AikaHikari122 here!

Before I begin with the lesson I’d like to say a few things. First, I’m really happy this was featured! Thank you to everyone who upvoted and subscribed and commented.

Secondly, I’m not in charge of who can join and who can’t. Personally, I find it a bit silly that the subscribers aren’t just automatically classed as the students but I have no say over the matter and I’m not too sure if anyone on here is active. I class every subscriber as a student here, so feel free to get involved in the writing lessons I post – if you feel like it. I can only reply to the comments aimed towards my lessons because that’s all I’m really in charge of. Only thing I’m allowed to do is post lessons and no one has got in touch with me to say I can’t post anymore, so I’m not sure I’m meant to be posting this.

But I don’t want the University to just die, so I’m going ahead and posting this writing lesson!

So with that, let’s begin.

Homophones are words that are spelled or sound the same. I’ve seen a lot of people getting mixed up with these, so I felt there should be a lesson. Though, now that I think about it, I’m not too sure how to teach this. There’s no real way to teach the difference between similarly sounding words and I can’t remember how my teachers taught me. Only thing I can think of doing is listing some words and giving examples of common mistakes.

Zhoozh It has quite a good list of Homophones, so I’ll copy and paste the one from there because they know more than I do.

altar/alter: You worship at an altar, but you alter the meaning.
bald/bawled/balled: When you have no hair, you’re bald. When you cried hard, you bawled. And, well, you probably don’t want to use the word balled, unless you’re writing for a very particular audience.
brake/break: Press the brake pedal when you want to stop the car. Perhaps you’d like to take a break from driving.
capital/capitol: If we raise enough capital, perhaps we can visit the capital city, where the legislature convenes in the capitol (building).
cite/site/sight: You cite a reference. You visit an archaeological site (place). And you see the sights (things).
complement/compliment: Complement means to go along with and to complete. Dessert complements dinner. Tocompliment means to praise. Please give my compliments to the chef. It also means free, as in, I scoredcomplimentary tickets to the show.
discrete/discreet: Please be discreet (judicious) when you are discussing the discrete (individual) details of the party.
I’ll/isle/aisle: I’ll (I will) marry you, walk you down the aisle, and take you to a honeymoon on a deserted isle (island).
it’s/its: It’s (it is) a lovely day. Or, It’s (it has) been nice talking with you. The jury has reached its conclusion. Hint: only use the apostrophe with a contraction for it is or it has.
lead/led: Lead is a heavy metal. General Eisenhower led the Allied forces.
lightening/lightning: Lightning strikes, and when it does, it often has the effect of lightening up the sky.
loath/loathe: Loath is an adjective: I was loath to admit my mistake. Loathe is a verb: I loathe bad grammar.
morning/mourning: In the morning, I heard about his death and I went into mourning.
pore/pour: I will pore over this manuscript if you pour me a drink.
principal/principle: The principal of the school (principal=pal) looked out for me as I stood up for my principles(ideals).
rain/reign/rein: As it rained (precipitation), the queen reigned (ruled) and reined in (controlled) her constituents.
seam/seem: At the seam (edge), it may seem (look) like the fabric is hemmed.
there/their/they’re: This is a biggie. There describes a location. Their is the possessive form of they. And they’re is short for they are. They’re glad to be there at their cabin.
who’s/whose: Who’s is a contraction for who is/who has. The person who’s shopping or The person who’s been shopping. Whose is the possessive form of who. Whose book is this?
your/you’re/yore: Another biggie. Your is the possessive form of you. Your dog is cute. You’re is a contraction that means you are. You’re cute. Yore is infrequently used, and refers to a legendary past. You’re entertaining me withyour tales of yore.

As you can see, they have a rather descriptive difference between these words. Homophones aren’t too hard to remember, so long as you know the meaning of the words and the different variations. If you have trouble with remembering the correct form of a word while writing, best thing to do is look the word up; most the time they’ll give different versions of a word and tell you how to use them.

So that’s all for this lesson. No homework because I don’t really think there’s any point. No one does it anyway.

If you really want to, write a paragraph including the correct use of the first five homophones you can think of.