Try reading it aloud without stopping.
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough and through.
Well done! And now you wish perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead, it's said like bed, not bead-
for goodness' sake don't call it 'deed'!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(they rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth, or brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's doze and rose and lose-
Just look them up- and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart-
Come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I'd learned to speak it when I was five!
And yet to write it, the more I sigh,
I'll not learn how 'til the day I die.
-Anonymous
How'd it go?

I show this to my high school students whenever I hear them talk about how people just need to learn how to speak English. Makes them a bit more sympathetic. Just found your blog - new follower :)
ReplyDeleteAwesome - nice to meet you and thanks for following.
ReplyDeleteWell, I screwed up on the moth/mother line . . . but everything else was okay! *thumbs up*
ReplyDeleteAnonymous probably won't learn it in its entirety then even! I teach students with Learning Difficulties, Literacy and Numeracy, you have no idea how these so called 'sight words' baffle them!
ReplyDeleteThat was hard. But fun!
ReplyDelete