Andrew Rutter, France, UK citizen
Barbara Race (below) is correct. I taught dysfunctional secondary age children before I left the UK and learning similar spellings for tests certainly works for those who will work towards tests or can be bribed with rewards. Others will benefit from repeated usage and revision. The problem is that you have to adapt your teaching style to your audience, so what works today may not work tomorrow. You need a bank of strategies.

Sonia Rivera, Puerto Rico
The best thing to do is to use those spelling words in different activities. For example; play games with your students using the words, spelling bees help a great deal, specially if you're rewarding the students. Games and activities should depend on grade and level.

Pathi, India
Make the students understand the fun of reading the words through syllables and ask them to read as much as possible any reading material and listen to English programmes on TV and radio.

Jagdish, India
It is always a difficult job to learn spellings, but this can be made easier by following the simplest learning rule i.e. revision. Students should be clearly told spellings are not learnt by cramming only. All the efforts made in this way are totally a time waste if the learner does not understand the importance of revision. The most effective way of learning a spelling is to revise on a regular interval. Spelling once learnt should be revised at the intervals of one day, two days, one week, two weeks and one month. This type of controlled revision can help a lot. Another way to learn spelling is the achievement test. In this test, not the representatives but all the spellings which have been learnt by the learner, should be tested. This test can be taken either in the form of dictation or by giving written test containing phonetic transcriptions of the words which spellings are need to be tested.

Jean Stocker, Germany
Try getting hold of a copy of 'Teaching English Spelling' by Ruth Shemesh and Sheila Waller. There are some really good tips in this book which also helps pronunciation. You can also try and put words into shaped boxes, i.e. information where the 'f and the 't' are higher than the other words. As Chinese is a'graphic' language, perhaps you could work more with pictures and words.

Barbara Race, France resident / UK citizen
I have only recently become an ELT teacher and for twenty-five years I taught infants. The current thoughts on teaching spelling in primary schools when I left UK in 2001 was to teach groups of words with the same spelling together i.e. all the '-ight' words and then to go straight on to the list of words with the same sound, as that, but with different spelling. Learning words for spelling tests was also back in fashion.

Jafar Ali, Afghanistan
I think the best way to learn the spelling of some complicated words or some words that are hard to learn the spelling is saying a word for every letter of them, next making sentence from the words for example: Leicester = lions eat ice cream every Saturday, tigers eat rabbit.

Nikki Gower, Thailand
'i before 'e' except after 'c' is a rule that has always stayed with me and is one I pass on to my students. It helps explain the differences with words like 'believe' and 'receive' where you have similar sounds.

Dick Bird, Australia
Remember native speakers have problems with spelling as well. Try analysing the mistakes to see which aspect of spelling they are having problems with; for example, do they frequently confuse 'r' and 'l'? This is L1 interference for speakers of Chinese (Italians would confuse 'ee' and 'i'). It also suggests they are using the sound to guess the spelling, which is actually quite a good strategy. They may behaving difficulties with doubling of consonants - this is complicated by the fact that US and UK spelling has different rules. There's no easy answer, just practice, repetition and reading. David Rose (University of Sydney) suggests spelling out words according to the spoken syllable, e.g. S,Y,LL - A - B,L,E. This worksespecially well with students who have strong oral skills.

Charanjit Singh, India
Spellings are difficult to learn and you will often run out of innovations. You could try a few rules that I have learnt:

1. Teach them the basics like 'i' before 'e' except after 'c' (and exceptionslike 'weird' ).
2. Give out lots of examples of commonly confused words and words misspelt (except / accept / expect, lightning / lightening) and scores of such words. It's agood place to introduce homophones!!!
3. Make sure you spell out the new or difficult words that come up in class. Use the board or check back from one or two students.
4. If the class is really weak, you could have a five minute dictation everyday. Ask them to rewrite the mistakes ten / twenty times.
5. Tell them how the spelling of a word changes according to the part of speech it represents (advice / advise, device / devise).
I hope this helps!!!

Tabinda Urooj Samdani, Pakistan
To make my students pronounce or learn the spellings of a certain word lets say 'ostentatious', I break up the word and write it down on the white board i.e. os - ten - ta - tious, and then ask them to learn it in pieces. They love the activity and it mostly works.

Shanti, India
An innovative English teacher was teaching the word 'assassination' to her class 3 students. She was singing a song "Donkey, donkey, me, country" and children were repeating and she explained later: Donkey = ass, donkey = ass, me = i, country = nation.

That makes it assassination. Isn't it interesting? I am sure children would remember it lifelong!!!