Improve Your Spelling in 2016

Do your New Year’s resolutions include improving your spelling? If they do – we’re here to help!

In last year’s resolutions post, we focused on breaking down the wider aim of ‘improving spelling’ into five smaller and more tangible goals. Whatever your specific spelling goals for this year are, here are some articles to help you out:

Commonly Confused Words: A Quick Reference Guide
In one of our regular features, Commonly Confused Words, we look at two or more words that people often mix up. Sometimes, these words sound exactly the same but have different spellings and meanings. This article lists many of the pairs and groups of words we’ve featured, provides links to the full articles for each pair or group, and shares tips and tricks to help you remember when to use which confusing word.
The Dirty Thirty (part one and two) and 10 Mnemonics to Help with Spelling Tricky Words
In these articles, we’ve come up with mnemonics to make sure you never misspell certain words again. The words in these lists are often spelt incorrectly, so it is likely that examiners will being watching out for mistakes when marking papers.
Eight Tips for Creating Mnemonics
Although we’ve come up with some mnemonics for commonly-misspelled words in the above posts, mnemonics tend to work better if they are personal to the user. If you find yourself getting stuck on the same words again and again, it is worth coming up with your own mnemonic to help you remember how to spell them. Use the names of people you know and places you’ve been to help trigger your memory – and the ruder a mnemonic, the better!
Using Spellzone Word Lists as Part of Your Exam Preparation
While we originally wrote this article in the run up to exam season, Spellzone word lists will help improve your spelling whenever you use them. Our word list feature is a great way to adapt Spellzone to suit your needs. While we already have a huge collection of existing word lists – in a wide array of subjects – the best way to make sure you’re practising the vocabulary most relevant to your subject is to create a list of your own. In this article, we go through how to create your own word lists. You may also be interested in this article on how to use Spellzone’s spelling tests.
Greek and Latin Word Roots
We often talk about how one of the reasons English is such a difficult language to learn is because it has roots all over the world. Once you take this into consideration, however, you can begin to look out for word patterns. Many English words come from Greek and Latin origins. In these articles we look at how word roots are a useful tool for both figuring out how to spell a word, and figuring out what it might mean.

We wish you all the best in 2016. Do let us know if there are any topics you’d like us to feature on the blog this year. Happy New Year!

04 Jan 2016
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