Apply Knowledge of Structure of Words to Help Spelling

Morphology is the study of the structure of words, or how they are built up.

If we know how a word is formed, it can help us to understand its meaning and how to spell it.

Sometimes, the meaning of a word can be more helpful than how it sounds when we are working out how to spell it.

Look at the following sentence.

There was a southerly wind, so they sailed home quickly.

The word southerly contains the root word south even though it is pronounced differently. If we know this, we can simply add the suffixes -er and -ly to spell the whole word.

Now look at this sentence:

There was a lot of media publicity when the King visited our school.

The word publicity sounds like it should be spelt publisity, but it is based on the root word public. Knowing this helps us to spell it properly.

In this activity, you can practise spelling words that are based on a root word but may be pronounced differently.

Let's have a go.