Spelling skills dramatically improve by reading a lot of material.
However, if you wish to improve your spelling in the least amount of time, it seems impractical to get involved in a reading crash course that would only make the task of enhancing your spelling knowledge tedious and exhausting.
The best alternative is to plan a daily routine aimed at developing your spelling proficiency.
It's true that some people seem to have a natural facility in spelling the trickiest of words, but that doesn't mean you can't reach their level. All it takes is some discipline on your part – devoting a few minutes a day to building a vocabulary that would help you not just in communicating orally but in writing as well.
An established amount of time each day devoted to homework or some other learning activity is important, as this may discourage a student from "forgetting" to bring home assignments and may also prevent rushing through assignments to, say, watch television (May, 2010).
In the same vein, devoting just a few minutes a day to improve your spelling skills will dramatically improve your spelling skills, especially when you take the time to track your progress regularly and routinely use and apply the words you have already mastered.
Making a habit of studying spelling independently is especially important for students past the primary grades as drills are no longer given in school.
You should therefore be resourceful enough to outline a daily plan to add new spelling words to your vocabulary, or at least make use of modern technology to help you create some structure for your spelling goals.
There are numerous resources on the Internet that can give you that needed push – weekly spelling plans, spelling quizzes, games, and other interesting websites.
You can also improve your spelling proficiency by downloading computer spelling programs such as the popular Ultimate Spelling software, which gives you the confidence to immediately use the new words you've mastered, as it gives not just a couple of usage examples, but as many as six for each word.
The learning curve is minimized because of the multisensory feature of the Ultimate Spelling software. Apart from reading the spelling words, the user also gets to listen to more than 20,000 audio pronunciations and view a host of images relevant to the word being studied.
This is invaluable as students learn differently – but, according to Silverman (2006), most teachers look for other problems such as ADD, oppositional behavior, or other types of learning disabilities when students 'don't get it', rather than acknowledge that there may be visual learners, as well as auditory learners.
When you make it a point to set aside even just 10 minutes a day for learning and mastering new words, you will be able to dramatically improve your spelling skills in just a month, especially if you take advantage of the tests and exercises incorporated in the software.
There's nearly no time wasted because once you've mastered certain words, they are no longer included in the exercises – providing you with the opportunity to absorb more concepts in the least amount of time.
References:
May, H 2010, A parent's guide to helping a child with homework, The Free Library, viewed 7 June 2010, .
Silverman, F 2006, Learning styles: want to have teachers reach every student? Think seeing, feeling, touching, District Administration, Norwalk, CT viewed 8 July 2010, .