Spelling and Homophones Focus Set 2
Spelling and Homophones Focus Set 2 continues the original Spelling and Homophones Focus with a further set of frequently confused pairs, "practice" and "practise", "stationary" and "stationery", "principal" and "principle", "past" and "passed", and with the plural-formation rules that trip pupils up most often: adding "-es" after certain endings, changing a final "y" to "ies", and changing a final "f" to "ves".
Method
- Learn the noun/verb spelling pair "practice", a noun, football practice, and "practise", a verb, to practise the piano, remembering the pattern also used for "licence", a noun, and "license", a verb.
- Learn "stationary", not moving, an adjective, and "stationery", pens, paper and envelopes, which sound identical but are spelled and used very differently.
- Learn "principal", the most important, or the head of a school, and "principle", a rule or belief, as in a moral principle.
- Learn "past", a preposition or adjective meaning before now or moving beyond something, and "passed", the past tense of the verb "to pass", which are very frequently mixed up in writing.
- For regular plurals ending in a hissing sound, -s, -x, -ch, -sh, -z, add "-es": bus becomes buses, box becomes boxes, church becomes churches.
- For a noun ending in a consonant plus "y", change the "y" to "i" and add "-es", baby becomes babies, but if a vowel comes before the "y", simply add "-s", toy becomes toys; for many nouns ending in "-f" or "-fe", change to "-ves", leaf becomes leaves, though some exceptions keep the "f", such as roof becoming roofs.
Worked example
Choose the correct spelling: "The choir needs more (1)_______ before the concert." (practice/practise)
- Identify whether a noun or a verb is needed in the gap: "needs more ___" requires a noun, a thing that can be had "more" of.
- Recall the rule: "practice", with a "c", is the noun form, and "practise", with an "s", is the verb form.
- Confirm by substitution: "the choir needs more practice" makes sense as a noun, whereas "practise" would be wrong for a noun slot.
- Final answer: practice.
Practice questions
Type your answer and press Check to be marked straight away, or reveal the answer and mark yourself.
Q1Choose the correct spelling: "Remember to (1)_______ your spellings every evening." (practice/practise)Show answer
Answer: practise (a verb is needed here).
Q2Choose the correct word: "She kept a neat drawer full of pens, envelopes and other (1)_______." (stationary/stationery)Show answer
Answer: stationery
Q3Choose the correct word: "The traffic remained completely (1)_______ for over an hour." (stationary/stationery)Show answer
Answer: stationary
Q4Choose the correct word: "The (1)_______ of the school gave a speech at assembly." (principal/principle)Show answer
Answer: principal
Q5Choose the correct word: "Honesty is one of her most important (1)_______." (principal/principle)Show answer
Answer: principles
Q6Choose the correct word: "We walked (1)_______ the old church on our way to the park." (past/passed)Show answer
Answer: past
Q7Write the plural of "shelf".Show answer
Answer: shelves
Exam-style questions
Written in the style of a 11+ exam paper, with a full mark scheme.
Identify and correct the six spelling or word-choice errors in this passage: "The head teacher, who's office overlooks the playground, gave a speech about important principals such as kindness and effort. She reminded pupils to practice their reading every night and to keep their stationary tidy. The buses waited stationery outside the gate long after the bell had past." (6 marks)
Show mark scheme
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Nothing ticked yet - 6 available
Give the plural of "wolf", "city" and "glass", and explain the spelling rule that applies to each. (3 marks)
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Nothing ticked yet - 3 available
Free printable worksheet
Want more practice on paper? Download the spelling and homophones focus set 2 worksheet pack - 12 pages of exam-style questions with a full mark scheme. One email opens every download in this browser for 14 days - no account, no card. Print it for personal and classroom use.
This topic is chapter 12 of 11+ English Workbook 3, the whole course as one free printable PDF.
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