Correct Spelling

Only two words of three are spelled correctly - can you find which is incorrect?

Image: Helpful Games

Game instructions to practice spelling

Choose the sound to practice from the buttons above. Then ten questions are randomly generated that exercises spelling with that sound.You will get three words or sentences, and one of these is misspelled.It's up to you to find the one that's not spelled correctly.

Phonemes and graphemes

A grapheme is the smallest semantically distinguishing unit in a written language, which in this game is in the form of letters: vowels and consonants. The spoken language equivalence of grapheme is callled phoneme. In this game, the spelling is practiced in groups of English phonemes. The SH sound below is an example of a phoneme. A phoneme is usually spelled with two graphemes, which is called digraf.

Below are listed the general rules for the spelling of the English language organized by phonemes. Most rules have exceptions so beware!

The O sound

This sound has several spellings in an othographology perspective:

• o, as in grow.
• ou, as in rough.
• oo, as in school.
• oe, as in toe.
• oa, as in boat.
• ow, as in cow.
• ue, as in clue.
• ew, as in chew.

The J sound

Two major rules:

• Before a, o, or u the /j/ sound is spelled with j.
  Some examples are jam, job and just.
• Before e, i or y the sound is spelled with g.
  Some examples are gem, ginger and gym.

The M sound

The M sound is a consonant sound and has five primary spellings, where four are digraphs:

• MB, as in thumb.
• MN, as in autumn.
• ME, as in some.
• MM, as in hammer.
• M, as in swim.

The N sound

This sound have many different possible spelling. Among the most common are:

• N, as in bank.
• NN, as in banner.
• NE, as in gone.
• KN, as in know.
• GN, as in sign.

The F sound

The /f/ sound is usually spelled with ff after a short vowel and f elsewhere, but some borrowed words are spelled with ph.

The K sound

This sound can be spelled in several ways. The most common spellings are:

• K, as in bike.
• CK, as in sick.
• CH, as in mechanic.
• CC, as in accelerate.
• C, as in direct.
• QU, as in quest.

These are the rules that apply most often:

• If the previous letter is a consonant, the K sound is often spelled with K.Some examples are blank and sketch.
• The K sound is spelled with C if the next vowel is a, o or u. Examples are scale, corn and cut.
• The K sound is spelled with K if the next vowel is e or i. Examples are key and kid.

Those are the most common spellings of the K sound.

The CH sound

May be spelled in several ways, but the general rule is that The sound /ch/ has two spellings: tch after a short vowel, ch anywhere else. The two most common spellings are therefore ch and tch. Common endings sounding CH are -tion and -ture. There are, however, several exceptions: sandwich and much are two examples.

The SH sound

This english sound has multiple spelling variants:

• sh, as in shoe.
• ti, as in section.
• ci, as in social.
• si, as in expansion.
• ssi, as in expression.
• ch, as in machine.
• che, as in cache.
• s, as in sugar.
• ss, as in assure.

The most common way of spelling the sound /sh/ is with the digraph sh.

The E sound

Use i before e except when the two letters follow c and have a long e sound or when the two vowels are pronounced long a. The different spellings of the e sound are:

• e, as in me.
• ae, as in aerial.
• ee, as in heel.
• ea, as in dead.
• ei, as in ceiling.

Start practice now!

The G sound

The G sound has five dominant spellings:

• G, as in dig.
• GG, as in egg.
• GH, as in ghost.
• GUE, as in guess.
• GU, as in guide.

The G sound at the end of words are usually spelled with -ge, -dge or -age.

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