Dictation: Spelling Traps
✍️ Dictation: Spelling Traps
These are the words most commonly confused in dictation. For each pair or group, the sound is identical — context tells you which one to write.
Earn the mark scheme marks
💡 Exam Tips & Common Errors
- Use the replacement test for every homophone pair — it takes 1 second and is reliable.
- Don't guess accents — if you cannot remember whether a word has an accent, write the word clearly without one rather than adding a random accent in the wrong place (which is also an error).
- Make a personal list of the words you misspell in practice dictations. Your list will be more useful than any generic list.
- Practise writing s'appelle, appartement, intéressant, and malheureusement from memory weekly — these are the top recurring errors.
- Remember: peuvent-être doesn't exist. Peut-être is always one fixed phrase with a hyphen and refers to "maybe", not "they can be".
❌ Common error: il a manger une pomme.
✓ Correct: il a mangé une pomme.
Why it costs marks: After avoir in the perfect tense, the -er infinitive ending and the -é past participle ending sound completely identical: [mɑ̃ʒe]. In writing, the past participle must be spelled -é. Writing the infinitive -er after avoir is the single most common dictation error at GCSE. Check: is there an auxiliary verb (avoir/être) just before? → use the past participle ending (-é, -i, -u).
❌ Common error: les enfants joue dans le jardin.
✓ Correct: les enfants jouent dans le jardin.
Why it costs marks: The third-person plural present tense ending -ent is completely silent. Students who hear [ʒu] write joue (singular). But les enfants is plural, so the verb must agree: jouent. In dictation, always check: if the subject is plural (ils, elles, les + noun), the verb needs -ent.