Pronunciation and spelling oddities

Abi | Oct 13, 2025Oct 21, 2025

LESSON OVERVIEW

The main objectives of this ESL lesson on pronunciation and spelling are to:

• talk about pronunciation and spelling;
• discuss and watch a funny video about silent letters in English;
• practise words with challenging spelling and pronunciation.

Students discuss pronunciation and spelling challenges, make predictions and watch a video where a stand-up comedian jokes about a feature of pronunciation. They talk about silent letters, engage in a dictation exercise and explore tricky spelling and pronunciation words (e.g. debut, genre, bouquet). Students also work with rhyming words, find and correct spelling mistakes and chat about several topics, using the target words from the lesson.

WARM-UP AND VIDEO

This ESL lesson on pronunciation and spelling starts with a warm-up. Students read points related to pronunciation and spelling challenges (e.g. a word you are never sure how to spell) and give some examples. Afterwards, they watch a video where a stand-up comedian jokes about the abundance of silent letters in English. Students watch the first part of the video and say what the joke is about. Then, the comedian imagines a special day to celebrate this language feature and students guess his suggestions using words with silent letters. Finally, they watch the second part of the video to check their predictions. Following that, students discuss questions about silent letters in English and other languages. 

PRONUNCIATION AND SPELLING PRACTICE

In this part of the ESL lesson on pronunciation and spelling, students do a dictation exercise and write down sentences containing words with common pronunciation-spelling mismatches (e.g. colonel, lieutenant, coup, mnemonic). They then get a card with the correct sentences and check if they have made any mistakes. After that, students match words from the dictation with their definitions. Moving on, they look at words from the previous tasks and discuss questions about tricky word pronunciation, spelling and origin. Following that, students finish sentences about different situations using a rhyming word. They also use the words and phrases from the previous exercise. Then, students find and correct spelling mistakes in various sentences (e.g. A coup can sometimes be justified if a government fails.). Finally, they choose three of the previous sentences to discuss.

HOMEWORK/REVISION

This ESL lesson on pronunciation and spelling also includes an additional task that you can use as homework or revision. In the task, students cross out the incorrect word in a collocation. They then finish the sentences with their own ideas. The task is available in the teacher’s version of the worksheet. You can print it and hand it out to your students. It’s also included in the e-lesson plan.

WORKSHEETS

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