' wa '

(Update: I've just updated this post for two reasons: a) The Blixy Zoom Words isn't working so I've used plain old writing; b) I needed to make it clear this post was about British English pronunciation)

Look at these words. What do you notice about the sound and the spelling?
wander, want, watch, wash, swallow, warrior, swap, wannna

And now these:
walk, wall, war, warm, water, wardrobe, warning, towards, dwarf

Hopefully you noticed that all the words begin with, or contain, the letters wa.

In British English in the first lot, the wa sounds like it should be spelled wo - we hear the sounds /wɒ/ : watch, swallow, was, etc.

In the second graphic, the wa sounds more like 'wor' (war) or /wɔ:/ walk, warning, award. But if you look carefully, you'll see that the wa in these words is mostly followed by r or l (except in water).

So......?

Are these rules? No, they can't be rules because they are not definite enough. There are exceptions such as water and also a very few words where the wa makes a more phonetically regular sound of /wæ/ like in wax (and another word that's not polite enough for The Spelling Blog!) and a few other pronunciations. But there are patterns to be seen.

Are these patterns useful? Yes, I think it's worth raising awareness of this. Nobody ever pointed this out to me and I just thought a lot of these words were phoneticaly irregular, but it's reassuring to see a pattern.

However I would feel happier if I could find an etymological reason for this pattern - believe me, I've searched. Any ideas, anyone?

By the way, when I finally finish my Teaching English Spelling book (before summer 2010, I hope), there will be an awareness-raising exercise about the wa spellings.

Code word activity

I've always thought interactive text reconstruction activities (eg http://www.cict.co.uk/software/textoys/examples/example2.htm) were really useful for spelling improvement, but they're not easy to do on paper. A good alternative is a code words exercise, in which you see some letters in the text and have to guess others to reconstruct it. Doing the puzzle really makes you think about spelling, as well as meaning and grammar - a full workout really!

And for learners who find writing difficult, this can make a great model for their own writing.

Here's one I made. This is a guided one: there are hints to help learners solve the puzzle and think about spelling. Feel free to print it out and use it. The second page is the key. If it's too difficult learners could read the full text first or the teacher could read it out.

This is the first one of these I've ever made, so feedback welcomed. Especially if there are any mistakes!!
Code Word Nouri

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.

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

Spelling names - does it matter?

Darren Elliott ( @livesofteachers ) had this little outburst on Twitter this morning! And it made me think: how important is it to spell names right? It seems it's not very important if it's someone else's name but very important if it's yours!

My own name is a bit of a spelling nightmare. Johanna is not usually spelled with an h in English (the h is completely silent), so people often write Joanna or even Joanne, which is a more common name. To a lot of people I'm Jo, but I'm definitely not Joe (same pronunciation but that's a man's name). My Stirling is spelled with an i not an e (Stirling not Sterling, same pronunciation), so I always have to say 'like the Scottish city not the money'.

So people often spell my name wrong. Do I mind? Yes! Well, no! But yes! And no! Intellectually, of course not: my name isn't easy, people are busy, life is short, what does it matter? But my gut feeling is: 'that's not me!'

Perhaps the spelling of our name is part of our identity.

And of course sometimes it really does matter, because if someone types my misspelled name into Google they might find somebody far more interesting than me! Or emails offering me an all-expenses paid trip to the Seychelles may never get to me (not the spam kind- they always get through).

What about you? How important is it that people spell your name right?

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