Spelling: How to improve?

English spelling may be a nightmare but here I'm showing you there are many things you can do to help yourself improve.

1. First - don't despair! Some of the world's cleverest people have struggled with English spelling - you are not alone! Try out these ideas and you should soon see an improvement.

2. When you are practising spellings, use as many senses as you can:

• Look closely at a word, try to remember what it LOOKS like.
• Think about the SOUND of a word.
  that will often give you clues about the spelling
• To learn a word, WRITE it or TYPE it - or both

3. Dictionaries can be a help - sometimes - if you know how to spell the start of a word! If you need a lot of help with spelling, you might consider getting a specialist dictionary.

4. Playing word games with sympathetic friends will help your spelling. There are many games that involve making words from a random selection of letters, for example:  Scrabble, Boggle, Word Spin.

5. Read a lot - not just books but everything around you e.g. food packets, newspapers, catalogues, billboards, road signs etc.

This will fix the look of many common spelling patterns in your memory - which will help you to spot if one of your spellings doesn't 'look right'.