Daily Prompt: Dictionary Shmictioanary

Time to confess: tell us about a time when you used a word whose meaning you didn’t actually know( or were very wrong about it, in retrospect).

I have noticed even the most educated people have used these words inaccurately, e.g , (to, too, two) (lose, loose,) and (there, their and they’re).

Even though the above words do not seem difficult, yet they are used incorrectly. One example is :it looses its value.

In the above sentence looses is incorrect, it should have been loses. I think if we think about the pronunciation of these words we’d be able to use them correctly.

Loses has a z sound whereas loose has an s sound.

I try to use simple words when I write my posts.

……………………………… 🙂

Weekly writing challenge:A Lost Art

Tell us about a lost art: one that you know ,one that you miss, or one that should be lost for good.

In my first year of teaching I found among other books in language arts, they also  had a   speller. It had around thirty lessons, in each lesson there were twenty  words the kids had to learn how to spell , every Friday they were given a spelling test, most kids spelled all of them correctly, there were a few who did not.

Besides the spelling words there were words that sounded the same but the meaning was different e.g there,their, they’re; to,too,two, by,buy,bye and many others. There were sentences with fill in the blanks for kids, they had the similar sounding words, they were asked to fill in the right word.

There were words where the root words were given the children were required to add ed or ing to the root word.

The kids were encouraged to write stories or poems using the words they learned that week.

The book had everything which helped the kids to learn about capital letters ,periods,and so on.

I felt it was a wonderful way of encouraging the kids to write.

These spellers were used for kids from grades one to eight, they were numbered from book one to eight. The parents complained their child was having trouble learning to spell twenty words each week.

I thought learning  to spell twenty words in one week was not that much of a challenge, yet there were parents who constantly complained.

The Department of Education suddenly decided to take away the spellers from the course, this hasty decision back fired because the kids coming up the grades could not spell even the simple words.

I felt it was a wrong decision made by the school board and the department of education.

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