How do you say 🙂 in English? Easy, right? But, how do you spell it? Well, that is easier.
🙂 is spelled S-M-I-L-E.
Spelling words is the easiest thing in the world, but to spell a word you need to know the alphabet. Do you know it? The alphabet for English-speaking countries consists of 26 letters, 5 vowels (a, e, i, o, u) and 21 consonants. As opposed to Spanish speaking countries, in English the letter “Ñ” doesn’t exist.
Here you have a list of the vowels, consonants and their pronunciation:
When you ask someone to spell a word for you, they will only give you the letters, one by one, of how that word is written. Another example:
😀 is spelled L-A-U-G-H.
The spelling and the pronunciation of the word “Laugh” are very different, but don’t worry about the pronunciation now, we will revise that in another post 😉 .
Just like with the question “How do you say…?”, the question “How do you spell…?” can be used at any given moment during our lives. We can be very advanced English language learners, but there will always be words we don’t know the meaning of or we don’t know how to write.
For example, do you know the English word for “ciempiés”? (By the way, that last question is another way to ask “How do you say…?” 😉 )
Now that you know the English word for “ciempiés”, and the pronunciation of the alphabet, are you able to spell “CENTIPEDE“?
Remember, when we spell a word, we say one by one the letters that the word is written with.
How would you spell the following words?
Aurora, Einstein, Indoors, Oportunity, University.
Did you know there’s this game called “Spelling Bee” that consists of participants spelling words in various levels of difficulty? This game is mostly played in kindergarten and the early grades in elementary school, both in the US and Mexico. Teachers use it to help kids learn vocabulary, but its main purpose is to help them learn the alphabet faster.
Do you have any words you didn’t know and asked someone to spell them for you? Have you ever played “Spelling Bee”? Is this type of learning games played in your country? What other purpose do you think the “Spelling Bee” game has?
Share your answers and thoughts in the coments!
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