Spelling is a complex subject, and to learn and understand it you need to know how history, spelling rules, word structure, letter patterns, and sounds are all connected and influence spelling.
Let’s look at the Five Foundation Blocks for learning to spell and how they are all connected.
1. Knowing the History of Spelling and English
This is one of the most important ways to really understand English spelling, and will help you feel less frustrated and annoyed with it. It'll help you understand why spelling has some strange letter patterns and pronunciations like these: -ough, -igh, wh-, kn-, gn-, -rupt-, -ou-, and silent letters.
English and English spelling is a melting pot of different influences and the tribes who conquered and settled here: the Celts, Romans, Saxons, Vikings, French, and the Germanic, Norse, Latin, Greek, French languages all mixed together to make a unique language and spelling system.
And then later, the dictionary makers didn't care about making English spelling phonetic or easy to spell, they only cared more about the history of the word and making it more "important looking" by including letters and patterns from its Latin, Greek, French origins.
A lot of silent letters used to be pronounced then became silent over the centuries but kept in the spellings to show the history of words: knee, knock, gnat, gnash, daughter, light, plumber, bomb, write, wrestle, sword, answer.
Pronunciation (the way we say words) changes but spelling doesn't change.
Check out this lesson on Why English is so Confusing.
2. Understanding Spelling Rules and Exceptions
Knowing spelling rules and exceptions can help explain why we have strange endings and how and why words change. We've got so many spelling rules that are so important to know like the drop the 'e' rule, the y to i rule, the 1:1:1 doubling up rule and many more.
make — making (drop the 'e')
happy — happily, happier (y to i rule)
shop — shops but shopping, shopper (1:1:1 doubling up rule)
forget — forgets but forgetting, forgettable (doubling up rule for longer words)
photo — photos but hero — heroes (Adding -s or -es to words ending in -o)
Rules are there to help us read and pronounce words too, for example, knowing the difference between the drop the 'e' and 1:1:1 doubling up rules help us with understanding hoping and hopping.
hoping = hope — drop the 'e' with -ing = hoping.
hopping = hop — 1:1:1 doubling up rule to keep the short vowel sound = hopping.
This links to the other foundation blocks: seeing letter patterns, and how words are built, how rules affect sound, and also the history of words.
If you like learning from books, check out my Spelling Rules Workbook.
Check out the spelling rules lessons.
3. Understanding How Words are Built
Understanding the structure of words and how they're built with root words, prefixes, and suffixes is so important.
misunderstanding
dishonestly
illegally
uncomfortable
unhappiness
And this can also help your vocabulary and can make you less scared of long words.
This involves spelling rules, too, and adding suffixes can change the vowel sound in some words.
For more about prefixes and suffixes, check out these lessons.
4. Noticing Letter Patterns and Historical Word Roots
This is a very interesting foundation block and is about developing your visual memory for recognizing common letter patterns and historical word roots so you can spell and read them instantly.
To learn these make a letter pattern dictionary and put them in sound groups with exceptions:
-ound: found, round, ground, pound, sound, hound, bound
Make a rhyming sentence: My hound found a round pound on the ground.
-atch: match, batch, catch, snatch, but watch
th + ough: though, thought, through, thorough have the same patterns th- and -ough but different sounds. Check out my video on this.
We have the -ight pattern with the silent -gh-
-ight: right, light, flight, bright
but we also know that the -ite pattern in bite, kite, write, quite has the same sound.
Some -ight words have an -ite homphone patner:
right, sight, might
write, site/cite, mite
Check out this letter pattern lesson
Knowing historical word roots and their word families is a very interesting way of learning and understanding spelling. It's about the visual link and meaning between words not the sound/phonetic.
-rupt- (from Latin for broken, fracture) rupture, interrupt disrupt, disruption, erupt, eruption, bankrupt, corrupt, abrupt (It’s a great sounding word root and so useful to know the meaning of it which helps us understand why we have this strange pattern.)
tw- two, twice, twelve, twenty, twins, between, tweezers, Twix (Notice how these are related to two in some way, but the ‘tw’ is pronounced differently in two!)
In Old English/Anglo-Saxon, they had ‘w’ in the spelling twā, and most likely pronounced it similar to the Dutch, twee, and German, zwei. Then it became silent but left in the spelling to show the history of the word.
sign (from Latin to mark, indicate, a symbol) signal, signage, signify, significant, signpost, signature, design, designer, resign, resignation (sometimes the g is silent sometimes it's pronounced to help with the pronunciation signature)
Check out this lesson on word families and letter patterns.
5. Using Sound (Phonics)
This is about relating speech sounds to a letter and letter patterns.
Sounding out words is about using sounds to help us spell, but English spelling is only about 50% phonetically regular so we need the other foundation blocks to help us.
For adults, sound is the first bit of a word we have reference for and the letters and letter patterns that go with these sounds. So, a good strategy is to try to hear if a "tricky" or new word sounds like a word or pattern you know how to spell, and then when you write it, use your visual memory and knowledge of rules and patterns to see if it's right.
If you're interested in sound and spellings then I have a Spelling Sounds and Patterns Course: https://www.udemy.com/course/spelling-sounds-and-patterns/
Check out this lesson on speaking vs. spelling.
Summing up
That was a brief look at these important methods to help your spelling.
1. Knowing the History of Spelling and English
2. Understanding Spelling Rules and Exceptions
3. Understanding How Words are Built with root words, prefixes and suffixes.
4. Noticing Letter Patterns, and Historical Word Roots
5. Using Sound (Phonics)
As we've seen these are all linked together and you can't learn spelling without knowing all of these.
Thanks to these people and their great books, and information on spelling: Johanna Stirling, Gena K. Gorrell, Pacquita Boston, Misty Adoniou, Elaine Miles, Anne Curzan, Christopher Upward & George Davidson, David Crystal