It has been suggested that trombone has a subconscious link with bone- when we see the word trombone, it might recall the image of a bone in our minds. Following this principle, we could draw students’ attention to words within words.

Manage: A man of a certain age. Sexist, perhaps, but a strong subconscious image.

Destroy: The link here is the image of the ruined city of Troy after the Trojan war.

Restore: Having a rest, to regain health, for example.

Enterprise: Enter the market to win a prize (this is how it is pronounced), ie to earn money.

In no sense guilty: This is a play on words, because the first three words sound like  Innocence, which is the opposite of guilt. So someone who is in no sense guilty is innocent.

Spelling and word structure

Sometimes the spelling and letter position give a clue to the meaning:

Parallel has two ls next to each other.

Level  is a palindrome, and so well-balanced.

D comes in the middle of middle and at the end of end.

Letter is read from left to right. Letter begins with l and ends in r, which are abbreviations of left and right. This example helps students to remember which is side is left and which is right.

To listen, with a silent t, is an anagram of O, silent t!

Tongue and language are not exactly the same, but they have meaning that overlaps, and they have three letters in common, too.

Associating words

Another technique is to pair words that look or sound similar, or have some other connection, and strengthen the connection with a meaningful link:

We can link sight and sigh with a rhyme:

Sight from the eyes,

But from the mouth, sighs.

Maintain and mountain. Maintain collocates with high eg maintain high standards /levels/quality. Hence the connection with mountain.

Note and notice, which has an extra ic (I see!) are similar in meaning.

Rob and steal can be confusing, so here is a way to remember:

You can rob Rob, and you can steal steel,

But you can’t steal Rob and you can’t rob steel.

i.e. you can rob a person (Rob) and steal something (steel), but not the other way round.

Choose and chose: write chOOse on the board, with two large Os. Say to a student, choose one ‘O’. Then rub out the one not chosen: chO se.  Point to the remaining O and say you chose that one. Get the students to do the same in pairs.

Two tall stories.

We could also make connections between words and images based on spelling or sound in  short stories:

A hundred years ago, nobody except the very rich could buy a car because they were so expensive. Then Henry Ford started mass-producing cars, the prices came down, so more people started to buy them. In fact so many people could buy one, a new expression came into being: I can buy a car! A Ford! I can buy a Ford, a car! I can, a Ford, a car! I can afford a car!