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Spelling: discussions and interactive exercises

Computers and word processing programs with their automatic spelling checkers have made writing and spelling a lot easier. There are times however when you cannot rely on these automatic spelling checkers, like when you are writing letters by hand, or when you are teaching or reporting and you have to write on a blackboard or white board. The differences between speliing of words in American and British English also make the study of spelling rules necessary.

Listed below are links to discussions and interactive exercises in spelling from the best ESL and EFL resources on the Internet. Clicking the blue links will take you to the specific pages where the discussions and activities are, while clicking the website name will take you to the home page. Take time to browse these excellent websites; they are consistently good and fast loading. Besides the activities and exercises listed below, these sites generously offer, free of charge, a tremendous range of valuable resources for ESL and EFL teachers and students.

In answering the interactive exercises, you should follow carefully the prompts and directions. You should read each sentence or part aloud before clicking the answer you think is right. After the correct answer is displayed, think it over as to why it is the correct answer. (Please take note that the correct answer may depend on whether the exercise comes from an American English or a British English website.) After doing so, read the complete sentence again aloud with the correct answer.

To train yourself to think in English, try to recite the sentences with the correct answers from memory and at your full speaking volume. Or you can ask a friend to read out loud the sentences with the correct answers and you repeat them without looking at the computer screen.

Adding -er / -est (quick, quicker, quickest, happy, happier, happiest, hot, hotter, hottest...)
Adding -ing / -ed (work, working, worked, stop, stopping, stopped...)
Adding -ly (loud, loudly, happy, happily, terrible, terribly...)
Adding -s
-ible or -able (accessible, visible, dependable, networkable...)
-ie- or -ei- (friend, fiend, feint, freight...)
English and American English (colour, color, practise, practice, tyre, tire...)

Note: Listed below are the publicly-accessed exercises and activities. You have to join in order to avail of all the resources in this website.

Adding Word Endings
ADDING -ED and -ING (index to all exercises)
Adding -ED to Verbs 01
Adding -ING to Verbs 01
ADDING -S and -ES (index page to all exercises)
Spelling Plural Nouns 06 - Chart (Irregular Plurals List)
Spelling Plural Nouns 01 (Plural Nouns I)
ADDING OTHER ENDINGS (index to all exercises)
Spelling Adverbs With -LY 01
Capitalization: Learn the rules for capitalizing nouns, then practice with quizzes (Index page to all exercises )
Capital Letters Lesson: NAMES
Capital Letters Quiz: NAMES
Comparatives & Superlatives: BIG-BIGGER-BIGGEST, AS...AS (Index to all exercises)
Comparatives 01 Comparatives - one syllable words
Contractions: I + am = I'm, There + is = There's, etc. (Index to all exercises)
Contractions: Negative Modals (Contractions Practice #2)
Your or You're? 01 Confusing Words - Your / You're
Contractions: Subject + Be Verb Contractions Practice #1 - to BE Verb
Punctuation
Practice using commas, correcting run-on sentences, and making possessive nouns (Index page to all exercises)
Possessive Nouns with Apostrophe S General Rules for Making POSSESSIVE NOUNS
Spelling Practice, Take some practice spelling quizzes (index to all exercises)
THE ENGLISH ALPHABET
Beginning Spelling Lesson + Quiz BEGINNING SPELLING 1
Advanced Spelling Quiz 01 ADVANCED SPELLING Quiz 1

Rules for Irregular Plural Formation of Nouns
List of Irregular Nouns
Rules for Irregular Spelling of Verb Inflections

Spelling words with "ei" and "ie"
Review: "ei" and "ie"
Spelling final "y" before a suffix
Review: final "y" before a suffix
Final Silent "e"
Review: Final Silent "e"
Spelling Words with Double Consonants
Review: Double Consonants

Note: This excellent website by Charles I. Kelly and Lawrence E. Kelly has the most number of activities and exercises in spelling among the sites we have checked out. Listed below are just some representative examples. Visit this website to avail of the other spelling activities and exercises.

Spelling and Typing Games: Type the word before you run out of time.
Catch the Spelling: Catch the letters in the correct order.
Word Based Games for ESL Students (Flash Player version 5 or newer)
Spelling / Vocabulary Quizzes: 151 quizzes covering over 1,500 words
WordWeb
Crossword Puzzles: Doing crossword puzzles may help your spelling
English Vocabulary: Some of the activities listed on this page are good for spelling practice

Spelling List One
Spelling List Two
Spelling List Three
Spelling List Four
Spelling List Five
Spelling List Six
Spelling List Seven
Spelling List Eight
Spelling List Nine
Spelling List Ten
Spelling List Eleven
Spelling List Twelve
Spelling List Thirteen
Spelling List Fourteen
Spelling List Fifteen
Spelling List Sixteen
Spelling List Seventeen
Spelling List Eighteen
Spelling List Nineteen

I / E Spelling Rules: Exercise 1
I / E Spelling Rules: Exercise 2
I / E Spelling Rules: Exercise 3
I / E Spelling Rules: Exercise 4

[13] Pictorial Vocabulary Guides, from LanguageGuide.org
Learn the pronunciation and spelling of thousands of words using an image based interface, with supported languages as English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Italian, Greek, Chinese, Chinese (traditional characters), Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Turkish, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian

[14] Free online spell checker (up to 20,000 characters), from SpellCheck.net

[15] Spelling It Right - Learn To Spell Confidently, by Roger Smith (British English)

Note: This great website offers lessons and activities in spelling including Syllables, Consonant Blends, Prefixes, Suffixes, Word endings, Vowels, Words in Science, Maths, English, Geography, Plurals, Memorizing Strategies, Word games, Wordsearches. Listed below are the Interactive Hangman games from this site.

Hangman: suffixes -able and -ible practice
Hangman: the i before e rule
Hangman: words starting bl, br, cr, cl, dr
Hangman: words starting fl, fr, gr, gl
Hangman: words starting ch, k, ph and g
Hangman: words starting wh, c or sc
Hangman: words starting pl and pr
Hangman: words which have the "magic" e
Hangman: words ending -er, -or and –ar
Hangman: words starting sc, sh, sl, sm, sn, sp, squ, st, and sw
Hangman: plurals of words ending –y

[16] Often Misspelled Words in English, from www.yourdictionary.com

100 Most Often Misspelled Words in English
150 More Often Misspelled Words In English

[17] Word Cup (an international, online vocabulary competition for all ages, students and adults, sponsored among others by Oxford University Press), from eSpindle

eSpindle is a non-profit organization offering customized vocabulary tutoring online. It is supported through memberships, and memberships are matched with free licenses for disadvantaged students. Other services and resources offered by eSpindle are:

Practice quiz for the Word Cup (Choose between easy, average and hard words; quiz updated twice a month)

Free, moderated online spelling bee and Word Cup forum (exchange ideas, make friends, find encouragement)

Root word directory (prefixes, root words and suffixes)

Fun trivia about the English language and learning

Facts and statistics about literacy in the US

[17] SpellCheckPlus, from Dr. Terry Nadasdi (University of Alberta, Canada) and Dr. Stefan Sinclair

A tool for writing in English that identifies spelling errors and common grammatical problems. It is able to detect problems with words that sound the same (e.g.: there versus their, its versus it's, etc.), incorrect use of correct words (e.g.: never mined instead of never mind), punctuation/spacing (e.g.: with out instead of without), capitalization (e.g.: saturday instead of Saturday) and hundreds of grammatical errors, e.g.: I have went instead of I have gone. The site is particularly adept at catching commonly confused words and "slips of the pen", e.g.: pier pressure instead of the correct peer pressure, road to hoe instead of the correct row to hoe, etc.

Notes:

A Word A Day, from Wordsmith: Explore the world of words, share, and delight in the joy of words with a community of more than 600,000 linguaphiles in at least 200 countries, from Australia to Zimbabwe

Spoken English Learned Quickly offers free downloads of lessons and books (Learning Spoken English, a 450-page Student Workbook and an Instructor’s Guide) to your computer, iPod, Blackberry, MP3 player or PDA; Lessons in vocabulary, grammar, syntax, and verb tenses using spoken English exercises; Complete lessons contain enough recorded audio lesson material for two hours of study a day, five days a week for nine months.

englishforjapanese.com offers fee-based language learning study solutions for Japanese students of English for speech, pronunciation, listening, pronunciation, social and business conversation skills; with free but non-interactive exercises and tests in English usage, vocabulary and grammar; some lessons in downloadable PDF format; related blog Two-Minute English offers free daily, non-interactive exercise and activities.

Bilingual Vocabulary Quizzes from The Internet TESL Journal's Activities for ESL Students

Arabic - English
Chinese - English
Indonesian - English
Japanese - English
Korean -English
Kurdish - English
Malay - English
Persian (Farsi) - English
Portuguese - English
Russian - English
Sesotho - English
Somali - English
Spanish - English
Swahili - English
Tagalog - English
Thai - English
Turkish-English
Urdu - English
Vietnamese - English
Zulu - English