You can spend all the time in the world memorizing how to pronounce and use vocabulary words in context, but if you don’t know how to spell them correctly, you’re only getting half the value of each word. Anything that you write for the purpose of communicating with other people – whether it’s a personal letter, a professional document, or an academic essay – loses much of its impact if it contains spelling errors. Spelling practice should be part of your routine when you’re learning a new vocabulary word, or reviewing an old one. Here are some other ideas for improving your spelling skills:
Participate in a spelling bee. The Scripps National Spelling Bee has been held each year since 1941 and has become so popular that it’s broadcast as if it’s a sporting event on cable television in the United States. Several movies have even been made about the event: Spellbound (documentary) and Akeelah and the Bee (drama) . In a spelling bee, contestants listen to a word spoken by a referee, and then spell that word out loud. This is particularly good practice for words whose spelling and pronunciation are not easy to remember, due to odd vowel clusters or silent consonants. Check your local community calendar and find a spelling bee to watch or participate in – you’ll have a lot of fun.
Play a word game. The games Scrabble and Boggle are very useful spelling practice tools. You can play on-line Scrabble or traditional board-based Scrabble, and learn new words while learning how to spell them. Boggle is a fun game in which you have to make as many words as possible out of an assortment of letters displayed on a set of dice, in a given amount of time. It’s a good way to practice quick identification of words and letter groupings.
Take a spelling test. You can get books from the library, used-book stores, or university bookstores that have spelling tests included in them (check the English section, or the section devoted to SAT/GRE practice) and use them to improve your skills. You can also find on-line tests on many sites, geared towards any level from elementary school to university. Do a Google search for “spelling test” or “spelling quiz” and you’ll have hundreds to choose from.
Practice makes perfect!
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I agree that playing with words is useful, partly because that way we can ‘make friends’ with them and it may foster more relaxed associations with spelling. However, tests are only good if you are already a good speller – otherwise they are just confirmation that you can’t spell well. Personally I think there is too much emphasis on testing spelling not enough on teaching it. To improve spelling people need to learn strategies and predictable patterns of letter strings. A little knowledge of etymology is a very useful thing too.
Johanna