Confusing Words 2- Valentine's Day

Who said spelling wasn't important?

My students were doing an assignment the other day on interpreting lyrics. Many of them wrote something like, "Many people think the song is about heartbreak...." few of them wrote it correctly. I kept getting students who wrote, hard or hearth instead of heart. So, here's a quick visual I set up to help them remember

These are "hearth" hats

 A hearth is the floor of a fireplace.

The arrow in the picture to the right is pointing to the hearth.

It isn't a word we use a lot in English, but if you ever read Cinderella they talk about the hearth.

Hard has different meanings. It can mean difficult, or not soft.

This is a "hard" hat

This is a word we use a lot in English so you should be sure you can recognize it and pronounce it properly.

This is a "heart" hat

Finally we have the word they usually wanted to use: hearts. Hearts are part of our body that pump blood and are very important to living.

However, we also use hearts to mean love.

The easy way to remember this is the hEARTH has the earth (ashes) in it, harD is for diamonds, and there's lots of art with heARTS.

Hopefully that makes your students have a less confusing Valentine's day. After all, sending a note that says, "I love you with all my hard" just doesn't send the right message.

A dog massage

A dog message

Speaking of message, as another teacher pointed out be sure your students know the difference. There are two pictures of dogs here. One, is a dog with a massage. The other is a dog with a message. Mixing them up and promising to "massage" someone instead of message them could be a bit awkward!

Confusing Words 1

STRIPPING STRIPES
The first day of class in the Spring semester we played a review game covering everything they should have learned from their class in the fall. One of the queries was as follows:Combine the following sentences:

The cat lives on campus. The cat has stripes.

I look over and see one group talking. They aren't using Spanish (YAY) but one student in the group is visibly confused and begins to mime whirling something over her head. Her classmates quickly laugh and shake their heads, "No... not strip! Stripes" and then they mime drawing stripes on their arms.Important distinction.

If your students need a reminder it may be a good time to cover spelling rules. The "magic e" makes the i says it's own name (long vowel). Without the  "magic e" the i can't make its own name (short vowel)

SWEET SWEAT
My students were writing opinion essays on business practices. One student had come to me after class for some advice about his essay against sweat shops. 

First let's start with praise. He correctly differentiated between sweat and sweet (which is something I see native speakers mess up sometimes). 

You can remember the spelling a few different ways.  Some people remember HEAT makes you SWEAT. Others that MEAT is not SWEET (so meat and swee
t use different vowels).

Even though my student got that part right, he did make a small mistake with one of his supporting ideas.

TASTE TEST
"An example of the horrible conditions of sweat shops is that the women are fired if they are found pregnant. To make sure they are not hiding their pregnancy the sweat shop tastes women to see if they are pregnant."

After I read this I smiled. "So did they lick the workers to see if they were pregnant?" 

He was shocked by the question, but quickly figured out that taste and test were in fact different words.

MEET THE MEAT To end, this one wasn't in my class but a blog comment on an earlier post prompted me to add it.

  Does anyone else think of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy when students mix these up?

I am starting to collect commonly missed words, so let me know if you need a visual to help you and/or your students in the comments, by twitter or Facebook.

Other Common Spelling Mix ups!

How many of your students are convinced they don't need to learn to spell because they have "spell check." Be sure to remind them that spell check does NOT help with similarly spelled words.

You can always find new ways to practice spelling with your students! Those who are more visual may find an infographic helpful. Earlier this month I posted a New Year's Eve infographic of  commonly confused words and many people found it helpful. Hopefully this one will help some teachers (and their students) as well.


Some of the most common mistakes we make when writing happen when we are moving too quickly and end up making a spelling error. Even worse, there are many times when we use the wrong word in place of the right one, such as dessert for desert, and we don’t see the mistake in our minds. Technology such as autocorrect on our phones and spell check on our computers oftentimes will not pick up words that we spell correctly but happen to use in the wrong situation. That is why it is important to read your words again so that you can catch any errors before sending the message to your boss or turning in your assignment to your professor. Familiarize yourself with words that are similar in spelling to others so that you can keep them separate and the meaning of your words intact. Read through the infographic below to see just a few examples of these words that tend to trip us up.

Created by DLA Editors, a company providing high-quality document editing and proofreading services

New Year's Spelling Mistakes

I find I make two different types of spelling mistakes. There are some words that I always struggle with spelling correctly. Then there are the words that often pop up spelled incorrectly because I made a typo. 

Sometimes in this second group my typos are not caught because they are auto corrected to a similar word. 

If I am making these simple mistakes then I am SURE that my students are also making them!

There are lots of different ways to practice spelling with new vocabulary words, and visuals are a great plus! Check out this infographic to learn the differences yourself or to help your students! 

Spelling words incorrectly while on the job, especially in messages to your boss or students, is a sure way to be embarrassed while you are working. Make 2014 your year to appear more knowledgeable than ever – learn how to spell! It can sometimes be confusing when reading a paper or email that has incorrect spelling or use of possession because even the simplest mistakes can have a great effect on the meaning of a sentence. For example, New Year’s Day is completely different than New Years Day. The first occurs on January 1st of every year and is celebrated all over the world. The latter is what people often use to refer to this day we celebrate, but without the apostrophe indicates it is the day of many new years. Read through the infographic to the right to see a couple of examples of words that are commonly mistaken for others in regards to New Year’s Edition.

Created by DLA Editors, a company providing high-quality document editing and proofreading services

Confession - The 5 English words I ALWAYS double check

Why can't it work this way in real life!!!

The beginning of the year is coming and I am about to be inundated with students whose brains went on vacation in the summer. They are often energetic about school (having rested) but not really ready to be back.

One way that I forge a bond is to tell them up front I am imperfect. In fact I have five words that I used to  always look up because otherwise I don't spell them correctly. I have found solutions for four of them but the first one still eludes me. These words aren't typos. They are just words which, for some reason or another eluded me.

Calender- I don't say, "Cal-en-dar" I say, "Cal-en-der" so this was always a hard one for me. How do I remember? I cheat! I use Spanish. I remember that a calendar "gives" me the date. The word for give in Spanish is dar. If you don't speak Spanish you can remember that a Calendar is a sandwich. It goes, a-e-a.   

Excersize- I worked at a gym throughout high school and college, yet I still manage to write Excersize way more often than I'd like to admit, and I write it a lot in worksheets: Exercise 1. I think I start to write Excel, and then add on a size... I am not sure but that one is embarrassing. The worst part is, I butcher it so badly that spell check can never fix it! "Did you mean excessive?" or "Did you mean exorcism?" This is the one I've never found a way to fix in my brain.If you have any advice please let me know!

Expereince- It has been argued that one of the only spelling rules people know is, "I before E except after C or when sounded like A as in neighbor or weigh." It does have exceptions, but overall this rule is pretty good. Nonetheless it does not work for me with experience. Every time I would type experience my brain would switch the e and i. Other people have problems with experience because they tend to end it in ance instead of ence. My little trick (which helps both) to remember proper spelling was to pick a word I never spell wrong: patience. Now whenever I go to type I try to remember, to have patIENCE to spell experIENCE.

Its / It's- I teach English and I am really good at your vs you're and they're vs their, but this one was hard for me! Is it it's or its. I know people have always said, "Well it's is a contraction and its isn't." That's great, but it didn''t help me. Because then I ended up sitting there going, "So wait... is it's the contraction or its?" Regardless I finally found a way to stop this bad habit. The only thing that helps me is by thinking of a sentence like "They're in their book." Then I think to myself, "Right so their doesn't have an apostrophe when it is possessive so neither does its." It works great because none of the possessive adjectives have apostrophes.

Pronunciation- I blame this on being an English teacher. Whenever I start to write Pron... my fingers go straight to pronoun and then I add a -ciation. Luckily there's a memogram for this! Memograms are anagrams created by Peter Spenser which are meant to help you remember how to spell a word. So, with proper pronunciation you will "ruin no caption" when reading aloud. There's only there's only two Os so I have to leave my extra O behind. If you have a word you can never remember you may want to consider making an anagram to help you. The book is available to download for free if you click here or on the book's cover to the right.

What about you? Are there any words that you used to spell incorrectly, but finally found a way to remember them? Or are there any words you still struggle with?

Funny Sketch About Different English Learners' Problems

This is a fun sketch that goes over the different problems a student may have in a class.

One student struggles with grammar! This is the students I would be most like. With a student weak in grammar I suggest lots of reading, movies, fun drills, and maybe some grammar comics. 

There's another student who is pretty bad at spelling (and thus pronunciation!). There are a few great sites out there if your students can't spell, but I usually know a few good spelling tricks to help out students.

http://www.spellingcity.com/ 

http://www.spellingcity.com/ gave a free password for Teacher's Appreciation Day.

The next student struggles with idioms and proverbs. If you can find these in songs or movies it may help your students remember them.

The final girl has large problems with her vocabulary. There's an entire MOOC going on right now on how to teach vocabulary. I have an older blog post that covers some basic suggestions for activities, games, and quizzes.

And the last student struggles with emphasizing words (and vowel sounds). I am pretty bad with pronunciation other than using minimal pairs and jokes. but the 34th ELT Blog Carnival has given me many more ideas to work with.

The Carnival will be published on September 1st, so all submissions must be received before August 31st.

See http://eslcarissa.blogspot.mx/2013/07/the-34th-elt-blog-carnival-pronunciation.html for more information.

Cootie Catcher - Speaking Activity

Step 16

Do you struggle getting your students to talk? This is a great activity that can be used for most vocabulary and grammar you want to practice. The example here was done with colors, and fruits. At the end you'll see one done with weather and emotions (so probably A1 or A2 on the CEFR scale). You can make this more complex for higher level students as well!

You can also use this to have students review listening (you verbally give directions and they have to listen and follow them). Depending on the age level and whether they have made these before, this takes between 5 to 20 minutes.


Follow steps 1-15 from the last post (or check out the video on this post).

Step 17 Draw the points

From there follow these directions (you can click on the pictures to make them bigger). NOTE: These are the simplified directions; with higher level students, feel free to omit what you feel can go unsaid:

16. Unfold the paper; it should look like the photo on the upper left (the colors have been added to make the creases stand out).

17. Have your students locate the 8 small triangles in the middle.
Each triangle will get one drawing.  Either a sad face, a happy face, a bomb, or star. There should be 3 sad faces, 3 happy faces, one bomb and one star in total. 

Step 21 draw a category

18. Fold the four bigger triangles to the center (making a square).

19. Flip the paper over.

20. Have your students find the four squares.

21. In each square have them draw one ________ (whatever you want them to practice: countries, toys, prepositions, school supplies, etc.). In this case fruits.

Step 24 Draw a different category

22. Flip the paper over again.

23. Have them find the 8 triangles.

24. Draw (or write) 8 different things. In this case colors.

Now your students are ready to play!

Rules of the game

Question 1

General Rules

1. ONLY ENGLISH may be spoken! Students found speaking a language other than English will lose all of their points.
2. Students should speak in grammatically correct COMPLETE sentences to play. If their partner catches a mistake they may say, "Can you repeat that?" or, "Come again?" or anything else they have learned so that their partner can restate the sentence.

How to Play

1. Find a partner
2. Ask the partner a question (For lower levels, "Do you like fruit?" For higher levels, "If you could ban one of these four fruits from the world which would it be?")

   

   Question 2

3. Listen to your partners answer, (For lower levels, "Yes, I like apples." For higher levels, "Oranges should be banned because they take forever to peel!")
4. Move the cootie catcher the number of syllables/ letters their answer has (app-les: two syllables, or a-p-p-l-e-s: 6 letters)
5. Ask them another question, (Again lower level, "What's best?" Higher level, "What color do you think is overused today?")
6. Listen to their answer (Lower level, "Yellow is best" Higher level, "Yellow is used far too much because companies think it makes us hungry. Think about it, Burger King, McDonald's, they all use yellow")
7. Open the

   

   Final Answer

   triangle flap to find a happy face, sad face, bomb or star.
8. Switch partners and repeat.
9. Find a new partner and repeat

SCORING

• A smiley face is worth 1 point
• A sad face is worth -1 point
• A bomb means you lose all your points
• A star means you get 5 points

The purpose of the game is to get 10 points!

SCORING VARIATIONS

Template

• I used to put the 6 faces, star and bomb on a piece of paper. Students cut them out and then put them on the cootie catcher. This made sure they got the number of each correct.
• Make a different scoring system (maybe the star is worth two and a sun is wroth 5)
• Make the goal to talk to everyone in the class, not get points (in this case it is usually better with higher level students as you can practice telling fortunes or giving proverbs instead of getting points).

OTHER VARIATIONS

• When I did something like this with my really little ones (3 years old) I pre-folded all of them.
• Give them a pre-printed cootie catcher to start. When they have the folds "pre-written" on a piece of paper they tend to fold faster. For example the template to the right could be used to review emotions and the weather.
• Often to start the class we brainstorm as much of the relevant vocabulary as we can think of drawing pictures on the board. This gives them a visual to look at later when they are designing their cootie catcher.
• Bring magazines in and have them put pictures of celebrities on it. This can work with questions like, "If you had to become a celebrity which one would you become?" or just, "Who do you like?"
• It can help to draw a sample on the board, but you risk students copying it directly so I like to draw it with some blanks (like above) to encourage creativity.
• If you make them generic enough this is a great filler game. Just plug in whatever new grammar topic you learned and have them use it at the end of class. For example: If you just learned relative phrases ask, "What do you think is Paris Hilton's favorite weather?" "Paris Hilton, who loves to tan, likes it sunny."

Would you ever use cootie catchers in class? How do you use cootie catchers in class?