Teacher Discussion Forums

English isn't that bad. And by the way I'm sure I can understand thousands of Portuguese words. I can't speak a single sentence of it though. English isn't too bad if u are reasonably bright and are brought up by literate and supportive parents, but the likes of 'and, any, apron' and 'on, only, onc...

I'm sure there are a number of factors why some people don't like reading, but lack of vocabulary is certainly one. quote] Yes. But how do u build up vocabulary without learning to read first? I have never tried to learn Chinese, but have been told that because their pictograms give a clue to meani...

Tell me Masha, why is it more complicated to have a phonetic spelling such as 'you' than a non-phonetic spelling such as 'u'. The problems with English spelling come from the fact that there are a great many more phonemes in the language (44) than letters in the alphabet. 'U' for 'you' would simply...

Sally My experience with spelling is much like yours. I think it is because English spelling is often so illogical that we all remain slightly nervous about it, and this makes more prone to misspellings, even when we spell better than most people. Re my use of 'u' for 'you', I think 'u' would be ver...

Oh dear! A spelling error committed by a linguist and writer:
'shows u why' should be 'show u why'.

The main reason why many native speakers of English don't enjoy reading is because they found learning to read very difficult . One of my Dec 09 blogs at http://englishspellingproblems.blogspot.com and the Sight words page on my website shows u why. I think in their own language most people try to b...

Perhaps the author had Ogden's basic English in mind? For my analysis of regularly and irregularly spelt English words I compiled a list of 6800 words which British pupils were likely to meet by age 16. (I found that 3695 contain a spelling irregularity of some kind.) From my own language learning I...

With so many English letters having unreliable sounds (good food, hear heard heart, should shoulder shout) they are absolutely essential. I hope u can use words from the Sight Words page on my website www.englishspellingproblems.co.uk to help with that. Making students aware in short sessions of the...

Some of u may already be using my website www.englishspellingproblems.co.uk which has lists of words with regular spellings on the Learning to Read page and the tricky-to-read ones on the Sight Words page, with tricky-to-spell ones on other pages grouped by sound, such as ee, o-e, long oo. I have re...