Did you know that English's function (aka "grammatical") and content (aka "lexical") words have different spelling constraints? This difference is key for helping students understand why some words are allowed to look one way, while others aren't.
Function words are those words that can be hard to define and picture, like articles, determiners, conjunctions, prepositions and pronouns. These words are often unstressed, and this means we may reduce them while talking. "I want a piece uh pie." instead of "I want a piece OF pie." These reductions, alongside their different constraints, can make them hard to spell for some people.
Content words are the heart of the matter. These are easier to define, often stressed, and we'd have no idea what someone is talking about without them (or other explicit contextual cues). Nouns, verbs, adjectives and many adverbs are content words.
While function and content words fall on a continuum with some gray areas, the basic differences are clear. Function words are allowed to be 1 or 2 letters! Content words must have three letters! Function words are a closed class - we're rarely adding to them anymore. Content words are open and new ones are added all the time! ("Just google it!") Those with a deep understanding of grammar will love diving into the gray areas. There's a lot more differences worthy of exploring.
#orthography #spelling #eslteacher #literacyspecialist #literacyinstruction #englishgrammar #dyslexia #orthography #morphology #reading #readingspecialist
27 июн 2024
