with the appropriate ending. Some examples are: ‘write’ to ‘writing’; ‘cope’ to ‘coping’; ‘breathe’ to ‘breathable’; ‘joke’ to ‘joking’; ‘disperse’ to ‘dispersible’; ‘opposite’ to ‘opposition’. However, if the words end in either ‘ce’ or ‘ge’ and we are adding the endings ‘ous’ or ‘able’, then we do not drop the silent ‘e’. For example: ‘courage’ to ‘courageous’; ‘acknowledge’ to ‘acknowledgeable’. Although this rule is applicable to the majority of words in the English language, it is not applicable to all of them so be careful about making judgements.
• Words ending in ‘ful’: ‘beautiful’, ‘mindful’, ‘careful’, ‘useful’. Many students spell words like these with two ‘L’s’ on the end. Remember that there is always only one ‘L’ at the end of words that end in ‘ful’.
• Adding ‘ly’: when we take a word ending in ‘ful’ or an ‘e’ and need to add an ‘ly’ they appear like this: ‘definite’ to ‘definitely’; ‘love’ to ‘lovely’, ‘mindful’ to ‘mindfully’, ‘skilful’ to ‘skilfully’. Again, this is not applicable for all words, for example: ‘idle’ loses its ‘e’ and becomes ‘idly’; ‘true’ also loses its ‘e’ and becomes ‘truly’.
• Adding ‘all’: when we need to add ‘all’ to the beginning of words we drop one of the ‘L’s’, for example: ‘so’ to ‘also’; ‘ready’ to ‘already’; ‘ways’ to ‘always’; ‘together’ to ‘altogether’.

Need to improve your spelling?

A useful tip for improving your spelling is to try and read a wide variety of texts. This could be a chapter of a book or article once an evening before you go to sleep. Regular reading of a wide range of texts will allow you to process correct spellings much more easily as you become familiar with more words. However, reading is not for everyone and if this is the case then having subtitles on whilst you are watching television can also help to improve your general spelling.

Another useful tip to improve your spelling and even extend your vocabulary is opening a dictionary once a day at random and learning one word from the page you have chosen – do not put it down until you can recite the spelling of the word and its definition by heart – this should take no more than 5 minutes of your time so it is perfect if you are someone who has a busy schedule. This will become useful in the exam because if you use any of these words then you will show the examiner that you have a wide range of vocabulary which will gain you more marks.

You are marked on your spelling throughout the exam and so it is important that you can spell correctly. Be sure to keep a list of any words that you are aware you misspell. Devote some time to looking these words up in a dictionary, reciting their spelling out loud to yourself and writing them down whenever you can.