We may have all seen some word wall or another which contains words that have to be memorized or learned by heart because they are irregular. Some of the supposed irregular words include: have, give, said, they, come, their, and one. They are considered irregular because there appears to be a mismatch between their spellings... Continue Reading →
C for chair and S for shoe: Understanding the difference between graphemes and letters
<b> <c> <ch> <d> <f> <g> <gh> <h> <j> <k> <kn-> <l> <m> <n> <-ng> <p> <ph> <r> <s> <sh> <t> <th> <u>* <v> <w> <y>* <z> <-ck> <-dg(e)> <-tch> <x> <qu> <wh-> <gu> <-ugh> <wr> <rh> <ai>/<ay> <au>/<aw> <ea> <ee> <ei>/<ey> <eu>/<ew> <ie> ... Continue Reading →
Clues of History Buried in “Friend”
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 →
