An important part of learning new vocabulary words is learning how to spell those words correctly. Naturally, correct spelling is extremely important if you’re communicating in writing, whether that’s via a Powerpoint presentation, a departmental memorandum, a quick e-mail, or a formal report to a committee. No matter how extensive and appropriate your vocabulary is, if you make mistakes in spelling, it gives your readers a negative impression of your abilities and your knowledge of the topic. However, spelling is important even if you don’t rely on written documents. In general, knowing how a word is spelled will help you remember how it’s pronounced – although as we’ve discussed before, English is unfortunately full of words that go against a common-sense pronunciation guide. But more importantly, learning the correct spelling of a word will help you learn a word more quickly.

Our eyes are trained to recognize patterns and to put pieces of things together to form a coherent whole. By focusing on how a word is spelled, you train your eye to pick up on and remember the pattern of letters that form that word. When you look at the etymology of the word, you’ll find that the smaller segments within the word (the roots and prefixes and suffixes) will also fix themselves in your memory, and help you recall the word’s form as well as its meaning. All of these aspects of learning will combine to give you a more solid understanding of the word and its definition, as well as how to spell it.

Muscle memory can also help you quickly learn how to spell a word, as students of the Japanese language know. In Japanese, words are formed primarily from combinations of characters called kanji, and each of these characters is composed of between one and twenty-four strokes, or lines, which must be placed precisely in order for the character to be read correctly. To guide the learning process, students are instructed to make the lines in the same sequence every time. For example, the character kuchi, meaning “mouth,” is a simple square that is formed by first making a vertical line on the left, then a single stroke that creates the horizontal line on the top and the vertical line on the right, and finally a stroke to create the horizontal line on the bottom of the square. Naturally, you can make a square by drawing the lines in any order you want, but when you use the same motions to make this character every single time, it’s soon completely automatic. The “spelling” of the kanji has moved from your conscious brain into your unconscious, assisted by muscle memory.

The same technique goes for English spelling. Practice each word you’re studying by writing it out at least ten times, and you’ll integrate your muscle memory with your active study, helping your retain and remember the word and its proper spelling.