Chip, cheap, ship, sheep - remembering the spelling

Words that sound similar, especially to learners of English, can be a nightmare to spell.

A colleague in Algeria wrote that his young students mix up the spelling of the words chip, cheap, ship and sheep. If you're a native speaker of English you might think that the only problem here is the two different ways of spelling the long e sound in cheap and sheep. Otherwise the sounds tell you how to spell them, don't they?. But if you're a learner of English as a foreign language, you may well not be able to hear or produce the two different vowel sounds in ship and sheep. And the same difficulty is common with the different consonant sounds in ship and chip. So that's where phonics falls down for learners of English.

So let me try to help.

If we can't rely on sound for spelling these words, perhaps we can find something in the meaning to help. But that's usually easier with longer words. So I had to get a bit creative with these.

Linking the meaning with a photographic image of the letter.

Using synonyms to remember those two vowels

Using the word shape linked to the meaning 

Using drawn images to remember the vowels

You'll notice that:

• there are lots of different ways to help learners remember
• visual images stick in most people's memories
• linking meaning with spelling gives learners a hook to hang the spelling on
• this is a great way to differentiate between two (or more) similar words that cause spelling problems
• I can't draw! It's true I'm rather embarrassed about these drawings - particularly those sheep! - but in fact here I think it's an advantage because it makes them funnier and it shows people (teachers and learners) that they don't have to be artists to be able to do this. I'm most certainly not!
  

Teachers! Parents! People who find spelling hard! 

I invite you to try it yourselves with words your learners / your children / you can't spell or confuse. 

Start by identifying the problem part in the word. Think about the whole word shape and think about the shape of those tricky letters, but always think about the meaning too and try to make a link. Can you make a visual link between the spelling and the meaning? 

Try out some different ideas - just the thinking and drawing will help memory, so it works best if the person who is having the spelling difficulty does it himself or herself or you do it together. The images can then be displayed as a reminder if necessary - but remove the display as soon as possible so the memory needs to do a bit of work. 

Please share your images with us in my Flickr group:  https://www.flickr.com/groups/spellingimages/

And please, feel free to tell others about this Flickr group, this blog, this idea and/or my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/thespellingpage

Looking forward to seeing your pictures!

Johanna

 .

Vowel patterns - Three in a Row Vowels Activity

Learners seem to have many more problems with spelling vowel sounds than consonant sounds. This isn't really surprising as English has only five vowel letters for about 20 vowel sounds, including diphthongs. (For consonants there are 21 letters and 24 different sounds, plus silence.) So vowels need to be used in combination (digraphs and trigraphs) to make certain sounds. Also, unstressed vowels are often pronounced with a schwa /ə/ (like the last syllable of teacher), regardless of the spelling. Added to this, some languages give much less importance to vowels - Arabic and Hebrew, for example - and learners may not realise the precision needed in English.

So, what to do? How can we help learners spell vowel sounds accurately? Here is just one activity from my book which helps learners to notice and practise vowel digraphs.

I hope you find it useful. Feedback always appreciated. 

22.4

Three in a Row Vowels

Aim: To give practice with vowel patterns. (See pages 131 and 135 of book for rationale)

Materials needed: Pencils. For each group of four learners: One game board — enlarged to A3 if possible; two different coloured sets of cards, also enlarged to A3 and cut - these are available on The Spelling Blog downloads page.

Activity:

1.       Learners work in groups of four (or up to six if necessary). Each group has two teams. Give each group two different coloured sets of vowel pattern cards — one for each of their teams. Also give them one game board. The cards are shuffled and placed in a pile, face down, in front of each team.

2.       One team turns up the first card. They make a word containing that vowel or pattern that matches one of the categories on the game board. They write the word in pencil under the pattern and place the card on the game board on top of the relevant category.

3.       The next team turns up one of their cards and does the same. The game continues until one team gets three cards in a row, horizontally, vertically or diagonally. So as well as trying to make a row of three, learners need to stop the opposing team from winning a row.

4.       To play again, learners need to rub out the words they have written on the cards.

Variations: Boards and cards can be laminated for reuse. Then learners write their words with a non-permanent pen (e.g. overhead projector pen) and these can be washed off after the game.

You may want to set a time limit for the creation of each word.

At the end of the game, everyone writes personalised sentences for the words they used to help them remember the spellings within a sentence.

For an easier version of this game, each team spreads out all their cards in front of them and they can choose the pattern they use to make a relevant word.

You could use this idea to make your own game with different spelling patterns or different topics.