Amid the Covid-19, due to online schooling, does your child often depend on smartphones and computer systems for online lectures? Does your child often feel they are incompetent in the English language? Are your children unable to pronounce English words, write correct spellings and speak with confidence? This is all because gadgets can auto-correct the spellings which makes it difficult for them to remember the correct spellings of the words. Also, we don’t socialize due to lockdown and maintain social distancing to avoid the spread of the pandemic which lowers down their confidence while speaking.
In this article, we will talk about a few ways to help your kids learn English spelling quickly and effortlessly which will not only improve their confidence in speaking but also in writing the English language.
Why are English spellings important?
Any building can stand strong if the foundation is strong, and similarly, spellings are the foundations for strong command over the English language. English Spellings are important to pronounce words. It also helps your child initiate communication. It also affects the overall confidence of the child’s growth. As a result, it helps the child to read complex texts effortlessly.
The need to spell correctly has become more important than ever. With the past faced digital era paving it’s a way towards education, the children spend most of the time on electronic devices and also interact with social media applications where they learn from what they see and read on these devices. One of the peculiar reasons why it is important is because of the auto-correction feature that these devices offer, which has become a shortcut to get the work done. As a result, the knowledge of how to spell a particular word is becoming an issue.
How do Kids learn spellings?
As per psychologists, the children learn to spell by visual memory to string letters like beads of a necklace. They learn the spelling while playing the games. Every child learns the spellings depending on their memory with growing knowledge of spoken and written word structure.
Let’s say, When your child sees an apple, he will speak apple, or it is red. Like if he plays with a ball, he will spell the ball as ‘b-a-l-l’.
Ways to improve your child’s English Spelling
Take your pen and paper and note down which points you are practicing to make your child learn it. There are many different ways to improve your child’s English spelling, Let us look at some of them.
1. Mnemonic Sounds
The mnemonic sounds are used as a strategy to remember the English words easily. It helps the children to improve the important information effectively. This technique helps to remember English spellings in a visual way.
For example, One way to learn English spellings by easily using mnemonics is to construct a phrase or sentence with the first letter of every word that represents the difficult spellings.
Like,
ARITHMETIC: A rat in the house may eat the ice cream.
BECAUSE: Big elephants can always understand small elephants.
LAUGH: Laughing aunts under green hats.
NECESSARY: Not every cat eats sardines. Some are really yummy.
2. Phonemes
The sounds of the letters which we pronounce are known as phonemes. There are 26 letters in the English alphabet. There are a total of 44 unique sounds that help us distinguish the meanings of the English alphabet. These unique sounds are further classified into vowel sounds and consonant sounds. We learn English spellings with the help of these sounds very easily.
For example, If we want to pronounce a ball, we will use the phoneme /b/, and then pronounce it as a ‘ball’.
3. Interactive Games
You can have some word games or spell games and make your child play with them. Accompany your child to play the games so he finds the games more interesting and you can also spend some quality time together.
Let’s say, you can make flashcards with spellings of various words and play them with your child.
4. Doodle Videos
As mentioned earlier, children learn visually more than theoretically. Doodle Videos are animated videos that are created for educational purposes. These videos have a voice-over on them, this helps a child learn spellings faster while enjoying the video.
5. Engaging activities
You need to make your child aware of the objects like it’s shape, colors, and size. Show him the objects and let him identify them for himself. This will help him memorize the objects and it’s spellings easily.
Takeaways
Now, you have understood how you can help your kids learn English spelling quickly. Observe how the objects you see around yourself and think about how you learn the spelling of that object. Help your child also look at the objects the same way.
Let me know what other ways you can adapt to help make your children learn spellings effortlessly.
Do you need more help to make your child learn spellings? Spellasaurus offers a Back to Basics English course for your child where they provide lectures for mnemonic sounds, phonemes along with engaging activities and downloadable worksheets with 2 live sessions as a Bonus. For more info, click here.