200 Tricky Spellings in Cartoons: Visual Mnemonics for Everyone - Tapa blanda

It’s fun. Most books about spelling have an uncanny way of making readers switch off after the first couple of pages. This book will make you smile, and laugh out loud in places. It brings situational humour to learning.

It’s easy. You’ll learn to spell 200 tricky words in a fun, intelligent and virtually effortless way. You are not being offered a structured spelling programme but a reference manual; you can dip in and out of any place in the book as often as you like.

It’s practical. The black-and-white cartoon format lets you photocopy pages and use highlighters and colouring pens to create your own spelling artwork that you can enjoy while enhancing your learning. By using your hands and brain, you become an active speller.

Each tricky to spell word is a cartoon that helps you connect the word’s meaning and graphical features with its spelling pattern. The spelling hints are visual mnemonics, i.e. memory triggers that help us remember things we easily forget, for example tricky spellings. We can readily recall mnemonics because of their funny and unusual associations with things that are part of our daily lives. Best of all, mnemonics require almost no effort to learn.

The book is structured around:

• Confusing pairs of words, e.g. homophones or words that ‘go together’

• Tricky everyday words

• Tricky formal/academic words

This book is for anyone who wants to improve their spelling skills. It was written with older children and adults in mind; adult guidance is recommended for younger children.

The spelling method is very popular with visual learners and those with dyslexia – the two groups that are not always compatible with traditional spelling instruction at school. Lidia Stanton has been successfully using it with her own students for well over a decade.

Visual mnemonics have been found to particularly benefit those who:

• prefer to learn by seeing and doing

• have tried traditional spelling strategies (e.g. Look, Cover, Write, Check), or breaking words into sounds and syllables, but with limited success

• have dyslexia or other specific learning difficulty

• are students of English as a Foreign/Second Language (EFL/ESOL)

• simply enjoy having fun with words.

Lidia Stanton is a teacher, study skills tutor, dyslexia specialist, psychologist and linguist. She has taught literacy and study skills to children, college and university students, and adults in the workplace. Lidia enjoys writing on the subjects of psychology, education and dyslexia, and has been named a Quora Top Writer for 2016. Her ideas have been published in Times, Forbes, Quartz, Medical Daily and The Independent.