Jumat, 19 November 2010

Help with Spelling Problems for ESL Classes

Here are the most common spelling rules in English. For exceptions to the rules take a look at Common Spelling Problems.
Capital Letters
Use Capital (T, S, B, etc.) letters for the following types of words:
  • Days, Months and Public Holidays
    Monday, January, Christmas
  • Proper names of People and Places
    Jack, Maria, New York, Germany
  • Titles for People
    Ms, Dr, General
  • Nationalities and Regions (both nouns and adjectives)
    Dutch, Swedish, Basque
  • Titles of Works of Art (content words only)
    The Last Day of Summmer, American Journal ofMedicine
When to Double Final Consonants
The final consonant of a word is often doubled when adding -ed, -ing, -er, -est in the following cases:
  • Double final "b, d, g, l, m, n, p, r and t" at the end of words:
    rob - robbing
    sad - sadder
    big - bigger
    travel - traveller
    skim - skimming
    win - winner
    pop - popping
    prefer - preferred
    hit - hitting
  • Double these final letters there is the following pattern "consonant - vowel - consonant" at the end of a word. For example: travel - 'vel' v - consonant - e - vowel l - consonant.
  • Words of more than one syllable have their consonants doubled only when the final syllable is stressed.
    begin - beginn ing BUT open - opening
    defer - deferr ing BUT offer - offering
  • When words have more than one syllable and end in 'l' British English always doubles the 'l', even in the case of unstressed syllables. American English, on the other hand, the 'l' is not doubled when the syllable is unstressed.
    British English - travelled
    American English - traveled
Part II discusses spelling when a word ends in 'e, ie or y'.

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