Full-Body Spelling Workout at IATEFL

At the IATEFL Conference in Brighton (England) this year I led a workshop called  

Full-Body Spelling Workout 

This focused on kinaesthetic routes to teaching spelling. The lovely people at IATEFL videoed my session and have posted it here on the Brighton Online website

But you can also watch it below. It's about 45 minutes long.

It was wonderful to meet so many people at IATEFL. A special thank you to those who came to my workshop. For me this year's IATEFL was the most enjoyable and useful one ever. If you weren't able to attend you can watch lots of sessions here.

Spelling bee lesson from Lesson Stream

Just a quick note. Check out Jamie Keddie's lesson about spelling bees on Lesson Stream . Great for classroom language - asking about words. And the students have their own class spelling bee. While you're there, check out the rest of Jamie's amazing site.

Why you shouldn't marry a man who can't spell

This is awful ... but really funny. Ladies, well worth 22 seconds of your time, especially if you're considering marriage.

'i before e' rule - Stephen Fry and friends

Stephen Fry claims there are over 900 exceptions to the 'i before e' rule. You could argue with his figures. Some of his guests do, but ... well, watch for yourself:



Johanna

The cat that spells its name

If only everything was naturally labelled like this cat, I wonder if we'd have less trouble with spelling!



Anyone seen any other pictures of things that accidentally spell their name?

Johanna

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde uinervtisy

You may have seen this at some time:


    Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a tatol mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.

Did it indeed come from Cambridge University? Matt Davis of the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit there has written a response at
http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/Cmabrigde/ . It makes for very interesting reading and explores whether you can do the same thing in other languages.

If you haven't got time to read that, you might like to watch this video instead:

Do Spelling Mistakes Matter? - Stephen Fry on Language Nazis

Do you get annoyed when you see spelling or punctuation errors? Do you go round correcting misspellings with a red pen? Or do you just tut? Do you write comments on blogs and in forums about people's misspellings?

People assume that I do because I'm interested in spelling, but I don't. Really, I don't! True, it makes me angry if I receive a sloppy letter from someone who is meant to be providing a service for me - like an estate agent or bank  - because it makes me think they may be sloppy in other ways too. Oh, and I do think teachers should edit their writing carefully too.

We all make mistakes sometimes and we don't always see them when editing. Yes, yes, we should use a spell-check but, hey, sometimes life's a bit short for that. And, really, there are worse crimes in the world than misspelling a word that seem to get a lot less aggressive criticism. It really is pitiful to read vicious attacks on other people's spelling - attacks so badly written that they are full of spelling mistakes of the aggressor's own.


Anyway, this is a preamble to this wonderful video I have just come across of Stephen Fry agreeing with me! And it's a beautiful example of 'kinetic typography' by Matthew Rogers.

As Fry says, sometimes people DO need to spell and grammar (there, I've verbified a noun!) properly and that's why I do what I do. If you lack spelling knowledge or strategies and this creates an obstacle in job applications or exams then something needs to be done.

So watch, enjoy and comment below! Do you agree with Stephen Fry? And me?


Stephen Fry Kinetic Typography - Language from Matthew Rogers on Vimeo.
I originally found this here.

Johanna




Remember if you buy any of these products (or anything else) from amazon.com or amazon.co.uk via the links here or above, the small commission I earn will be sent to The Afghan Reading Project.

The the Impotence of Proofreading - very funny

Here's a video clip that a friend (thanks, Shaz!) showed me. It's a poem written by Taylor Mali about someone who can't spell. Very clever, very funny and rather rude in parts! So if you're easily offended, best not to watch!



If you want to read the words, they're on Taylor Mali's website

When two vowels go walking - Is it the truth we're talking?

There's an English spelling rule that native-speaker children are taught:

"When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking - it says its name."

It means in a word like bean, the e is pronounced (with the long sound like the name of the letter E) and the a is silent. Here are some more examples:

boat
toe
rain
tied

And here is a video about it for kids. Beautifully made, cute and convincing ...

http://pbskids.org/lions/videos/twovowels.html

BUT ...

... I was going to write about this 'rule' in my book (Teaching Spelling to English Language Learners). First thing that happened was that I was a bit stuck for examples. Then I got suspicious and decided to check it out. I wrote all the possible vowel digraphs (two written vowels together that make one sound), such as ae, ai, ao, au, ea, ei, etc and I put them into a concordancer at http://www.lextutor.ca/concordancers/concord_e.html

And what did I find? I found this rule was just not true. It only works for a few digraphs and then not always. Look, these ones generally do work:

oa - coat, load, approach, goal, etc (most words with oa make the o sound and the a is silent, except if it's followed by an r: board, coarse)

ai - rain, paint, rail, failure, etc (this one is pretty good too but some common words don't follow the rule: said, pair, etc)

ea - sea, beans, easy, please, beach, etc (this one sometimes behaves according to the rule but look at all these exceptions (and there are lots more) : leather, already, early, appear, break, bread, etc)

Some pairs have a few examples
ui - juice, fruit, suit (but not liquid, build, guide, biscuit and many more

ei - ceiling, receive but not height, eight,

oe - toe, woe, goes, potatoes but not in shoes, does, poem, foetid or canoe

ue - blue, true but not in guest, league, queen, affluence and any more.

And the others really do not follow this rule at all. At best there are two or three words that follow the rule for these combinations, but generally none,
ae, ao, au, eo, eu, ia, ie, io, iu, ou, ua, uo.

Now those of you who follow my work know that I don't give a fig for 'rules' in spellings. We can only look at patterns, or precedents, and make guesses. But it does annoy me to think that children are taught 'rules' like this when they're just not true.

Do you agree? Are you a teacher who has taught this 'rule'? Can you justify it? Do you know any other 'rules' that are not true? Is a 'rule' that's partly right better than no rule at all?

Visualising words - starring a young Tony Buzan

There are several differences that we often find between good spellers and weak spellers. One of these is the ability to visualise words. Ask a good speller the spelling of a word and you will probably see them look away from you and 'read' the word. Often people look up and to their left as they do this. They may be able to 'see' the word projected onto a wall or surface there.

Ask a weak speller and they'll probably just look worried!

Here is a (very old) video of a (very young) Tony Buzan talking about just this.

(Note: I've got the video to start in the right place but for some reason not finish where I want it to. If anyone can tell me how to do this I'd be grateful. I suggest finishing at 3.17. In fact the video freezes at 3.46 anyway)



So to help weak spellers, we need to help them to 'see' words too.

Some techniques for doing this coming soon.

Thanks, by the way, to Tim Kenning for the video link.

Oh and ... a very happy 2010 to you all.

Johanna

Spell it like it sounds?

If somebody asks "How do you spell hot?" You might answer, "As it sounds", meaning it's phonetically very regular. But it depends who's saying hot. The way a North American says it may be very different to the way a southern English person says it for example. And many learners of English find it difficult to distinguish individual sounds precisely, especially vowels.

But does anyone have as much trouble spelling something 'as it sounds' as this policeman:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNoS2BU6bbQ

:-)

Hello and welcome to The Spelling Blog

Hello

This page is for people who find spelling difficult, especially if English isn't your first language.
It's also for teachers who teach writing and spelling.
And it's for people who are just interested in English spelling.

First, I wanted to show you this. Here are some great videos of children teaching people how to spell:
http://www.spelltube.co.uk/

Clever teacher, clever kids!

Hope you enjoy it. Leave me a comment and tell me.

Johanna

p.s. Hope you have time to visit my website The English Language Garden at http://www.elgweb.net/ - there are lots of spelling activities and more there.