The English Spelling & Alphabet

• Can you spell your name, please?
• That's D A N I E L
• Ok, thank you very much.

Spelling is an everyday language activity and it's even more common in English, simply because of the number of irregularities. That's why spelling contests are so typical in any English-speaking country.

Here're some notes about SPELLING for you to introduce this useful topic and learn a bit more about the crazy English Spelling.

Further practice about spelling:

• The English Alphabet. (videos)
• Phonemic Chart by the BBC.
• English Grammar in Use: Spelling theory.
• Advanced Listening about hyphens [.pdf, audio, transcript]

Learning languages by using them

"I hear and I forget
I listen and I remember
I do and I understand."
                (Chinese proverb)
As you can read through the proverb below, learning English is more like doing something: speaking, listening, writing, reading and so on, trying to use English in everyday situations as much as possible, and pretending that nothing is wrong. On the contrary, we learn by  mistakes, but I'd like to treat errors and mistakes as a part of our learning process, like something natural and normal of human beings. So, do not panic about your mistakes and please just learn through them all. Here're some common mistakes at EOI Basic.

Finally, as Luke Thompson says in his blog: Luke's English Blog: Are you a good learner of English?