Frequently mis-spelled words are: separate, achieve, illicit, illegible, woolly, studying, attach,.... You need to look them up in your dictionary - just as all native speakers do. You already know we don't say things the way we write them! For example, 'no' and 'know' are pronounced in the same way, also 'knows' and 'nose'. As in 'know' we have what are called 'silent' letters. We don't pronounce the 't' in 'listen' or 'often'. We don't pronounce the 'l' in 'calm', 'palm', 'calf', 'half'. An 'o' before an 'n' is not pronounced like /o/ in 'not' but like the sound in 'but' e.g. Monday, monkey, money, London. We pronounce 'ph' as 'f' in 'telephone', 'photograph', 'phenomenon', 'symphony'. The rules are:- When we add an ending to a word we sometimes change the spelling: e.g. get>getting; drop the 'silent' 'e' e.g. love > loving; add '-e' before '-s' e.g. pass > passes; change 'y' to '-i(e) or 'ie' to 'y' e.g. fly > flies, die - dying; add '-es' after 'o' to make the plural form. Practice Exercise: Add endings to the following: 1.glass 2.story 3.play 4. stop 5. great 6. potato 7. happy
Answers: 1. glasses 2. stories 3.plays, playing, played 4.stops, stopped, stopping 5.greater, the greatest, 6.potatoes 7. happier, the happiest. n.b. if there are two vowels then you don't do anything (see 5. above, the same if a vowel is followed by 'y' (see 3. above) See The A - Z of English Grammar & Usage for the rules.
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