Weekly English Words with Alisha - Commonly Misspelled Words

Welcome back to Weekly Words. My name is Alisha, and this week we're gonna talk about commonly

misspelled words. I'm excited about this because I like catching misspellings.

“Believe.” To “believe” something just means “to accept something as true,”

or not true in the negative. “Believe” is commonly misspelled? Do they spell it “belive”?

Well, “believe” is commonly misspelled. Don’t do that. So if you're having trouble

remembering the correct way to spell the word “believe,” consider that the word “lie”

is in the middle up the word, which is kind of counter-intuitive if you've been paying

attention to the Weekly Word series. If you're trying to persuade

a friend to do something, you might say, “Please believe me, this is gonna be the best party

ever! You have to come.”

The next is “a lot.” This is commonly misspelled because people like to put that

“a” and the “lot” together. It's actually two separate words “a” and “lot.”

“A lot” just means “a large number of something” or “a large amount of something.”

Uh, “many” of something in a sentence you might say something like, “I have a

lot of hobbies. I like skiing, snowboarding, and whitewater rafting.” So just spell them

separately. Don’t put it all together.

Oh, the next, aah… “There,” “their,” and “they’re.” Students of English tend

to be better about spelling these words than native speakers of English, and I find that

very interesting. The first “there,” T-H-E-R-E, refers to “a place,” as in, “He lives

over there.” “The book is over there.” Somewhere other than where you are right now.

The second form, T-H-E-I-R, is the possessive form of “they,” as in, “That’s their

house.” “That's their dog.” Something that belongs to some other group of people.

And the last form, T-H-E-Y-apostrophe-R-E, “they are,” refers to a quality about

another group of people as in, “They are the students.” “They are the teachers.”

It's the contracted form of “they are.”

Onward. The next word is “grateful.” “Grateful.” The meaning of “grateful” just means that

you are “appreciative” of something. In a sentence you might say, “Oh, I feel so

grateful my teacher took time after class to explain this concept to me.” Grateful

is commonly misspelled because this “G-R-A-T-E” sounds just like the word “great.” G-R-E-A-T.

But actually, that “great,” “good” meaning is not the correct spelling for this

word. We use “grate (G-R-A-T-E)” instead. This spelling of “grate” is also used

as a verb, as in to “grate” things in the kitchen. Umm...I don’t know if that

has any relation to this or not. Probably not. It’s G-R-A-T-E.

Next is “receive.” “Receive.” To “receive” something as a verb means umm… “to be

given something” or “to get something.” “Receive” can be kind of tricky because

of the “I” in the “E” place where the “I” before “E” except after “C”

rule applies. It's not a 100 percent true rule, but typically after the letter “C,”

if the letters “E” and “I” need to follow it after the letter “C,” “I”

is typically not the first letter to come. Usually it's “E” that’s the first letter.

So it should be C-E-I, “receive,” rather than “recieve.” Something like that. And

a sample sentence, you might say, “I received a gift from my friend on my birthday. I was

really happy about that.”

The next word is “end.” The word “end” is not very commonly misspelled. But thank

you for joining us for this episode of Weekly Words. Please watch your spelling with these

words, as it can be very important to get them right. Thanks again, and I will see you

next week. Bye-bye.