Many words in the English language contain letters that are not pronounced. We call these letters silent letters.
Silent letters can make a huge difference to the meaning of a word and can completely change the pronunciation of the word altogether such as rat/rate.
Why do we have silent letters?
Most silent letters in words were pronounced a long time ago but became silent through the years. As the spelling was already fixed, the silent letters remained in the words.
Some silent letters can help the reader distinguish between homophones (words which sound the same but have different meanings and different spellings).
For example: whole/hole, be/bee, new/knew
For this set of activities, you will be asked to choose the correct spelling of words. Here's an example.
Choose the correct spelling:
wrek / wreck / reck
The correct spelling is wreck.
