Yesterday morning one of my students couldn’t answer a sentence completion question during our SAT prep. The reason? It wasn’t that he didn’t know the meaning of the correct answer. He also had a pretty good self-created definition of the word he was looking for, so that wasn’t the problem. So why couldn’t he arrive at the right answer? He couldn’t read his options correctly; he didn’t recognize the word epitome. “What’s an eh pih tome?” he asked.

So what? So the dude can’t spell and he’s losing SAT points because of it!

Let’s talk about some moments when spelling matters on the SAT.

For starters, like epitome, some words in our language simply aren’t read easily with straightforward phonics. Sometimes you may fall prey to the sheer difficulty of a given word (e.g. colonel, hor d’oeuvres, eyrie) and sometimes you may find yourself in an SAT-induced panic that trips up your normally stellar reading that leads to mistakes on words like connoisseurs, leisure, or suede. Either way, if you know the material and don’t earn a point because you can’t spell you’re going to freak out when you get your score back.

Some homophones matter, too. Now, granted there aren’t a lot of really heavy duty English words that sound the same, but they’re out there.  For example: raise and raze. One means to build up or take to a higher level, the other means to flatten or demolish. Which is which? Look it up here.

Spelling also matters deeply when you don’t know the meaning of words you’ve come across. Granted, many words in our language aren’t built from roots, but many are. If you understand roots, understand connections between spellings of different words, then you can start to pick apart the meanings of words you’ve never seen before simply because of their spelling. You can get the general idea of the meanings of words like anthropomorphism, convivial, and antediluvian just from their components. However, if you don’t understand how those words are composed, how they’re built from little bits of meaningful pieces, well, you’re probably outta luck.

Finally, you may have noticed that when you’re putting an actual #2 pencil to paper there is no spell check, which can be a real handicap when you’re wanting to jazz up your essay with vocabulary you have so studiously applied to memory. (If you’re going to do those 5,000 flash cards, you may as well put the material to use.) If you take a stab at connoisseurs on the test and don’t realize you’ve spelled it conossores (or whatever), it may not matter much to you, but the grammar‘gician who’s reading your essay REALLY CARES. Don’t distract your reader with flagrant mistakes.

Ok, so what do we do? We learn to spell. How? Well, I, for one, have become very good friends with merriam-webster.com. I love their site! You get all the sub definitions of a word right there, which is great since I think you should read the secondary, tertiary, and quaternary definitions of a word and understand them. They also have a super pronunciation button that will read words to you in instances of confusion. I promise you that, even now, when I find words I don’t know in a book I take the time to look them up. You should too.

Take the English language seriously! Look at it, observe it; don’t just read it. Your writing for the rest of your life will thank you.

Extra Bonus Bit (some words that are tricky that you should commit to memory):

Epitome  haranguing  connoisseurs   hors d’oeuvres   eulogy  eulogize  chandelier   colonel   leisure   suede  concierge   cologne  eyrie   misled   raise   raze