A Welcome Message from the Principle

Oops! I am delighted to be sharing my daughter’s excitement as she prepares to head off to university. She has been getting lots of things through the post, including A Welcome Message from the Principle of her college. Principle?? My children say that I am pedantic when it comes to punctuation and spelling but even I was surprised to see a spelling mistakes in the first line  of her university booklet! Words like ‘principal’ and ‘principle’ are a nightmare for British students as well as international students and of course things like spellcheckers may not pick them up. But there are some simple spelling rules that you can use to help you in your spelling on a day to day basis.  I have always found sayings like: ‘i before e except after c’  very useful (so you know how to spell ‘believe’ and ‘receive’). And I learnt whole sentences as a child to remember difficult spellings: Big Elephants Are Ugly Take It From Uncle Len (beautiful!). I’ve found a handy little spelling guide with seven useful rules on it fitting nicely onto one side of an A4 page. Print it out and put it over your desk! Teachers – print it onto an A3 sheet and stick on it your classroom wall. The Cambridge Vocabulary for IELTS by Pauline Cullen Spelling Rules is here.