Spellings

Many students find English spellings very confusing.  So what do you do?  Consult your dictionary.  It will clarify your confusion by showing you the different spellings of the word.

Look at the words catalogue and theatre.  You must have noticed that the dictionary lists both BR E and AE/US spelling of the words.  Both are correct.

Exercise  Spelling:

Use the dictionary to answer the following questions about

spelling.

a)         What other possible spellings does your dictionary

            give for these words?

                        Theatre Catalogue

b)         Does your dictionary say anything about the spelling

            ‘theatre’ and ‘catalogue’.

c)         How is the past tense of the following verbs spelling?

            If there are two possibilities, write both.

                        Theatre Catalogue

 

Pronunciation:

Students have problems pronouncing English words. A dictionary will help you learn the pronunciation of any word but only if you are familiar with the symbols in which they are written.  We will discuss this in greater detail in the next lesson.

All language dictionaries carry a pronunciation key/table. Be sure to read it.

 

Part of speech:

All dictionaries indicate what part of speech a word belongs to - whether the word is commonly used as N, ProN, V (tran, intr), Adj, Adv, Conj, Art, or Prep.

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