Latest blog posts

National Clean Off Your Desk Day: Top Tips for Creating a Productive Workspace

Have you ever thought about how the space you work in might affect your productivity? While some people thrive in chaos, others find mess or clutter distracting. Tidying can sometimes become a form of procrastination. The second Monday of January marks National Clean Off Your Desk Day in America and this year it falls on January 14th. Wherever in the world you live, here are our three top tips for making sure your workspace is utilised for productivity! Work in the Same Space Every Day While we don't expect you to add an extra study room to your home, you might find it productive to work in the same place every day. Whether that's at a desk, at the dining table, or on the ...

500 and counting

Hutton Grammar School in Preston, UK recently became our 500th Twitter follower and to celebrate we gave the school a free one year subscription to Spellzone. Mrs C Gore, Assistant Subject Leader for English and Literacy Coordinator said: "We are absolutely delighted to have been gifted this subscription. This is a wonderful chance for students of all abilities to gain some extra support with the spelling - something that is now ever more important throughout both Key Stage 3 and GCSE levels." "We are looking forward to giving our students the opportunity to use Spellzone both in school and at home and we know that parents will be impressed with the resource just as m...

Idioms about the Five Senses

The term ‘five senses’ is used to refer to the faculties of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. Today we’re going to take a look at five idioms about each of the five senses and tell you what they mean. Sight: In the blink of an eye - in an instant Out of sight, out of mind – an expression used to suggest that one is likely to forget someone/something when they are/it is no longer present/visible The apple of someone’s eye – a person whom someone admires very much To see things eye to eye – to agree on things To turn a blind eye – to pretend not to notice Smell: To follow your nose – to follow your insti...

Twenty Idioms about Nature

Last Friday was the first day of spring. All over the country, leaves are turning green, blossom is blooming, and flowers are pushing their way up out of the ground – it’s no wonder nature has inspired many an English expression! Here are twenty idioms about plants, flowers, and trees: “Oops-a-daisy!” – an expression of encouragement said to a child who has fallen/has hurt him or herself, an expression of mild annoyance used when something has gone wrong a late bloomer – someone who is slower than their peers to develop in a particular field a needle in a haystack – something that is difficult/impossible to find because...

400 followers and counting...

English teacher Mrs. V. Mahmoud from the Eaton Bank Academy in Cheshire, UK recently became the 400th person to follow Spellzone on Twitter. To celebrate this milestone Mrs. Mahmoud was contacted by Spellzone and offered a free subscription to the online English spelling course for her school. For the next twelve months up to 1000 students at Eaton Bank will be able to practice their own word lists and brush up on all the English spelling rules in school, at home and on their mobile devices. Mrs. Mahmoud said "This is a fantastic opportunity for our students! I'm sure this will be invaluable in helping them to improve their spellings and therefore improve the quality of their ...

Three Commonly Confused In- Words: Infamous, Invaluable, and Inflammable

Often, when a word starts with in-, we can assume that it means the opposite of the same word without the in-. ‘Invisible’, for example, means ‘not visible’, or ‘intolerant’ means ‘not tolerant’. This is because one of the translations of the Latin prefix in- is ‘not’. Today, we’re going to look at three exceptions to this rule. Scroll down to make sure you’re using the following in- words correctly! Famous vs. Infamous If someone isn’t famous, it doesn’t mean that they’re infamous. Let’s take a look at the Spellzone dictionary definitions of each word: Famous: widely know...

10 Common Mistakes

We’ve shared some of these tips on Facebook and Twitter over the last few months, but we thought it would be useful to round up these easy-to-avoid mistakes for those of you who don’t use social media. YOUR vs. YOU'RE. Can the word you want to use be replaced with 'you are'? If so, use 'you're'. ITS vs. IT'S. Can the word you want to use be replaced with 'it is'? If so, use 'it's'. WHOSE vs. WHO’S Can the word you want to use be replaced with ‘who is’? If so, use ‘who’s’. THERE vs. THEIR vs. THEY’RE There = a place. Their = a person. T...

Thirty Sports Idioms to Help You Through the Summer

With everyone’s attention on Wimbledon and the World Cup at the moment, it’s hard to leave home without sports coming up in conversation. But do we actually talk about sports more than we realise? Today – just in case you’re not sick of sports quite yet – we’re sharing some sports-related idioms alongside their definitions. across the board – applying to all at this stage of the game – at this point during the activity/event ball is in your court - it is up to you to make the next move ballpark figure – an approximate guess blow-by-blow – detailed step-by-step description ...

Word for Wednesday: The falsely true tale of Oxymora

Oxymora or oxymorons are words or phrases in which two or more seemingly contradictory terms are used together. An often given example of an oxymoron is ‘And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true’. Whilst most oxymorons seem nonsensical, they can actually be useful in descriptions and lend themselves to poetry and creative language to great effect. Here are some of the bizarre oxymorons used in our language, which somehow manage to make sense: Old news Beyond Infinity Free credit Antimissile missile Loud whisper A nice mess (often misquoted as ‘Another fine mess’) Silent noise Dark light Love hate Ice burn Sweet sorrow (Shakespeare) ...

Commonly Confused Words: Accept vs. Except

Happy New Year, everyone! To help those of you with spelling-related New Year’s resolutions, we’re going to start the year with a series of posts on commonly confused words. Here at Spellzone we believe that looking at the origins of a word can be really beneficial when trying to get your head around its spelling and meaning – and today we’ll start by taking a look at the words ‘accept’ and ‘except’. Make sure you check out our blog archive for previous posts on other commonly confused words. What does each word mean? The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines the word ‘accept’ as: ‘consent to receive or undertake (s...

10 Mnemonics to Help with Spelling Tricky Words

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 ...

Word for Wednesday: Dyslexia

As many of you are already aware, this week is the British Dyslexia Association’s annual Dyslexia Awareness Week (14th-20th October). This week is about raising awareness of dyslexia as a very real and complex disability and something that can potentially affect much more than a person’s ability to read and write. The British Dyslexia Association highlights that dyslexics can also face problems with organization, memorization and mathematics but also reminds us of the strengths that dyslexia can bring. One of these positive traits, common among dyslexics I’ve met is creativity and imagination – a quick browse of the #DyslexiaAwarenessWeek hashtags on Twitter ...

Ways to Tackle Tricky Spellings: A Recap

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 ...