Mastering Spelling (AQA GCSE English Language)

Although spelling is a tricky skill to master, the great news is that you can improve your spelling quickly. There are lots of tricks and tips to ensure you’re hitting the top levels of the GCSE mark scheme. Find out some of the best spelling strategies, as recommended by experts.

Does spelling matter in GCSE English Language?

All English Language exams assess students on SPaG (Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar) as it is worth around 20 percent of the total marks in the GCSE. 

How do I improve my GCSE spelling?

Different people find different techniques can help improve their spelling, so it’s important to try to find strategies that work for you so you can score high marks without memorising the spellings of hundreds of words. Here are some spelling strategies that we recommend: 

Read in your free time

If you can set aside a few minutes each day to read, you will become more familiar with the spellings of different words. Try to be more curious about the words as you read: if you don’t know the meaning of a word, look up the definition. Create a spelling log of all of these new words, and test yourself at a later date. How many new words can you spell confidently? 

“I” before “e”, except after “c”

Learning specific rules, like this one, can also help improve your spelling. The rule means that when the letters “i” and “e” appear next to each other in a word, the letter “i” usually comes first (for example, in the word “Priestley”), except when the two letters follow the letter “c”, when the letter “e” comes first (such as in the word “receive”). 

The rule isn’t true for every word featuring these letters, but it can be a helpful reminder.

Mnemonics

A mnemonic is a device that helps you remember something. Mnemonics usually contain the letters of the tricky word in a memorable phrase. For example:

Necessary: one coffee (one c) and two sugars (ss)

Separate: there’s always “a rat” in separate

Rhythm: rhythm helps your two hips move

Try making your own mnemonics to help you remember the spellings of tricky words. Alternatively, if you’re a visual learner, try creating visual links from a tricky word to an image.

Focus on your own tricky words

Testing yourself is another great strategy to improve your spelling, but test yourself only on words that you find difficult to spell — learn 5 or 10 tricky words every week if you can.

Using ambitious vocabulary

To get top marks for SPaG, you need to be accurate in your spelling, punctuation and grammar, but you also get awarded marks for attempting to use “ambitious” vocabulary in your own writing. Here, “ambitious” means words that are more complex than those you might use in everyday speech or subject-specific words. 

A great way to show examiners that you can use “ambitious” vocabulary is to learn some complex words that work well in any GCSE English Language writing assignment. For example, most GCSEs will ask you to write persuasively, so learning how to spell words like “revolutionise” or “extraordinary” (“If we decide as a society to revolutionise schools, the results will be extraordinary”) will mean you can use them with confidence in the exam. 

Matching your vocabulary to tone

Another way you can gain SPaG marks without worrying too much about accuracy is to make sure that all your vocabulary (some of it “ambitious”, hopefully!) matches the tone, style and audience of your writing. This ensures that all of your writing is logical and coherent. If you don’t do this, your answer can feel unplanned or random. For example, if you are describing a spooky woodland scene in a creative writing task, then it wouldn’t be appropriate to describe the clouds as looking “like marshmallows”. This is because the positive connotations of “marshmallows” don’t properly reflect the eerie mood you are trying to create. 

Common spelling mistakes at GCSE

Homophones

Homophones are words that sound the same but mean different things. They are very common errors in GCSE English Language exams, so try to learn the right word for the right context. Some common mistakes are:

Commonly misspelled words

Here are some of the most commonly misspelled words at GCSE that may be useful to use in the English Language exam:

American spellings

Don’t forget to use British English when you sit your GCSE English Language exam, as this is specified by all the exam boards. This means that you should use British vocabulary rather than American (“pavement”, rather than “sidewalk”) and the British spelling of words (so s rather than z in “analyse” rather than “analyze”).

Top tips for the GCSE exam

• Check over your work at the end of your exam and correct any mistakes you can spot

• Ensure that you spell any words from the question or task correctly

• Use words from the reading sources in your own writing

• Be ambitious with your vocabulary: aim to use complex, but appropriate, words throughout your writing

• Ensure that you are fairly confident with the spelling of any ambitious words you use — to avoid mistakes, try to use words you can spell correctly 

• Make sure that all vocabulary you use is appropriate for the tone, style and audience of the piece of writing you have been set

• Focus on learning the spellings of words you find difficult, rather than learning a set list of general terms

• Find the spelling strategies that work for you

Sources

The UK government’s Department for Education GCSE English Language assessment objectives

Education Endowment Fund’s guidance on literacy in secondary schools