Improve Your Spelling Mistakes

hi everybody welcome back to ask Alisha

the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer them

maybe first question this week comes from hardik patel hi Karthik Karthik

says how can i improve my spelling yeah this is an important question and we did

a livestream about this topic so I'll quickly introduce the key points we

talked about in the livestream and hopefully they can help you as kind of a

starting point so the first and most important thing to do to improve your

spelling is read and make sure that you read things that are properly edited

properly prepared so this means I don't recommend for example social media posts

because not everybody is preparing everything thoroughly before they write

it it's not being checked it's not being proof read before it's being posted so I

would recommend books and magazines and newspapers that kind of thing that has

been properly edited and properly checked this is important because you're

not just listening to the words you're actually reading the words you're

reading the words on the page so you're getting familiar with how the words

should be spelled instead of just how it sounds some other things that you can do

are word puzzles word puzzles are a lot of fun in the live stream I talked about

something called crossword puzzles crossword puzzles are word puzzles you

need to know some vocabulary words you also need to know some like history

perhaps or science or maybe pop culture and then you need to put your knowledge

together with your spelling knowledge to create like the finished version of a

puzzle so a crossword is really fun and you can find beginner level crossword

puzzles to try so as you practice as you learn more English and as you learn more

about other topics too you can level up the difficulty of your crossword puzzle

so that can be a fun way to do it another thing that you can do is join a

spelling contest depending on where you live you may have a spelling contest in

your city or in your country in the US we have something called the spelling

bee it's for kids yes so if you're watching

this in your kid if you are a young person who's studying you can look for a

spelling bee if you are in the USA or maybe there's a similar spelling contest

in your country so those are great ways to practice your spelling because it's a

contest you're competing with other people to spell the word correctly so

that can be a fun way to do things if you are a student if you are a young

person another thing you can do regardless of your age is watch English

media with subtitles so again like I mentioned for the reading point make

sure that the subtitles have been properly prepared if it's someone who

has like created subtitles that are maybe not perfect or they were prepared

by a non-native speaker there might be some errors in there so if you can try

to find media like movies or even our videos for example sometimes they have

subtitles you can try watching that with the subtitles on so that you can

understand the spelling of the words as they're being said so that's another fun

way to stetic I think really though I think reading is the best thing that you

can do this was something I love to do when I was a kid I participated in a

spelling bee when I was a kid and I think that reading really helped me

understand the correct way to spell words and to like learn how to identify

new words in the future so read I think that's the best thing you can do thank

you for your question and good luck with your spelling let's go to our next

question next question comes from noir as Lena hi Nora Nora says hi Alicia my

question is what is the difference between I'm looking and I've been

looking we use I'm looking for when we are in the act of searching for

something right now in this moment we're looking for something so for example at

like a department store you could say I'm looking for shoes I'm looking for

the restroom that's something that you're doing right now you're in the act

of doing something right now on the other hand I have been looking for is

used for something that yes we're searching for it but the search has

continued for a long time so for example I've been searching for a new apartment

for four months or I've been searching for a new job in general if you are in

the act of searching for something right now you can use I'm looking for if it's

something that you've been searching for for a period of time a long period of

time you can use I've been looking for I hope that helps you thanks for the

question all right let's move on to our next question next question comes from

Lian heigen Lian Lian says hi Alicia hope you're doing great thank you I have

two questions what are the rules of semicolons and when should I avoid them

is one and do in some languages a multiple-choice test is called an

American test so is it true that American tests are really mostly

multiple-choice interesting let's go to your first question about semicolons the

quick version is semicolons have two uses the first use is they are used to

separate what's called compound sentences a compound sentence is a

sentence that's made from two independent clauses so there are two

clauses two parts to the sentence an independent clause is a sentence that

can stand alone like we don't need any other words to explain this sentence

that's an independent clause so when we connect these two in a compound sentence

we can use a semicolon to connect it to you like right here so let's look at

some examples an independent clause is a clause that is grammatically correct by

itself no other words are required the semicolon is used to separate the two

clauses like a period we do this when the ideas are closely related

the second use is when you're separating items in a list this can be tricky to do

but the reason we do this is because when you're making lists that have like

lots of complicated information they include commas for example it may be

difficult to understand where the items in a list end or start so we use

semicolons to help readers understand the points in a list here's an example

this is a long list so I'm gonna read it the citizens requested a new park

complete with a swimming pool improved roads sidewalks and traffic lights and

cleaner schools we have a few plans for our vacation

hiking biking and swimming near our campsite having a BB Q and enjoying

fireworks so you can see in these lists actually all of the items have a

semicolon in between them that shows us that's one item so we do that because

there are commas in other parts of the list if we use commas to separate the

items in the list we might confuse the reader so to show that each item is

clearly one item we use semicolons to do that this is not as common like there

are not so many situations where you need to use a semicolon in this way but

just in case this is the second use in most cases we just use the first one you

don't need to avoid using the semicolon it's a very convenient way to punctuate

your sentences so you don't have to avoid it you can use it just remember

that you need to use it two separate independent clauses like we talked about

in the first news as for your second point that's very interesting I didn't

know the tests were called American tests that's interesting we do have a

lot of multiple-choice style tests for sure especially in like high school and

university levels for like official tests like embedding tees for example

however we do have other styles of tests too so we have fill-in-the-blank which I

use a lot on this channel in the whiteboard videos we also have like

essay essay tests or essay examinations for students write essays we also have

like free answers so a student has to come up with an answer like just from

their own mind or using their own skills we see that a lot in math classes for

example so yes there are a lot of multiple-choice tests but it doesn't

mean that all tests are multiple-choice just it is very common so I hope that

helps okay thanks for the questions let's move along to our next question

next question comes from we sit - hi again do we sorry if I pronounced your

name wrong I do he says what is the difference between below under

underneath beneath bottom and down nice okay there may be some differences

depending on the situation but generally speaking let's look at the first for

example as you presented we can use all of these adverbs in the

same way let's take a look at some examples I keep my hairdryer below the

sink I keep my hairdryer under the sink I keep my hairdryer underneath the sink

I keep my hairdryer beneath the sink all of these mean exactly the same thing the

differences here is that probably I would say under is the most commonly

used in American English beneath sounds perhaps the most formal and maybe the

most old-fashioned so you can use them all in the same way they refer to being

positioned under or like below something else so there's not really much of a

difference there I think we just use under the most the word bottom however

that's a noun that refers to the lowest part or like the underside of something

let's look at some examples there there's dirt on the bottom of my bag

he cut the bottom of the pumpkin so these refer to the underside or the

lowest point of something so it's an actual amount after then the last word

in this list is down so down it's also an adverb but down refers to motion so

we use down when we're actually talking about movement of some kind so for

example put your hand down or walk down the stairs he sat down in the chair so

we're using some kind of motion there's word there's something happening from

like an upper level to a lower level there's movements happening there so we

use down to express movement the first four words that we talked about are used

to talk about position not about movement down is used to talk about

movement bottom is used to talk about a place on something so I hope that helps

you thanks for the question okay so that's everything that I have

for this week thank you as always for sending your creative questions remember

you can send them to me in English class 101.com / ask - alicia if you liked the

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check us out at English class 101.com for some other resources for your

English Studies thanks very much for watching this week's episode and I will

see you again next week