Friday, May 6, 2011

Spelling--The Dreadful Ordeal (5)


The following is Chapter 15 from my book, Teaching English, How To…. (Xlibris, 2004).

Question: In the age of computers, is spelling still a worthwhile subject in the English curriculum?

Answer: A complete spelling program aims at building confidence in spelling and includes teaching students how to spell words predictably misspelled, how to solve specific spelling problems, how to visualize correct spelling and how to proofread for spelling.

Words Frequently Misspelled

Multi-Syllable Words. Double consonants, words which contain double consonants or in which people tend to double the consonants incorrectly.

Accessory, accidentally, accommodate, accompany, accrue, address, apparent, attendance, attorney, banana, battalion, beginning, cinnamon, committee, disappear, disappoint, dispel, dissatisfied, embarrass, equipped, erroneous, especially, exaggerate, harass, hemorrhage, irresistible, missionary, molasses, necessary, occasion, occur, occurred, offense, omitted, politically, possess, preferred, recess, recommend, remittance repellent, scissors, squirrel, succeed, success, tariff, tenement, threshold, tobacco, vaccinate, viallain, warraqnt, withhold.

The –sede, -ceed, and –cede words
Only one word ends in –sede, supersede.
Only three words end in –ceed: proceed, succeed and exceed.

Words ending in –ful.
Every word ending in –ful is spelled with one l. One exception, of course, is the word “full” itself.
Beautiful, helpful, successful, spoonful, etc.

The Indefinite Vowel—hard to tell whether the vowel is a, e, i, o or u.
Analogous, apparent, arithmetic, attendance, battalion, buoyant, burglar, calendar, carburetor, caterpillar, cellar, cemetery, chandelier, compatible, correspondent, definite, dependent, existence, grammar, hypocrisy, implement, independence, indispensable, infinitesimal, irresistible, mackerel, maintenance, manual, mathematics, obedience, occurrence, privilege, pseudonym, pursue, rarefy, remittance, repellent, resemblance, reverence, ridiculous, secretary, separately, squirrel, susceptible, temperance, vinegar warrant.

Next Blog: Rules that work most of the time.

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