Improving your Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar
Here, we will focus on spelling, punctuation, and Grammar (SPAG). All are essential to completing your essays to a high standard and communicating effectively, from messages to emails. Infact, depending on your course, it can account for between 5 – 20% of your GCSE marks. This page will include methods and resources to enable you to improve these aspects of your writing skills.
Spelling
Below are a few tips on how to improve your spelling. You can also scroll down and click on the tabs for information and links.
Reading books, news websites, magazines, journals, or newspapers is a fun and interesting way to improve your spelling and vocabulary (check out the library’s Reading Collection).
Books (particularly fiction) will introduce you to new words and phrases, so the more you read, the more you learn. You can also watch films with subtitles. Reading subtitles of films is particularly beneficial if you are more of a visual person.
Here's the link to our Reading Collection below:
Reading - Reading Zone - LibraryOnline at Bradford College
Remember to note down new words as you read. You can search for their meaning in a dictionary or on the Internet.
Making a list of the words you either struggle to spell or don’t know their meaning is an excellent way to develop your spelling and understanding of them, and it will help you remember them.
Breaking a word down into small parts or “chunks” will make spelling easier. The “chunking” method will also help you remember large words.
E.g. Fortuitous > Fort uit ous
Unfortunately, not all words in English are spelled as they are pronounced, and simply breaking them down phonetically will not work. However, as around 75% of English words follow simple rules like using prefixes, doubling consonants, or plurals, you will improve your ability to spell simply by knowing the rules.
Click below for more information on spelling rules:
Spelling - Grammar - Cambridge Dictionary
5 Most Important Spelling Rules in English | Grammarly
Homophones are words that sound the same but have different meanings. Here are a few examples:
The past tense of read sounds like red, but you spell it as read.
There and their — their is a possessive pronoun - used when something belongs to someone or thing.
They’re – sounds similar to there and their but is a contraction of they are.
Knight and night.
Click below for more information.
https://youtu.be/LHJA5rZOyeU?si=RoYyW5AncQdN5lqj
The Ultimate Guide to Homophones | Grammarly Blog
Contractions List: When Should You Use Contractions? (thewritepractice.com)
Grammar Help: Affect Vs. Effect (thewritepractice.com)
Play games like Scrabble, crosswords, and word searches.
Click below for some free online word games.
Word Games - Play word games for free on Wordgames.com
Punctuation 
Good punctuation in your essays and writing, allows you to communicate your message effectively to the reader, without any misunderstanding. Punctuation uses symbols to separate words and gives words and sentences meaning, for example, speech marks tell the reader that someone is talking, and a Question Mark tells them you are asking a question. These symbols effectively remove doubt and offer clarity to the reader about what you are communicating in your text.
Here are some useful pages below
Here are some resources to improve your Grammar below.
