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4.5
It's great to see a book that explains ways/strategies to help learn, improve and remember spellings. For example, building words with prefixes and suffixes, and their meanings; knowing spelling rules; noticing letter patterns; using memory tricks, syllable breakdown, etc. But it's a brief look at these strategies and is more of a quick "easy" reference guide rather than an in-depth one. It's useful for both native and ESL speakers.The key chapter is "Patterns and building blocks". This explains how words are built with prefixes and suffixes and how understanding and noticing these helps your spelling. I love the section on the meaning of some prefixes (little words we add to the beginning of words to change the meaning), and suffixes (endings). "The prefix 'auto' means 'self' - autograph, autobiography, automobile. The prefix 'mal' means 'bad' or 'badly' - malpractice, malformed, maladministration". "The suffix ARY means 'related to' - cautionary, revolutionary, documentary".There are useful lists of words with endings that are easily misspelt (able/ible, ant/ent, sion/tion), but, unfortunately, the book is too small to go into how to remember these with memory tricks. For more information about using memory tricks to remember these key letter patterns, more about spelling strategies, and how words are built check out -Joanne Rudling's Spelling Strategies & Secrets: The essential how to spell guideShireen Shuster's Spelling Essentials: Pupil's BookAnd for teacher's - Sally Raymond's Spelling Rules, Riddles and Remedies: Advice and activities to enhance spelling achievement for allThe next chapter is a brief look at spelling rules. For example, the Y to i rule, adding ly, adding 'k' to ic endings, doubling the end consonant rule, making plurals, etc. Again, it's a quick overview of the rules with examples. For more of a detailed look at spelling rules try Joanne Rudling's Spelling Rules WorkbookThere is a short chapter on "Tips for learning hard words" which discusses using mnemonics (memory tricks) Look, Say Cover Write, Check method, syllable breakdown and noticing word families.Other chapters include: "Silent Letters", "Single and double letters", "Words with foreign spelling patterns", and "Confusable words", "False friends", and "Other commonly misspelt words", which has lists of problem words with some memory tricks to help remember them.As the back cover says: "Easy to use", "Easy to read", "Easy to understand" and "shows how language is really used." This is a neat little reference book, but for a more in-depth look at spelling strategies, and spelling rules then also try the books linked above.
