Difficult Spelling Words

Difficult spelling words are the bane of students and adults alike. Unless the habits of correct spelling are ingrained early on, the incorrect way of writing difficult spelling words will establish itself as a habit well into adulthood.

Rather than surrender to the seeming inevitability of these spelling traps, it is possible to aggressively address the issue. First, you must identify the most difficult spelling words. Second, you must come up with strategies to turn the correct spellings into permanent habits.

The first task, identifying the words, is done fairly easily with a search on the Internet. YourDictionary.com has listed the 100 Most Common Misspelled Words and included many tips on ways to remember the correct spellings.

Some other sources for learning difficult spelling words are:

• Most Difficult Words Spelling Test by Vivian Cook
• Easy to Say, Hard to Spell
• Poynter Online's Writing Tools

While it is certainly possible to try and learn all of these words through rote repetition in the hopes of memorization, it has been shown that there are better strategies. The strategies tend to follow the types of learning that have been discovered through education research, things like kinesthetic, auditory, etc. More information on these subjects can be found in many places on the web, such as The University of Illinois.

Most likely, the most effective learning strategy for any given person is going to need to be individually tailored. A combination of the following techniques, or something completely different, may end up being the mnemonic device that keeps you from ever misspelling "misspelled" again. Find what works, and then use that in combination with drill and repetition to come up with the best strategy.

• Vocalizing the letters of the words as if you were in a spelling bee can be a very effective tool. After saying the letters over and over again, they begin to lose their symbolic meaning and become more of a melody, imprinting on your mind in much the same way that nursery rhymes do with children. This serves as a powerful reminder of the way that correct spelling sounds when the memory of rules fails.
• Tracing the letters of the word into your palm or onto your leg takes advantage of the kinesthetic learning as your fingers develop muscle memory. With enough repetition, the fingers will remember the proper letters even when the brain doesn't.
• Staying with the kinesthetic model, using larger body movements while spelling may help those students who have better memorization with gross motor skills. This also has the advantage of stimulating the metabolism, making the brain more alert and receptive to the patterns of movement combined with correct spelling.
• Memorizing groups of words with similar spelling conventions will also help associate correct spelling with several problem words at once. Rules such as "I before E except after C" become quickly ineffective due to the many exceptions to the rule. Memorizing the exceptions in a group – "poltergeist sovereign heifer feisty counterfeit" etc – will be an effective way to combat the vagaries of the English language.

The most effective way to learn to spell, however, is to simply read. Inspiring reading in children will give them an intuitive grasp of grammar to the point where the words in the spelling tests will simply "feel" right. Parents who take the recommended words for their child's developmental level and turn them into fun games and stories will be adding the most effective ingredient for any kind of learning to their child's education: the ingredient of fun.