Tomato or Tomatoe: How Not to Misspell in English

Why is the spelling affair an absolute issue that every student faces constantly? Such definition to this riddle could not always solve this same problem: how is it possible to even remember the correct spelling according to the kind of dialect (variety of the language) in use?

As students of a foreign language, it is necessary to memorise plenty of grammar rules and sometimes we do this exercise just by heart; hence, the sort of performance we may expect on it is not good enough and by the end of the day we become exhausted aftermath.

Studying by heart is not a solution, that´s why the following steps are a full requirement to bare in mind for foreign language students:

Firstly, being aware that studying a language is a new horizon for one´s mind would undoubtedly help you to understand how to think in another language, indeed. For instance, a personal introduction in all languages includes your name, surname, age, etc. And when the person´s age is explained in English, the verb ´be´ is utilised to say “I am twenty-four years old”. Unlike Spanish, the meaning of this sentences would include the primary verb “to have” to express the sensation that one can own the years of life: “I have twenty-four years”, and definitely that´s not correct at all. As a matter of fact, this is a clear example of being aware of languages thoughts by not taking into account your mother tongue for learning a foreign language.

Secondly, once you get the first step, then you will be enabled to recognise the second stage of languages. There exist cognitive patterns inside grammar. For example, words that end with “o” letter tends to be pluralised with the regular form “es” and not “s”, or every word containing double consonant will lack of diphthongs when being pronounced. These sort of “cognitive patterns” will undoubtedly help you to remember how English really works and there won´t be a need for studying it by heart.

Last but not least, phonetics represents a non-abstract pattern to be studied in order to see the morphological structure of the word. Simply speaking, you might hesitate as regards spelling with the word “necessary” – is it “necessary” or “neccesary”? – Just remember the rule of double consonant: it lacks of diphthongs but raises the intonation by the “stress” in the middle of these two consonants. It is easy to remember and it nearly applies for all the common words in English.

All in all, studying a new language is a challenge. Nonetheless, even though it is hard to acquire by studying it by heart, there are some grammar and phonetics rules that may encourage you not to give up. For once more, give it a chance!