Welcome to the ASA Blog! Today, we’ll discuss some of the more common spelling mistakes English learners (and to be honest, many native English speakers!) make.

It’s often said that English grammar isn’t all that difficult, in comparison with many other languages.

Spelling, however, is another matter. English (unlike, say, Spanish) doesn’t have much correspondence between the way a word is spelled and the way it is pronounced. That means you have to do a lot of memorizing. However, it’s not entirely random. As you learn more words, you will start to recognize patterns of letters. The more patterns you recognize, the better you will be able to predict how words are spelled (and in some cases, pronounced).

You may ask whether it’s worth your time to learn how to spell, given the availability of spell checks, grammar apps, etc. out there nowadays, but while these can be useful tools, there are always going to be cases where technology isn’t available to help you (such as during an IELTS test, for example), so it’s important you work on your spelling as often as you can.

Here are five of the most commonly misspelled words in English (for part 2, click here):

1. Achieve (common misspelling: acheive). This verb, meaning “to accomplish or succeed at reaching a goal,” features a common i-e vowel combination. English also features an e-i vowel combination, however; an easy memory tool that many native speakers use to tell the difference between them is “i before e, except after c,” which means in most words i-e is the standard spelling, unless the letters come immediately after a c (as in deceive, for example). While this isn’t always the case (there are always exceptions!), it is usually true. Similar word: believe/beleive.

2. Beginning (common misspelling: begining): The confusion over this word (noun, continuous verb or gerund) meaning “start,” comes from the -ing suffix, which is frequently added to words to change their form. Typically it’s added directly to the stem (“begin” here), but sometimes another small change also has to be made, in this case adding another n before the suffix. An English phonetic rule is that a double consonant tends to make the following vowel sound “short” (the i sound in “rid”), whereas a single consonant usually makes the following vowel sound “long” (the i sound in “ride”). The last i in “beginning” has a short vowel sound.

3. Argument (common misspelling: arguement): This is another one where the suffix can cause a problem. The -ment suffix here changes the verb “argue” (meaning “to disagree”) into a noun. The pronunciation of the u doesn’t change, but the final e in “argue” is dropped.

4. Appearance (common misspelling: appearence): Once again the suffix is the source of confusion (changing the word from a verb meaning “to seem or look” into a noun), but there’s no easy rule here: both -ance and -ence are common noun suffixes (actually variants of the same suffix). Unfortunately you just have to remember which one goes with which stem. Similar words: performance, resemblance (but consequence, audience).

5. Lose (common misspelling: loose): It is a frequent mistake of native speakers to confuse the verb “lose” (meaning to misplace) with the adjective “loose”¹ (the opposite of tight). Despite (or perhaps because of) both words being common, the pronunciation is the problem here. Both have a long u (often spelled oo) vowel sound, but the verb is spelled with one o, while the adjective is spelled with two. The verb has a final s that sounds like a z, while the adjective has a final s that sounds like a hard ss.

After a while you will start recognizing common English spelling patterns, which will start to make pronouncing and remembering how to spell words a little easier. Join us next time as we continue to explore this strange and wonderful language

Hope this helped! Please contact us if you have any questions or comments, or if you’d like to book a free appointment to see how we can help! Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you next time with another mini-lesson in the ASA Blog!