English spelling

One of the components of learning any language is writing. You cannot learn to read and speak without learning to write. If you think that it will be enough for you just to learn how to speak in order to communicate, then you are mistaken. The modern world, where introverts actively create a comfortable environment for themselves, uses text much more than it did ten years ago. Chats and correspondence are everywhere. Therefore, it is necessary and important to study spelling. 

 

Step one 

English is an amazing language. It has many variants and dialects, which have their own characteristics not only in pronunciation, but also in the spelling of words, and even in the construction of grammatical structures. Therefore, the first and most important step will be the choice of the very option that you are going to study and use in writing. The most common are American, British, Canadian, Australian and Indian dialects. 

The importance of this step is that if you don't decide on an option, there will be a bunch of different words that differ in one letter (for example,British and American versions), and you will most likely interfere with them in one sentence, which is not very good. 

 

Abbreviations 

Abbreviations and abbreviations are what has been used in informal correspondence for about thirty years. Previously, this was convenient, because the number of characters in one SMS message had a limit, it was beneficial to fit three words into three characters, reducing them by the first letters. In the current situation, this can be called convenient, because the answer will not take much time for you or the interlocutor. 

For informal communication with native speakers (and non-native speakers too) of the language, you should remember the most common abbreviations, which include: 

• Brb — be right back 
• Ttyl — talk to you later 
• B4 — before 
• Thx — thanks 
• Bcz — because etc. 

 

Rules  

They are necessary, right? A few basic rules are still better to learn. For example, how to correctly add prefixes and suffixes, and how vowels can change in this case. It is also better to remember the spelling of the endings -tion -cion, triphthongs -ugh -sch and letter combinations -ough. 

1. Learn how to spell diphthongs. For example, in words with the sound "ae", the diphthong ie will be written, and with the sounds "ey" it will already be ei. There are still practically no moments when there is no letter u after the letter q, they are almost always togehter (friend, neighbor, squirrel, quiet, esquire).
2. Y at the end of a word changes to i only if there is a consonant in front of y (beauty — beautiful, play — playing).
3. Remove e if you are going to add a suffix (come — coming, arrive — arrived).
4. All as a separate word is always written with two letters ll, if "ol" is a suffix, then use just one l (arrival, denial, removal).
5. If the word ends in -f or -fe, then the letter f is replaced by v in the plural form (wolf — wolves)
6. Before the ing ending, consonants are doubled, preceded by only one vowel (swim — swimming, but clean — cleaning).

These rules, unfortunately, cannot fully describe the entire spelling of the English language, since the vast majority of words simply do not fall under the general norms, they just need to be taught. To make the process easier, we recommend doing vocabulary dictations to check your skills at least once a week. 

 

Words you just need to remember 

As one of the strangest spellings, these words are best just memorized forever, because their spelling and pronunciation defies logic. The list is far from complete, so you can add to it from time to time. Here's just a small part to get you started: 

• Trough 
• Enough 
• Laugh 
• neighborhood 
• Queue 
• check 
• Quit / Quiet / Quiet 
• About 
• Circus 
• Circumstances 
• Treat / threat / treatment 

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Surely on your language path you will come across a lot of words that will cause you bewilderment. But these will be the stages that will help you become better and improve your knowledge. With each new word in your vocabulary, you will be more confident and broader in expressing your thoughts not only orally, but also in writing.