Tyrion101 Senior Member United States Joined 3904 days ago 153 posts - 174 votes Speaks: French
| Message 1 of 10 24 July 2014 at 11:25pm | IP Logged |
For whatever reason I've never been able to spell in English, or apparently french as well, or any of the languages I know. The very idea makes me angry, mostly because no matter how hard I try, I always fail at it. It's only because of auto correct I'm able to put together a sentence that actually looks like its supposed to be spelled. I've never had any problems with grammar, or syntax, or even the more complex parts of language. Spelling however, I just cannot do. Is there anything I can do to be better at it? I've tried for years, and about given up that I'd ever be able to actually spell without random typos or just stupidity on my part ruining the whole sentence. If I were tested in any language I'd probably fail the test because I never can remember how to spell a word on command. What's wrong with me?
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rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5227 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin
| Message 2 of 10 24 July 2014 at 11:58pm | IP Logged |
Here are some tips you can use.
- Each time you practice a word, spell it out loud. The sound can help you remember.
- Keep a list of problem words and train yourself to write them correctly by handwriting them.
- Compare your misspelling with the correct spelling then on your computer bold the letters which are missing or in the wrong place in your spelling. for example Center spelled correctly is Centre if you're English.
- Break the word into syllables and write them separately. Re / la / tion
- Make it an acronym. Rhythm: Rhythm Helps Your Two Hips Move
- Simply learn the word by saying or singing the letters out loud, developing a melody.
- The number one thing that bolsters your spelling ability is reading.
Hope that helps!
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Michel1020 Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5008 days ago 365 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Dutch
| Message 3 of 10 25 July 2014 at 9:40am | IP Logged |
Yes reading - I am surprise to read - reading to be one of your interest.
Beside reading - for french- to know nouns gender, to know the rules and have some tricks is also important.
A few examples
CES or SES the possessive one starts with S which is the possessive letter for both English and french.
c'est or ces - can you put it in the negative or in the plural ? ce n'est pas ... ce sont... if so it is c'est - ces is already a plural you cannot make it more plural.
Possible verbs endings
with je are e - s - ai - x
with tu s - x - e,
with il or alle or on e, a, d, t
to know if a verb ending is er or é - change it for another verb like voir, faire or finir and does the change sounds right or does it sound better with the participe form vu, fait or fini.
Je vais manger - je vais voir or je vais vu ?
J'ai mangé - j'ai finir or j'ai fini ?
Il a fait à manger - il a fait à boire ou il a fait à bu ?
Edited by Michel1020 on 25 July 2014 at 9:42am
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Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6052 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical)
| Message 4 of 10 25 July 2014 at 10:13am | IP Logged |
I also believe reading is the most important thing.
Apparently, while reading a text in a familiar language, your brain does not read everything, but rather photographs words and compares them with images from its past experiences. Only new words are actually read.
Being a learner of languages using three alphabets, I experience this quite often: new words are difficult to read, but relatively older ones, that seemed impossible to recognise at first ("I'll never read this stuff at a reasonable pace") are now clearer in my mind.
So, go ahead and read. Increase the size and availability of the photo album in your head. And experience the unease whenever some word doesn't look good: spelling error!
Edited by Luso on 25 July 2014 at 10:18am
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Elenia Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom lilyonlife.blog Joined 3847 days ago 239 posts - 327 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Swedish, Esperanto
| Message 5 of 10 25 July 2014 at 6:54pm | IP Logged |
It could be that you're mildly dyslexic? Do you also have slight difficulty reading?
Among the majority of the dyslexia sufferers I know, their dyslexia makes reading just
hard enough that it is not a fun pastime (although this is also impacted by how
interested the person is in the book they're reading.)
It might be worth getting tested if it really bothers you or impedes your daily life.
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Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4244 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian
| Message 6 of 10 25 July 2014 at 9:23pm | IP Logged |
You could be dyslexic and your languages seem to have appalling orthographies (English, French). When orthographies are very unintuitive like that, spelling problems arise. For example, the Finnish orthography looks like this in comparison to how things are pronounced (IPA)
Finnish
orthography: talo
IP-alphabet: /ˈtɑlo/
(looks a lot like it's written doesn't it)
French
orthography: maison
IP-alphabet: /mɛ.zɔ̃/
(...what?)
a good rule of thumb is that the longer a language has been written, the more awful the orthography. An exception is Italian, which has a pretty good orthography.
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shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4435 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French
| Message 7 of 10 26 July 2014 at 2:52am | IP Logged |
Sometimes I have trouble spelling but nowadays I tend to type everything into the computer and do my
editing later. Usually any word / phrase that doesn't have a red underline I'd assume it is written
correctly. And I also set my computer to Auto Correct for English & French. I am still not used to using
special keys to type in letters with an accent mark on top.
For Chinese unfortunately there isn't a spellcheck program for it so I'd keep a dictionary screen open to
look up characters. Besides Chinese, making spelling mistakes now and then isn't much of an issue
since I can look up the correct spelling on Google.
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Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4225 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek
| Message 8 of 10 26 July 2014 at 5:44am | IP Logged |
Maybe it's just about bad visual memory? I don't generally have
problems with spelling in both Russian and English, thanks to good
visual memory. I have read a lot in Russian and never tried to
remember any spelling rules, and English it's just the same (I haven't
read lots of it, but I was exposed to it for years, after all). I also think I
won't have troubles with German, I already type words automatically
and my mistakes usually aren't about spelling.
However, there are some "dead spots", i.e. words, which I use often,
but can't remember their spelling. In Russian, for example, I keep on
mixing up в течение / в течении, in English I'm messing up purely
Latin words like curriculum.
I don't know how to fix a problem like this, but apart from reading I
think Swype-type keyboard would be useful. Of course people don't
usually type much on phones or tablets, and if they do they probably
buy a Bluetooth keyboard, but for me Swype is good enough. The
problem is that the dictionary of a keyboard may be small (as I have
noticed in case of Russian and German Swype), but it still should
cover lots of words to practice. When I don't remember the correct
spelling of an English word I type letters in Swype and in most cases
keyboard guesses the word I wanted to say right.
(yup, this is all typed from my phone with Swype, cause I have no
laptop available)
Edited by Via Diva on 26 July 2014 at 5:47am
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