A GRADED LIST OF COMMON WORDS DIFFICULT TO SPELL COMPILED BY JAMES H. PENNIMAN, INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH IN THE DE LANCEY SCHOOL. BOSTON, U. S. A. D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS. 1899 PREFACE. Many thoughtful educators agree on the following points with regard to spelling : 1. That numerous difficult words are so unusual that one may be pardoned reference to a dictionary on the rare occasions when he needs to use them. It is a waste of a child's mental energy to make him learn to spell words like chameleon and adipocere, as long as he spells which with a tand together with an a. 2. That many words are so easy that they may be learned from general reading by the process of unconscious absorption. 3. That words should be arranged "so as not to bring together a number of words of the same combination, and thereby," as W. T. Harris, United States Commissioner of Education, well says, "paralyze the memory, as is too frequently the case in the lists given in spelling-books, which, for example, collect in one lesson the words ending in tion, or tain, or ture, or cious, etc., thus giving to the pupil by the first word that is spelled a key to all that follow." Words of the same combination of letters can be learned, no doubt, in a short time, but school examinations show that by this arrangement no lasting impression is made on the mind. (iii) 4. That, as the practical use of spelling is in connection with writing, most spelling exercises should be written. 5. That it is manifestly absurd to learn how to spell a word of whose meaning and pronunciation one is ignorant. The compiler of the following spelling-list believes that concentration on those words, that experience shows are most frequently misspelled, is the only means of remedying the bad spelling that has been termed justly the reproach of American schools. The ability to write our mother tongue correctly should be the first requisite of a good education. The following practical suggestions have proved useful in the class-room : It is well to make the written spelling lessons so short that accuracy and thoroughness may be insisted upon. A fixed proportion of the perfect mark should be deducted for each misspelled word. This proportion should be made so great that ten words missed in a lesson of twenty-five or fifty will give a failure for the exercise. Instead of having the books in which the spelling exercise has been written exchanged and corrected by the pupils, it is better, where possible, that the exercise be corrected by the teacher, as the confusion likely to be made in the mind of the learner by the sight of words misspelled by another is thus avoided. Each mistake should merely be checked, and at the next exercise the pupil should write the word correctly opposite the error. He should also enter the word in a small note-book kept for the purpose, and these words should be reviewed every week or two in addition to the regular lesson, the fixed amount being deducted for each one misspelled. It would be well to have every member of the class always prepared to spell correctly the words that he has missed from the beginning of the term. A reputation for bad spelling is usually gotten by the habitual misspelling of a comparatively small number of words, so that much importance should be attached to these individual reviews of misspelled words. They can be recited most quickly orally, the pupils being called up one by one after the class has written the lesson for the day. While each is reciting his review, the rest of the class may be employed profitably in writing out an exercise or story showing the appropriate use of those words in the lesson that are most difficult to define. A few of these exercises should be read afterward and commented on by the teacher and the class. They will be found to show clearly mistakes that could not be so easily detected in any other way, such as: "I killed a zeal." "He made an acquiesce of his fault." |