Aims
Fun fact!The longest word in any major English dictionary is 45 letters long! The word is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis and it is the name of a medical condition caused by breathing in particles of volcanic dust.
If you look closely, you can spot several different words hiding in this colossal word. See how many words you can spot.
Introduction to memorising tricky spellings
Over the last one thousand years English spelling has been influenced by lots of different languages, including French, German and Latin. Because English has borrowed words from other languages, lots of complex spelling patterns have developed.
There are many different reasons a word can be tricky to spell. For example:
Words can have silent letters, like the letter ‘b’ in the word ‘subtle’ and 'k' in 'knight'.
Some words might have double letters that you also cannot hear, for example, in the words ‘disappoint’ and ‘accommodation’.
Some words don’t follow a pattern or spelling rule, for example, the word ‘ancient’ does not follow the rule ‘i before e except after c’.
Homophones might lead you to use the wrong spelling in your writing - for example, confusing the words ‘your’ and ‘you’re’.
Tools to help you remember spellings could include mnemonics, acrostics, words within words and sounding it out.
Follow this link and watch videos that help you with spelling tools or tricks
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zbmv2sg/articles/zjxqf4j
Most people get just a few letters of a word mixed up try highlighting the difficult part to spell of a word – the bit that is hard to sound out.
