Fri + day --> Friday Fri + end --> friend Fri (e) nd --> friend Friend is one the most frequently misspelled words: misspelled by both children and adults alike. Why is that? Why do children have difficulty learning the correct spelling of a word they know so well and use so often both in... Continue Reading →
Good Writing Requires More Than Creativity
Both models represent the same information: the structure of language. However, each model creates a different mental picture because the visuals are different. The first model divides the structure of language into three broad components - pronunciation, grammar, meaning - before subdividing each component into two aspects. The units of language gets larger as you... Continue Reading →
Why ‘privilege’ and not ‘priviledge’?
Does any of you have a word that you constantly misspell no matter how many times you look up the correct spelling? I have had a few of such words and one of the most memorable for me is the word ‘privilege’. The first time I became aware of my problem with that word I... Continue Reading →
Interest
Word sum: Inter + est --> interest (The prefix + base gives us the stem <interest> ) <Interest> is a Latin word which was borrowed into English from French. It literally meant “that which is between” – inter “between” + est “to be”. It meant ‘to concern, or be of importance’. Word sums: Inter +... Continue Reading →
Writing the ‘sound’ /k/ in English
Before I begin, I would like to explain certain concepts to make it easier to read the post. I use the forward slashes // to enclose pronunciation, while the angle brackets <> enclose spelling. The term 'graphemes' means a spelling units. Graphemes represent distinct pronunciations. I enclose graphemes in angle brackets: <ck>, <c>, <k>, <qu>.... Continue Reading →
Making Sense of ‘t’ in English
English spelling and reading can sometimes present challenges due to some of the complexities of the grapheme-phoneme correspondences. Several graphemes (spelling units) represent more than one pronunciation and a single pronunciation can be written using different graphemes. However, the complexities of the grapheme-phoneme correspondences provide us with valuable information about words. How a word is... Continue Reading →
