Purdue University North Central Writing Center Handout

Ways to Improve Your Spelling

Begin by trying these methods:

1.     Identify and make a list of problem words.  You can collect them from papers you have written, from diagnostic spelling quizzes, or from the areas of spelling insecurity you already know you have.

2.     Analyze the personalized list, looking for patterns of misspellings by asking such questions as “Do I repeatedly have trouble with final, silent consonants?”  and “Do I always hit a snag with silent e’s?”  Each incorrect spelling has a cause.  Students who want to improve their spelling can save themselves a fair amount of energy and time if they discover what that cause is.  Once the pattern is identified, you can try to discover the rules that would, if followed, have averted the errors.

3.     Keep a personalized dictionary.  Problems words can be recorded in alphabetical order in a notebook.  Such a personalized dictionary simplifies the process of looking up words in a regular dictionary.

4.     Help yourself improve visual memory by writing a word in the air and using a finger to make the troublesome letters especially large.  Try to imagine a word as if it were on an outdoor movie screen, stabilizing and holding that image as long as possible.

5.     Invoke your hearing sense by exaggerated pronunciations.  That is, emphasize the problem portion of the word when saying it.  For example, the person who habitually leaves off the final -d of “used” should practice pronouncing the word as ‘you said.”

6.     Try writing the problem word on paper, changing from a pencil to a pen to write the difficult spots, or put the problem letters in red or some other bright color.

7.     Use mnemonic devices--devices that help you remember.  You will have to discover which mnemonic devices are personally effective.  The only advice is that the more ridiculous the device, the more likely it is to be remembered.  We all know the ones about “the opposite of all wrong is all right,” or “ the principal of the school is your pal,” but more unusual connections are not difficult to come by and are less likely to be forgotten.

8.     For homonyms (words that sound the same but are spelled differently like there and their) select the easier of the two words to remember, learn how to spell it and when to use it, and then use the second one on all other occasions.  This may work for “its” and “it’s,” “to” and “too,” and “for” and “four,” for example.

9.     Keep the correctly spelled problem words in your line of sight for a week:  on a desk, on bookmarks, on the mirror in the bathroom.  The words need not be directly “studied.”   Eventually, you will have internalized the correct spelling of the words.