Pervaiz Salik - Become a Spelling Bee Champion in 2 Months

Become a Spelling Bee Champion In 2 Months

By

Pervaiz Salik

Revised edition. August 2022.

Copyright 2022 Pervaiz Salik.

ISBN: 978-1386998112

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be resold or copied in any form. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

Contents

Preface

Important: Read this first

This book is very short (about 64 full pages). It can be read in one day, or even in three hours.

But it is not possible to master the material in this book in such a short time. If you are tempted to rush through the book, don't do it. In particular, the Nine Powerful Methods, need careful and thorough study. Remember that you are learning techniques to permanently fix the spellings of words that you might not have been able to conquer up to now. Take your time over learning the methods (about two full weeks); attempt all the exercises conscientiously and thoroughly to the best of your ability; and then apply the methods to the

Spelling Bee Words in the remaining six weeks. I am confident you will be able to remember all the words in a quarter of the time that others before you have taken. I wish you the best of luck!

Pervaiz Salik

Chapter 1

For most people even those whose native language is English spelling is a nightmare; English being a most awkward language from this point of view. Problems are inevitable in an alphabet system which has only 26 letters, but over 40 different sounds that are to be represented by these letters. This is the main reason why spelling mistakes are common, but there are many other factors too. Traditionally, spelling has been taught in two ways: 1. Memorisation/ Repetition method

The teacher has a list of difficult words which are practised daily in class. The idea is that by dictation and constant repetition of these words, the pupil will learn the correct spelling.

Improvement, in fact, does take place in the short term; but since long term memory is required, the correct spelling is later forgotten.

2. The Rule Method

Various complicated spelling rules are given to the pupil (amounting to at least 30 pages).

These must be learned by heart and applied until mastery is achieved. Unfortunately, there are very few useful rules. The so-called rules have many exceptions, so that one has to learn not only the rules but also the exceptions to the rules in effect doubling the effort needed. In this book, it is assumed that the reader is familiar with the most basic and simplest rules that one unconsciously learns in Primary classes; these are given in Appendix 1.

The novel approach adopted in this book is to make use of the familiar words that the reader can spell correctly and link them to the difficult words by using (for example) techniques like

simplification and associated spelling words. Various classes have tried out these new techniques and found them to be much more effective than the two methods currently used in schools. Hopefully, this new approach will also work for you.

Chapter 2

Test Your Spelling

Get someone to read out and pronounce correctly these words and see how many you can spell correctly. You may have a quick look for five minutes before you start if you feel you are not confident enough to take a test at this early stage. However, the test is essential for the purpose of diagnosis and correction and should be attempted to the best of your ability. There is no time limit for the test.

(1) rappel (2) serrefine

(3) shalloon (4) tomalley

(5) napiform (6) prospicience

(7) gesellschaft (8) roscian

(9) sorites (10) catafalque

(11) mogollon (12) pococurante

(13) foulard (14) autochthonous

(15) yarmulke (16) knaidel

(17) gnathonic (18) ratoon

(19) quokka (20) dacryocyst

(21) interlocutory (22) menhir

(23) demarche (24) kakapo

(25) vespertine (26) semaphore

(27) guerdon (28) elucubrate

(29) narcolepsy (30) rhytidome

(31) juglar (32) marram

(33) epicede (34) galago

(35) abalone (36) foederatus

(37) apolune (38) concinnity

(39) narcolepsy (40) rhytidome

How did you do? These words were chosen at random from the Spelling Bee list. If you got all thirty words correct, then perhaps you have no need for this book; if you got more than five wrong, you certainly need this book in which case you should read each chapter carefully (especially Chapter 4). After studying this book, you will learn how to remember the correct spellings because you will be presented with effective methods for memorising those words you are misspelling. You should also keep a record of the misspelt words as you will need to refer to your list again near the end of your spelling course.

Chapter 3

Spelling: A Brief Chronological Development

It is helpful to retrace the development of how children learn spelling. This may be summarised as follows:

1. The Phonetic Stage

Here, simple words that are easy to spell are taught. The spelling matches the sounds of the words they are phonetic words so that spelling patterns begin to develop, such as: bat, cat, fat, hat,...

bet, get, let, met,...

but, cut, gut, hut,...

Obviously, the child must be familiar with the phonetic sounds of the letters; only then can the spelling of the words be successful. A later stage might be: car care

for fore

fir fire

her here

2. The Semi-Phonetic (Familiar Words) Stage

Here, words that are not quite phonetic including digraphs and diphthongs* are recognised. Examples: she, shut. said, the, they, there, you, their, chair, etc.

These words could also be put under the heading of familiar words because children are likely to meet these common words repeatedly. They begin to arrange them into their own pattern, and then they learn to spell such words correctly.

(*Note: Throughout this book, words in italics are technical terms and are defined in Appendix 2.)

3. The Non-Phonetic Stage

We come now to the real crux of our spelling problems: in certain words, the sounds and the spellings are different; in other cases, words with similar sounds are spelt differently, causing the unwary to make spelling mistakes. If we try to spell phone phonetically from previously learned patterns, we would probably write fone. Similarly, the following errors might occur if we went only by the sound:

Word Phonetic Spelling

limb lim

light lite

folks fokes

knife nife

friend frend

photo photo

whole hole

(*Reminder: throughout the book words in italics are technical terms and are defined in Appendix 2.)

4. The Final Stage

Having accepted the fact that many words have strange and quirky spellings, the student of English adopts a variety of strategies to cope with these difficult words including memorisation of spelling rules or sheer memory power (the traditional approaches), or linking the words that he can spell correctly with the difficult words in a meaningful way (the new approach). However, consciously or unconsciously, we all have assimilated certain spelling rules and spelling patterns. How good a speller one is depends on the strength and foundation of these rules and patterns. Weaker students do not have any good strategies to cope with difficult words, nor do they have good memories; hence, they are poor spellers.

The Nine Powerful Methods given in Chapter 4 will definitely improve the spelling of all students no matter how good they are. The methods rely on the fact that we can spell many words correctly; namely, the words we learned in stages 1 and 2 together with some other more difficult words that we may have picked up. These words form our