Most college students can write their essays without making spelling mistakes. Though, this doesn’t necessarily mean that they will never commit mistakes in the future when writing essays. Even the brightest students make mistakes as they try to rush and meet the deadline during exams.
Have you ever committed a spelling mistake for a word you know how it’s spelled? It happens, and it’s more common amongst college students who don’t engage in different techniques to improve their spelling.
Improving your spelling with essay writing
Essay writing is one of the most effective ways to improve your spelling. You need to practice with different topics to build your vocabulary and improve your essay’s mistakes. If you have alternative words to use in a certain context, you should never risk writing a word you don’t understand. Take time and search the internet for various topics you can write essays on. Whenever you have time, write at least one essay a day or two and read through it to check for mistakes.
Reading essays written by professionals on different sites also helps to improve your spelling. The best approach would be to search for a topic and write an essay about it before reading the essay. As a student, you can search for free essays on Paperap depending on your interest. This will help you get unstuck in the spelling mistakes related to words used in the context. It will help improve your essay writing, and you will get great comments from your teacher, and which translates to great education grades.
There are several tips that you can use to improve your spelling through essay writing, and they include.
Cross-checking your work on spell checkers
Spell Checkers are computer programs that check the words in a text and highlight all words incorrectly spelled as per the list of words stored in the database. Instead of reading through a lengthy essay, you can use spell checkers to check for any incorrectly spelled words.
Jot down words you wrote incorrectly and try to write them again without checking. The more you practice, the more you will find it easier to write different words.
Use a good dictionary
Good spellers do not depend on memory aids alone to memorize difficult words. They rely on the latest version of a dictionary, which is available both online and in print. Some instructors have strong convention preferences, while others accept any spelling.
Standard dictionaries identify all spelling conventions and variants, but the Canadian ones have preferred Canadian spellings. A dictionary meant for English language learners can be helpful for non-English speakers. They give more details and often many examples of words to help students choose words appropriately.
Use mnemonics to remember spellings
When you try to remember information with meaning, it becomes easier, and this process is called mnemonic. Mnemonic turns information into a sentence, a rhyme, a picture, or anything easy to remember. Songs and rhymes make words easy to remember.
Another way to remember is by converting each letter into a word. Consider “rhythm.” To memorize, just remember the sentence ‘rhythm helps your two hips move’. If you have difficulty with spelling, this can be a great and fun way to memorize them. Turn words into nonsensical sentences, and in no time, you will memorize them.
Learn a few rules
For some people, learning rules works best for them. If you are one of them, start with just a few, and as you go along, you can learn more rules. If you make this a habit, before long, you will master most of the words. The basic rules can be found online. There is no need to learn them all but start with a few, learn to understand them and move along.
Instead of writing on a piece of paper, type
To improve your spelling, type instead of writing on paper with a pen. Most computers have built-in autocorrect features that automatically correct wrongly spelled words and highlight all wrongly spelled words. When you write your essay on paper, it will be very challenging to highlight mistakes. When they are autocorrected, you can see how the words are spelled, unlike when written on paper.
Be aware of exceptions
When writing your essay, you need to pay detailed attention to the highlighted spelling exceptions. Remember that there are words that break the English spelling rules. These follow a specific pattern or keep their spellings from their original languages. Most old English words are challenging to learn without memorizing. You must ensure that you understand the difference between British and American spellings.
Keep track of tricky words
It’s normal to face challenges with some words. This doesn’t mean that these are hard to spell or memorize. Some are just challenging to spell, depending on how they are pronounced.
Tricky ones vary from one person to the other and depend mainly on one’s ability to memorize disparate words. Note down all the ones that you face difficulty, not limited to the ones that have unusual spelling for learning convenience.
Why spelling is important
There are several reasons you need to improve your spelling in your essay writing. Correct use improves your grammar, and this translates to better communication. Spelling is closely related to your overall literacy, and readers can easily use it to gauge your literacy levels. Words have different meanings, and the correctness will ensure that your work is interpreted correctly.
During job hunting, the impression of your introductory letter depends on how correctly you have used several words. Remember that tolerance for typos is low, especially on printed materials. It makes you look cheap and careless.
Conclusions
Writing an essay plays a vital role in improving your spelling. Pay attention to the tricky words, be aware of the exceptions and cross-check your work on spell checkers. Correct spelling improves your grammar and allows you to communicate effectively. You will not be misunderstood, and you will show that you have great literacy levels.
