Using Memory Tricks

Hi {!firstname_fix},

Welcome to Day 1: Using memory tricks

First, we’re going to cover using memory tricks.  These help you spell a word by helping you remember the difficult letters or endings of words.

Our brain is basically a forgetting machine. We've got so much going on that if we don’t use something all the time we forget it. 

Jim Kwik: "Your brain is ultimately programmed for deletion. Otherwise they'll be so much info and overwhelm." 

That's why we forget spellings that we don't use and we get stressed about it. It happens! We forget. That's natural. That's why good spellers use spelling strategies and memory tricks to help them recall spellings. 

Some words can be important to express ourselves but to spell them is a challenge. Using a dictionary is a key strategy but most people haven't the time or inclination to use one - you should. But, the big but, is that sometimes we can't even get the first letters of the spellings to even use a dictionary, or the silent letters scupper us.

English has so many difficult spellings and so many words that we don't use all the time but are so important. Words like embarrassed, definitely, necessary, independent. Smaller words like coolly, really and finally are often misspelled. Even misspelled and misspelt are misspelled. (We'll see these two words in the next lesson.)