Two students were sitting on the playground. One said to the other “Hippopotamus is a long word. How do you spell it with two letters?” The other said, “I don’t know.” The first one said “IT”.
This is an old joke that I remember from school days. It is a twist on the use of the English language. Did you get it? The way to spell the word IT is with the letter I and T. The first part of the sentence about Hippopotamus is as we say in Australian, a Furphy (pronounced ferfee). In other words, it has nothing to do with the actual question.
Why did this joke come up? It was because hippo is a very long word and can be hard to spell. If you look at it, you can see a hippo in your mind. Why did I use the word hippo? We have a tendency to shorten words when they are too long to say or spell. Every now knows that a hippopotamus and a hippopotamus is the same thing.
So how can you remember how to spell hippo? Well, the way I was taught in school for long words was through rhyming. Rhyming is used to help us flow through the different letters by simply remembering the first letter. The rhyme they taught me was to follow a melody for the lyrics. So you would effectively sing the lyrics as if you were singing a song.
The downside of learning this way is that now I can only remember how to spell it using rhyme. Also, I can’t spell the word backwards because I’ve linked the letters to the sound instead of imagining the actual letters. If I use my spelling technique then I can learn the word and spell it forwards, backwards and even from the middle. This means that I can see the letters and spell the word instead of singing it and still can’t spell the word.
By the way… do you want to learn to spell to have the confidence in your life to learn and develop? Download a chapter of my ebook for free: 9 Steps to Improve Spelling by visiting my website.