Spelling test

One very difficult kind of spelling test is the spelling bee: a competition where contestants, usually children, are asked to spell English words. The practice originated in the United States and has since spread to elsewhere in the English-speaking world, especially North America. It is not, however, a very familiar concept in most Commonwealth nations, where, if the term is known at all, it is usually perceived as a peculiar American tradition. Every year in the United States, there is a national spelling bee involving most primary and secondary schools in the country; in addition to being awarded a scholarship, the winners in each age group get to meet the President of the United States.

In this method, the student typically writes out each word in the current spelling lesson a set number of times each, for example, 50 to 100 times.

One of the most effective ways to memorize spellings is to make up mnemonics to help remember them. A mnemonic is a memory trick which associates the thing that is to be remembered with something else to make it easier. For spelling, it can be the exaggerated pronunciation of a word, like indepenDENT. Or it might be a silly sentence or visual image to help remember the word, like "the independents all dented their cars with sledgehammers". Or it might describe a key aspect of a word to help remember it, like "all the vowels in cemetery are the same: three little e's, each on its own little tombstone."