How do you spell these words: achieve or acheive? travelling or traveling? recomend or recommend?

Please write your answers in the comments box at the end of the article.

So, in this article, IELTS Game will speak about spelling and its importance for the IELTS test, rules, mistakes, and the differences between British and American accents in this topic.

Why spelling is important in English language?

There is no doubt that knowledge of spelling rules is crucial for the IELTS Writing section, as 25% of your score depends on it (correct spelling is a part of the assessment criteria “Lexical Resource”).

For example, to get a Band 8, the candidate needs to “produce rare errors in spelling and/or word formation”.

But for a Band 6, the candidate may “make some errors in spelling and/or word formation, but they do not impede communication”.

Besides the Writing part, spelling is highly important for the Listening and Reading sections.

There are no special assessment criteria in these parts of the test.

But you must keep in mind that if you misspell the answer in your Listening or Reading answer sheets, it will be considered as wrong, and you will lose points.

Common spelling mistakes in IELTS Writing

Some spelling rules are always broken by IELTS examinees. I decided to make a list of the most common mistakes that candidates make during the IELTS test.

I hope you will pay more attention to your spelling and will try to avoid the following errors.

1. Double consonants

Very often candidates mix up single and double consonants that occur nearby in a word. For example:

Correct – Wrong
across   –  accros

process – procces

parallel – paralell

professor – proffesor

Some words have two pairs of double consonants. Don’t forget to write all the consonants!

• success
• possess
• access
• embarrass
• accommodation
• assess
• address

2. Unstressed vowels

These mistakes mostly occur in the Listening part.

When you hear a word with an unstressed syllable, sometimes it can be difficult to say what vowel should be written in the syllable as in most cases it is pronounced like [ə] (the schwa). For example:

• capable [‘keipəbl]
• temperature [‘tempritʃə]
• relevant [‘relivənt]
• category [‘kætigəri]
• performance [pə’fɔ:məns]
• achieve [ə’tʃi:v]
• etc.

3. Different form

When a noun becomes an adjective, or a verb becomes a noun, some suffixes can be added or some consonants may change.

It leads to a number of different mistakes too. You must remember the rules of changing forms:

• benefit > beneficial;
• influence > influential;
• maintain > maintenance
• pronounce > pronunciation
• occur > occurred
• begin > beginning
• success > succeed
• process > proceed
• etc.

4. Silent letters

In some English words, there are letters that are not pronounced, but you mustn’t miss them in writing:

• column, autumn – n is not pronounced
• science, discipline, descend – sc are pronounced as one sound
• excite, excellent, exception – c is not pronounced