Spelling tests can be a bit nerve-wracking, but with the right preparation, you can face them with confidence. Whether you're a student gearing up for a school test or someone looking to improve your spelling skills, having a solid study plan can make all the difference. In this blog post, we’ll walk you through some effective strategies to help you prepare for a spelling test and achieve the results you want. 1. Start Early One of the best ways to ensure success on a spelling test is to start studying early. Beginning the night before might help with short-term memorisation, but it won’t allow you to really learn and retain the words. Set a Schedule: As s...
In the world of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), precision is paramount. Whether you're a student, researcher, or enthusiast, mastering the spelling of scientific terms is essential for effective communication and comprehension. Join us as we explore spelling in STEM and discover strategies for tackling complex scientific words with confidence. Understanding Scientific Terminology: Scientific terminology may seem like a labyrinth of letters and symbols, but fear not! Many scientific words derive from Latin or Greek roots, which provide clues to their pronunciation and spelling. By breaking down these words into their constituent parts, you can unlock their ...
Learning English spelling might feel a bit like navigating a maze, especially when getting ready for a spelling bee. Whether you're a student gearing up for your school spelling bee or dreaming of taking part in a bigger competition, we're here to help. In this easy-to-follow guide, we'll share practical strategies, helpful tips, and interactive spelling lists to make sure you're well-prepared for the challenge. Understanding the Basics: What is a Spelling Bee? Let's start with the basics. A spelling bee is a competition where participants are asked to spell a broad selection of words, ranging from everyday vocabulary to more challenging terms. The goal is to test n...
What does each word mean? Meat refers to the flesh of animals (including fishes and birds and snails) when it is consumed as food. The word is also sometimes used figuratively to describe: a) the inner and usually edible part of a seed, grain, nut, or fruit, b) the most essential or most vital part of an idea or experience. Here is meat used in an example sentence: We are cooking meat and vegetables on the BBQ. Which meat do you prefer: chicken or pork? Extract the meat from the pumpkin before you carve it. Let’s get into the meat of this discussion. The verb meet describes the act of coming together. The word is also use...
Expose yourself to as many new words as possible If you want to expand your vocabulary, it is important to actively expose yourself to unfamiliar words. One way of doing this is by reading as much as possible. As long as you focus on building your vocabulary, you don’t necessarily have to read books. From food packets, to road signs, to Buzzfeed, we each read a huge variety of words as we go about our day to day lives. We also expose ourselves to words by watching television and online videos, by listening to the radio or podcasts, and in conversations. Try to be conscious of the information you are processing. When you come across a new word, see if you can work out its mea...
English is a tricky language to learn and one of the things that makes it so difficult is that it’s full of words that sound the same but have different meanings or spellings. These words are called homophones. In the past, we’ve looked at many pairs and groups of homophones in our Commonly Confused Words series. This week we’re sharing tips for handling homophones – scroll down to make sure you never mix up your meanings again! Use homophones in the same sentence to show their different meanings. For example: Although we had a ball dancing the night away at the summer ball, we were so tired the next day we had to miss our football practi...
Will 2017 be the year you start working on your spelling and grammar? We hope so! Here are seventeen spelling and grammar goals for 2017: Take the Spellzone Spelling Ability Test New year, new start. Use our test to find out the best point for you to start the Spellzone course from. Find out more about how the test works here. Complete at least one Spellzone unit a week If you’re feeling enthusiastic, set your target number of units per week even higher. Begin a spelling log Create a log of the words you find difficult and learn as much as possible about them. If you know, for example, the word you are trying to spell is a loanword, you can assume it might not follow...
Can you believe 2015 is almost over? This year we attended our first awards ceremony, launched a Starter Course, curated a collection of curriculum-based word lists, began offering free online demos, and, of course, shared a variety of tips, tricks, and interesting facts over on the blog. Here are some of our favourite blog posts from over the year: This year we continued looking at pairs and groups of words which are easy to mix up, and we shared tips and tricks to help you remember when to use which word. We looked at: lie vs. lay, a vs. an, stationary vs. stationery, prescribe vs. proscribe, quiet vs. quite, ensure vs. insure, may vs. might, can vs. may, and borrow vs.lend. We al...
Last week we looked at the difference between may and might. Another word people often worry about confusing with may is can. Read on to find out when to use which word. What does each word mean? Can means ‘to be able to’. In a question, can might be used to ask about a capability, to ask someone to do something, or to ask for permission. Its past tense form is could. Here is can used in some example questions: Can his brother speak French too? (asks about capability) Can you pass the salt? (requests someone to do something) Can I go to the toilet? (asks for permission) As we explained last week, may is used to express possibi...
Do you struggle with spelling? You’re not alone. Since poor spelling can lead to a whole host of problems, and because your teacher can only do so much, we’re sharing five top tips to help you get your spelling under control. Let’s make this school year the one for getting that spelling under control! Don’t try and learn spellings blindly It might seem obvious, but if you come across a word and you don’t know what it means, look it up! You can find the Spellzone dictionary on the right-hand side of your screen. Knowing a little bit about a word can go a long way when it comes to working out how to spell it later. For example, if you know the wor...
Over the years we’ve shared many tips on the blog, and with exam season coming up, we thought it would be useful to compile a list of posts to help you get your spelling and grammar into shape. Don’t let easy-to-fix mistakes lose you marks! Have a great week! Mnemonics 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 them when marking papers. The Dirty Thirty: part one and part two 10 Mnemonics to Help with Spelling Tricky Words Commonly Confused Words These arti...
Over the last couple of years we’ve shared plenty of tips and tricks to help make spelling and grammar easier. For those of you who are new to our site, here are five of our favourite posts from the archives: Five Tips for Teaching Spelling Our Five Tips for Teaching Spelling post is useful for teachers, but students and independent learners might find it well worth a read too. Remember that if you find spelling difficult, you are not alone! Connect with us using #Spellzone2015 to share your struggles and achievements. Other related posts you might be interested in are Five Reasons Why English Spelling is so Difficult and Five Reasons Why It’s Worth Learning to Spel...
Last week we wrote about The Dirty Thirty – a list of words that are often misspelled, even by people who consider themselves to be good at spelling! These words often aren’t pronounced phonetically, or fall among the exceptions to common spelling rules – in short, they’re sneaky. We thought it’d be useful to come up with a list of tips and tricks to help you remember how to spell each word in the list. Click here for part one of our advice on dealing with The Dirty Thirty, and read on for part two! minute ‘Minute’ has the word ‘nut’ in the middle of it. necessary Try using one of these mnemonics to help you rem...
Hello everyone! Are you ready for 2014? For us at Spellzone it feels like December has whizzed by – here’s a round-up of this month’s posts: I started off December by sharing ten mnemonics for remembering how to spell tricky words. Do you always forget how to spell ‘rhythm’, or ‘laugh’, or ‘separate’? This post’s for you! This month, I found myself looking into the origins of the famous magical spells: Open Sesame, Hocus Pocus, and Abracadabra. If you’re into magic, click here for our article on grottos, caverns, killing curses. And if you enjoy this post, you may also be interested in our previous article on made-up wor...
For the last month or so I’ve been sharing my favourite spelling mnemonics over on Twitter. Today, especially for those of you who don’t use Twitter, I’ve decided to round up some of them to share with you all. The thing I struggle with most when it comes to spelling the word ‘necessary’ is keeping track of how many Cs and how many Ss the word has. To combat this (and I’m about to betray how English I am!), I think of how necessary a cup of tea is in ensuring I have a good day – and once I’ve got the image tea in my mind, I think the following: “The word 'ne[c]e[ss]ary' is spelt using one [c]up and two [s]ugars”. Some ...
Over the last few weeks we’ve been sharing different methods which we hope will help make learning to spell a little easier and a bit more fun. Here is a recap of our posts – which ones did you find most helpful? In our blog post about why English spelling is so difficult, we discussed heterographs, homonyms, and heteronyms. These groups of words make it difficult to solely rely on the ‘sound’ of a word in order to figure out its spelling. The word heterograph refers to words that sound the same, but have different spellings and meanings. Hetero- comes from the Greek heteros which means ‘other’ or ‘different’, whilst -graph comes ...
Make sure your student knows that they are not alone. Finding spelling difficult to get to grips with does not mean that someone is stupid. In fact, some of the world’s cleverest people have struggled with English spelling. Why not organise a research project on successful people and what they have accomplished despite finding spelling hard? Your students might be surprised at how many there are and the variety of fields that they have excelled in. Recommend that your student starts a SPELLING LOG. Whilst your student is certainly not alone in finding spelling difficult, it is important to remember that not everyone will find the same words hard. Students should cre...
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Commonly Confused Words
English Idioms Explained
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Mindful Spelling
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