Change y to i ... or change i to y?

Sometimes I find it's useful to turn things upside down. Looking at something in this different way prevents me from just accepting it the way I've always looked at it and makes me consider it more carefully, perhaps noticing things I hadn't seen before.

I like doing this with language 'rules' too. I want to check out for myself whether they are really reliable enough to be useful. I've certainly found some that weren't.

y to i
In English spelling, we often hear, "If a word ends with y, change it to i before adding a suffix". This is generally true but there are, of course, exceptions. If there is a vowel before the y, it doesn't usually change. And there are irregular instances such as say and said.

One of my posts was about letters not found at the end of native English words. It contained a PowerPoint presentation in it called Never-Ending Letters in which I identified i as one of those letters (except of course for the pronoun I). While I was writing it I noticed that it might be a good idea to turn this so-called 'rule' about y changing to i on its head - turn it upside down in other words.


i to y?
What if we said: "Don't write i at the end of a word - change it to y? In other words we're changing i to y (at the end of a word) instead of changing y to i (in the middle of a word). In a compound word we also keep the 'rule' about no i at the end of each part. As well as this, we need to change i to y before a suffix beginning with i, to avoid a double i like we get in the (non-native) word skiing.

So we write tries, tried and trial, but we can't write tri for the first form of the verb (because native English words don't end in i) so we spell it try. And we can't write triing, because we don't have double i, so trying.

Let's look at more examples, to test it out:
We write babies, but baby (end of word), babysit (compound word) and babyish (avoiding double i).
We write happier, happiest, happiness and happily, but happy (end of word), and happyish (avoiding double i).
We write reliable, reliance, and relied, but rely (end of word) and relying (avoiding double i).
We write beautiful, beautify and beautician, but beauty (end of word).
We write said, but say (end of word) and saying (avoiding double i).

OK, it works ... but I'm trying to decide if this is a better way to look at it or not. There are pros and cons.

Pros
There are fewer (if any) exceptions. As long as we are talking about native English words, they don't finish in i (except the pronoun I).
The fact that a vowel before a y stops it changing to i becomes irrelevant. If there's already a y, we don't need to change anything.

Cons
The base forms that end with y aren't usually the problem when it comes to spelling. It's the longer forms that are usually more tricky. These usually contain i.
When we teach, we usually start with base forms and later deal with inflections and suffixes.

My conclusion
Turning this rule on its head is probably more accurate and easier to understand but would involve teaching words in an unnatural order. So I probably wouldn't use it with low level students, but at a higher level, if students were having difficulty, I might well point it out.

So has this little experiment been a waste of time? No, I don't think so, because it's always useful to question what's generally accepted as true. Another perspective is always useful.

What do you think?
I would love to hear your comments on this.

Word endings - which letters are not at the end?

It's always easier to learn something if you know the reason for it. In the PowerPoint presentation below we see which letters are not usually found at the end of native English words and how this affects spelling.

Please feel free to use the PowerPoint as you like and share it widely. Just two rules:

1. Please don't change anything in it (if there's anything that needs changing, please write and let me know) 
2. Always link back to The Spelling Blog. Thank you.

The embedded version below doesn't have animations. You may think that's a good thing! But actually if you want to use the presentation for teaching it's better to have them - helps learners focus on new information better. So here's a version with simple, useful animations: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9063559/Word%20endings.ppsx 

In the next blog post, I'm going to discuss something from the Never-Ending Letters presentation that I think is pretty revolutionary! Any idea what?

Anyway here it is. I hope it's useful. I'm really interested to hear any reactions (in the Comments below).

Never-ending letters - teaching and learning the spelling of English word endings.

View more PowerPoint from jomango (that's me!)

Oh no! There was a mistake on the presentation. It's now been corrected so if you downloaded it on or before 28 March, please re-download. Sorry  - and thanks to my father for noticing!

Johanna

Printable spelling worksheets to download free

Printables
I've recently created a new tab on The Spelling Blog for Downloads. There you will find three worksheets from my book, Teaching Spelling to English Language Learners, that you can download and print absolutely free.

1) The multisensory Look Say Cover Write and Check chart has been popular. It's been available for a while, but this version is easier to download. It's far more than the usual four-column table (that I always think learners could just draw in their books). This one really teaches them to learn spellings by guiding them to use several different approaches at the same time. And there's a cover card too that reminds them of the approach.

2) World Cup Vowels is an activity to get learners to really notice vowels in words (in this case, country names). It is especially useful for Arabic speakers who are often rather cavalier in their use (or non-use) of English vowels. All within a football (soccer) context.

3) The third one is completely new to The Spelling Blog, but also concerns vowels. It is a system for colouring vowels to make them visually salient in difficult words. Full instructions are in the book, but here I make coloured versions available (so your learners don't have to colour them in!). These include a classroom poster and bookmarks for learners.

And more ...
Still to come (early April):

• Two more printable worksheets
• Audio files of some texts and activities from the book that I think could be useful
• Some PowerPoint presentations about features of spelling that may be useful in class.

Dropbox
By the way, I am able to make these available using my favourite webtool, Dropbox. Dropbox allows you to automatically save all your documents online (safely) so they are backed up and you can open and edit them anywhere that you have internet access. It also synchronises your documents if you work on more than one computer. And I've recently discovered that I can host files there that I want to share publicly, such as the downloads above. All this and, guess what, it's free. Well, it's free for 2GB, but you can 'earn' up to 8GB by referring other people. So if you like the sound of it, use this link: http://db.tt/Om5BS9b , to investigate and download Dropbox. That means that you will get an extra 250MB of Dropbox space and so will I. The more space I have, the more activities I can make available here on The Spelling Blog. (You only get the extra space if you use the link above)

Johanna

Learned or learnt? Spelled or spelt? - A Google Ngram analysis

 Learned or learnt? Spelled or spelt? Burned or burnt? Which spelling do you use? If you speak American English, probably the ed version, if you speak British English, you probably just write what you feel like on the day. I know I use both, but I also know I need to be consistent in my forthcoming book, Teaching English Spelling. So time for some research and I found this extraordinary and very new tool from GoogleLabs (still in Beta) called Google Ngram. You write two or more (up to five) words or phrases into the Ngram search box and it searches a corpus of 500 billion words from 5.2 million books on Google Books. Then it turns out a graph of how often the word or phrase occurred in books in the years you have specified. You can search all English books, British English books, or American English books. Look, rather than explain, I'll show you what my Ngram results were:

British English 1800 - 2000: learnt (blue) vs learned (red)

We can see learned is more common but declining. The worrying thing is that we just seem to be talking about both of them less! Let's see if the same is happening in American English:

American English 1800 - 2000: learnt (blue) vs learned (red)

Ah, less of a decline there! And a very clear and consistent preference for the ed ending.

Now burnt and burned:

British English 1800 - 2000: burnt (blue) vs burned (red)

Oh, interesting! As the years have passed British English speakers have burned about the same but burnt a lot less. No idea why! And American English?

American English 1800 - 2000: burnt (blue) vs burned (red)

Oh, wow! Completely different. Preference swapped over mid-18th century. No coincidence I suppose that Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1828.

What about my big question: spelt or spelled? 

British English 1800 - 2000: spelt (blue) vs spelled (red)

So traditionally spelt in British English but the American English has gained ground over the past 60 years and now spelled has taken over. But in American English:

 

American English 1800 - 2000: spelt (blue) vs spelled (red)

No competition!

So which should I use in my book? You may think spelled wins hands down, but I wonder if I should support the underdog? I'm planning to bring out a British version first, closely followed by an American version. Perhaps spelt needs a little boost from me in the British version, then spelled in the American one. But then again ...

Which will I do? There's only one way to find out ...send me your email address and I'll let you know when the book's out (soon)!

And which should you use? What do you think? Let me know in the comments. 

What do you think of Google Ngram?

How could you use it?

Johanna

10 commonly misspelled words -and how to remember them (1)

Which words do you find difficult to spell?

Here we're going to look at 10 words native speakers find most difficult to spell and ways to remember the spelling. Next time (or very soon) we'll look at the words that non-native speakers have most trouble with and how to remember those spellings.
(Photo from vancouverfilmschool at Flickr)

minuscule
This word comes from minute (tiny), not mini, so there's a u after the min not i.

millennium
We can remember it has double l because it's like million, but what about the double n? I just think of the year 2000 and remember there are 2 n's.

embarrassment
If you are embarrassed you have two red cheeks, so there is a double r.

occurrence
If a word ends with a consonant, vowel, consonant (CVC) pattern we double the final consonant before adding a suffix beginning with a vowel. However, if the CVC syllable is unstressed we don't double the consonant, eg open > opening. Here the stress is on the final syllable ocCUR, so we double the r.

accommodation
The most misspelled word! Just remember: "The best accommodation has two double beds" (double c and double m).
(Photo from toddwight1 at Flickr)


perseverance
If you have perseverance you are willing to do something several times before you get it right.

supersede
This word literally means to sit on top of something (to replace it). So super is 'on top of' and sede is 'sit' (think of sedentary).

noticeable
Normally we drop a final e before a suffix beginning with a vowel (like > likable, persevere > perseverance). However, if the letter before the final e is a c or g with a soft sound (as in notice or outrage) we need to keep the e before a suffix that begins with a, o or u, because c and g are only usually soft before e and i. So we write notice + able = noticeable and outrage + ous = outrageous.

harass
The word harass (and harassment) may come from an Old French word meaning 'to set a dog on' (to get a dog to attack somebody or something). Whether this is true or not, we can remember that a dog harasses a hare, so just one r. If you have trouble remembering how many s's you might like to think about which part of the hare the dog bites first! (Photo of Hare by Daveynin at Flickr)

inoculate
When you have an inoculation they only use one needle. Just one n. In fact there are no double doses (no double letters) in the word.

TEST YOURSELF

Without looking at the words above, on a piece of paper, write the words according to the clues below:
1. A hotel, hostel or apartment, for example.
2. To annoy or repeatedly attack somebody.
3. 1000 years.
4. Very, very small.
5. Replace something with a newer type.
6. A feeling of shyness or shame.
7. You can see something easily, obvious.
8. The quality of continuing with something although it is difficult.
9. Something that happens, an event.
10. An injection which prevents you from getting a disease.

Other related posts on The Spelling Blog:
How do you spell...
5 reasons why English spelling is difficult
Mnemonics for tricky spellings
-able or -ible?

Prefixes and suffixes - online activities

I've just come across this little spelling activity from the BBC which I can put directly into my blog. It's a gizmo for practising prefixes and suffixes. Have a go:



What I like about it is that it teaches about prefixes and suffixes rather than just tests. There are loads of spelling activities on the web that are great if you just want to test your spelling. Most of the people I work with have problems with spelling and so they need help, not just something that reconfirms that their spelling is poor.

Let us know if you have other sites that have teaching rather than testing activities for spelling.

By the way, thanks to the award-winning teachertrainingvideos.com for leading me to this. There are other spelling sites examined there too, but most of them do test rather than teach. The notable exception is the wonderful Spelling City which I've written about before here.

Other related posts on The Spelling Blog:
Spelling Long Words - Prefixes
Confusing Prefixes - dis and dys
Confusing Prefixes - anti and ante
Look Say Cover Write and Check

Plurals of words ending in 'o' - when to add 's' or 'es'

I made this - just for you!

Plurals Of Words Ending In ‘O’

View more presentations from jomango.

Handwriting and spelling

Where is your memory? In your brain certainly. But it also seems to be in your muscles. When you write a very familiar word or even just a string of letters as part of a word, you don't stop and think about the spelling, your hand just does it. You have gained automaticity: that is, you do something without really thinking about it (like changing gear when driving). The great thing about automaticity is that it frees up your conscious attention for dealing with higher-level tasks. In writing this means you can be thinking about how to express your ideas rather than how to spell the words. It's what people who are learning to spell should be striving for.

So how can learners gain this automaticity when it comes to spelling? Handwriting is an important consideration. If students 'print', that is, they write each letter separately and individually, they are missing out on valuable opportunities to get the hand to remember spellings of whole words or common chunks of words (letter strings) such as '-ing' or '-tion'.

Learners from languages that are written from right to left sometimes start to write a letter on the right and work towards the left. So in the common string 'wh', they may start writing 'w' at the top right of it and then when they get to the top left of 'w' they have to skip back to the right ready to write the 'h'. All the flow from one letter to the next is thus lost. This needs to be corrected if at all possible.

In Melvyn Ramsden's Rescuing Spelling, he recommends that children are encouraged to join up their letters or at least write letters that can be joined up (i.e. they have those little tails on them - called ligatures). He suggests they should write the letters in each morpheme together, so their hand learns to automatically make that shape. So when writing '-ing' at the end of a word, the pen shouldn't leave the paper and the 'i' should be dotted last, after the 'g' has been written. He gets his children to say out loud "ing" when they dot the 'i'. Neat! I'm going to try it out with an adult English language learner who has this problem.

Here's a video I just found of Melvyn Ramsden in action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aWPdObDgbU

Interesting, but I found it a bit uncomfortable to watch. What do you think? Are children taught to print or join up their writing when they start learning to write in your country?

Spelling words ending with -le, -el and -al.

'Towel', critical' and 'apple' all have the same pronunciation at the end. So how do people know which spelling to use? This presentation helps:

Spelling words ending with -le, -el and -al.

View more presentations from jomango. (tags: spelling english)

Spelling words ending in ‘-able’ and ‘ible’

Some adjectives end in the letters ‘-able’ or ‘ible’. They mostly refer to the ability or necessity to do something e.g. ‘washable’ (you can wash it), ‘visible (you can see it), ‘emailable’ (you can email it), and the pronunciation is the same. So how on earth do you know which spelling to use?

There are several approaches we can take depending on the person who is trying to learn it.
If I have a student who really struggles with spelling of even very common and simple words, then whether to use ‘-able’ or ‘-ible’ isn’t their greatest priority and I would use Hint 1:


Hint 1: It is much more common for words to end in ‘able’ than ‘ible’. So if you don’t know and there’s no dictionary around, use ‘able’ – you’ve got about a 5:1 chance of being right!

But obviously that’s not good enough for some people. If I was teaching someone who had a reasonable knowledge of the English language I’d get them to look at some ‘-able’ and ‘-ible’ words and notice the following:

Hint 2: Generally we use ‘-able’ when a complete word remains (or just without a final silent ‘e’, or a ‘y’ changed to ‘i’) when we take the suffix away. So for example, ‘fashionable’ – ‘fashion’ is a complete word, so add ‘-able’. But ‘edible’ – ‘ed’ is not a complete word meaning ‘eat’ so it’s ‘-ible’. Of course (being English!) this isn’t always true but it’s a good guide. If that doesn’t help, try this:

Hint 3: Play around with the root word and see if you can make any words with ‘-ation’ with it. So if you don’t know if it’s ‘applicable’ or ‘applicible’, think of ‘application’. If you can make an ‘-ation’ word then it’s probably ‘-able’. So here it’s ‘applicable’. But if you play around with it and can only make an ‘-ition’ ‘-tion’, ‘-sion’, ‘cian’ or ‘-ion’ word it’s much more likely to be ‘-ible’. For example, it’s ‘visible’ because of ‘vision’.

This should satisfy most learners but let’s say I am teaching someone who has studied Latin or is a bit of a linguist. They are not usually the ones who come to me with spelling problems but if they do:

Hint 4: If the root comes from a Latin verb ending in ‘are’, use ‘able’. If it comes from an ‘ire’ or ‘ere’ word use ‘ible’.

Hint 5 is for anyone:

Hint 5: New words are often made with ‘-able’, but not ‘-ible’: ‘emailable’, biodegradable’, ‘clickable’, ‘offsetable’, ‘recession-proofable’. (I may have made the last two up but they are allowable!)