50 PAIRS OF COMMONLY CONFUSED WORDS - LEARNING OBJECTIVES, SEASONALITY, & AGE RANGE FAQs

WHAT ARE THE LEARNING OBJECTIVES & OUTCOMES OF THIS RESOURCE?

This resource is mainly designed as a checklist for you and your child. Its main objective is to ensure that your child knows that the pairs of words on the list are often confused or to alert them to the fact that these words can be confused (if there are any words in the pairs that are new to them).

The other objective is for children to spend time with these pairs of words and to focus on the ways in which each pair is similar and different – whether this is because of how the words sound, how the words are spelt, or other slight differences between them.

By making sure that your child is aware of the differences in meaning, spelling and usage of all 100 words included in this resource, the accuracy of their written work will increase considerably.

IS THIS AN EVERGREEN OR SEASONAL RESOURCE?

This resource is an evergreen resource and is designed to be of use to you throughout the year in relation to a wide range of tasks.

That said, you may also find this resource useful for quick revisions sessions for your child or student prior to mock SATs exams in October, January, and during the run up to Easter.

CAN YOU PROVIDE FURTHER GUIDANCE REGARDING AGE RANGE & SUITABILITY?

The years and ages listed above are intended as recommendations only; please feel free to use this resource in any educational context that suits your needs.

50 PAIRS OF COMMONLY CONFUSED WORDS - USING THIS RESOURCE FAQs

CAN THE WORD PAIRS BE ORGANISED INTO DISTINCT GROUPS? IF SO, WHAT ARE THEY?

Yes, the word pairs in this list can be placed into distinct groups.

GROUP A: Homophones

This is by far the largest group represented in the resource.

A homophone is one of a group of two or more words that sound the same, but which have different meanings and different spellings.

The following pairs of words are commonly regarded as homophones.

• allowed / aloud
• ate / eight
• band / banned
• bare / bear
• bean / been
• blew / blue
• board / bored
• brake / break
• buy / by
• cell / sell
• cent / scent
• cereal / serial
• check / cheque
• chews / choose
• coarse / course
• dear / deer
• dew / due
• die / dye
• fair / fare
• father / farther
• find / fined
• flour / flower
• grate / great
• hair / hare
• heal / heel
• hear / here
• herd / heard
• hi / high
• hole / whole
• hour / our
• knew / new
• knight / night
• know / no
• made / maid
• mail / male
• meat / meet
• one / won
• peace / piece
• right / write
• stair / stare
• tail / tale
• threw / through
• weather / whether
• week / weak

Note: With certain dialects and accents, some of these pairs may not be pure homophones; they might be near homophones or indeed may not be homophones at all. For example, the pair ‘father / farther’ may not sound the same if the ‘r’ before the ‘th’ is pronounced.

Similarly, vowel sounds may vary. So, the ‘ou’ in ‘hour’ and ‘our’ may not be identical.

GROUP B: Near homophones

There are far fewer of these in this resource.

A near homophone is a word that has a distinct sound, but which is close enough to another word to cause confusion and spelling errors.

The following pairs are often referred to as near homophones:

• accept / except
• cloths / clothes
• desert / dessert
• its / it's
• loose / lose
• quiet / quite

A Note On Its & It’s :

Although its and it’s are homophones, the primary source of confusion here is arguably created by the apostrophe of contraction and its conflation with the apostrophe of possession (i.e. ownership).

Its is a possessive pronoun that shows that something belongs to something else:

The dog wagged its tail. (The tail belongs to the dog).

It’s is the contracted form of either it is or it has:

It’s time to go to sleep. (It is time to go to sleep.)

It’s been raining all day. (It has been raining all day.)

The reason why people tend to use it’s instead of its is because they are used to using apostrophes to show possession. For example:

• The boy’s shirt was dirty.
• The dolphin’s name was Scooby.
• The girls’ bags were navy blue.
• The women’s umbrellas were green.

I AM A PARENT: DO YOU HAVE ANY OTHER USAGE SUGGESTIONS FOR ME?

This resource provides you with a pre-selected list of commonly confused homophones and near homophones that you can go through with your child at your own pace, and in the way that works best for you. You may wish to select words that relate to other tasks you are engaged in, or you may wish to go through the words in alphabetical order.

Given its nature, this resource lends itself well to dictionary work and subsequent discussions about similarities and differences in meaning and usage.

As you and your child go through this list, you may wish to select certain pairs of words that you try to use, or identify, throughout the day. For example, you might want to draw your child’s attention to the difference between the ‘clothes’ they are wearing, and the ‘cloths’ in the kitchen used for cleaning.

Alternatively, you might also want to select pairs of words from the resource and put them in sentences for your child; or, have your child put them in sentences; or, you and your child could each take and turn putting the words in sentences. These sentences do not have to be serious; they can be funny. In fact, funny, humorous sentences can help the learning process.

ARE THESE WORDS SUITABLE FOR YEAR 6 SATs ENGLISH PREPARATION?

Yes. Questions involving homophones and near homophones (whether in passages, true or false, or matching questions) are routinely used in the Year 6 English Paper 2: Grammar, Punctuation & Spelling.

Focusing on commonly confused words and building your child’s vocabulary toolbox, therefore, is worthwhile throughout Year 6.

ARE THESE WORDS SUITABLE FOR 11+ PREPARATION?

Yes. This set of words is also a useful addition to 11+ preparation given its focus on words with close, but distinctive, spelling patterns.

Such words (e.g. ‘grate/great’) often feature in two types of questions:

• Questions involving anagrams (making a new word out of the letters of an original word)
• Questions requiring letters to be moved from their existing position (e.g. moving the letter ‘e’ from position 5 to position 3 in the word ‘grate’ gives the new word ‘great’)

More generally, ensuring that your child does not confuse these pairs of words results in higher levels of accuracy in both reading comprehension and writing tasks.

HOW DO I USE THIS RESOURCE IN ITS PRINTED FORMAT?

You may wish to print the list and keep it on the desk as a word mat during writing sessions as a quick reference tool so that your child can remind themselves of the other homophone of the pair or to check how individual words are spelt.

The list works equally well as a wall display in a classroom or home study space.

In addition, you may find it helpful to keep a copy of this list in a vocabulary folder (if you have one).

HOW DO I USE THIS RESOURCE IN ITS DIGITAL LEARNING FORMAT?

There are several ways for you to use this PDF on a screen.

If your child or student works on a computer, laptop, or tablet, they can keep the PDF open on one half of the screen as a permanent, digital word bank they can glance at when they need to refer to it.

Save the PDF to a tablet or an iPad. Using any basic PDF reader, your child or student can highlight words they want to draw on in their work or pairs that they find most challenging.

Note: Given the vibrant nature of the full-colour version of this resource, it works particularly well in its digital format.