Last Updated on October 10, 2023 by Editorial Team
Spelling difficulties are a truth that even some adults face on a daily basis. The pattern of letters, their sounds, the silent letters, and so on, perplex people a lot. Although there are different types of assistive technologies for people with reading difficulties, the basics of spelling become rather harder to learn through pen-and-paper methods.
Let’s take a look at what research says about the prevalence of spelling difficulties across all age groups:
- Dyslexic children generally have untreated spelling difficulties, even when their reading problems have almost disappeared. (Kemp et al, 2009).
- Dyslexic adults demonstrate poor spelling abilities (Berninger, Neilsen, et al. 2008)
- Developmental dyslexia persists throughout the lifespan (Shaywitz et al., 1999)
All these facts indicate the need to adopt alternatives to reading and writing the words, that can help in accomplishing the learning objectives. Thankfully, there are learning apps and games that are counted as one of the effective alternatives. How do these apps and games help in learning spellings, let’s take a look.
How spelling apps and games can help?
Technology in Education has come as a boon for people who find it difficult to acquire reading and writing abilities through conventional pen-and-paper methods. The applications for reading and writing come with features like speech-to-text, text-to-speech, etc. that can allow people to manage writing and reading disorders with confidence.
By providing engaging and technologically driven but human-like interventions, apps, and games can contribute to improving basic skills like writing correct spellings.
Practicing spelling need not be boring and stressful. If writing skills manipulatives, and board games offer non-portable classroom teaching or homeschooling teaching materials, the online apps and games allow people to carry around their practice materials and continue learning to spell even while on the move.
Let’s take a look at some of the best online apps and games for learning spellings that help adults improve these basic writing and reading skills.
10 Spelling apps and games for adults
1. Scrabble® GO – New Word Game
No surprises here! Scrabble, as a board game, has been a great practicing tool for adults for ages. When you are done with pen and paper practice and need a fun-filled way to gain mastery in spelling, this game allows you to practice spelling and score lots of points.
Scrabble comes with hints that correspond to the word. The words fit in only when you have spelled them correctly. This game also offers options like leagues, different modes, and tournaments so that the players can turn out to be confident spelling experts by taking various challenges. Further, the options like the longest word made, best plays, etc. offer a conscious recording of the progress in spelling abilities.
This game offers an option to connect to friends and gives you a competitive environment to test your spelling knowledge and find where you rank among your circle of people.
App Link: Playstore | App Store
2. Ultimate English Spelling Quiz: New 2020 Version
Do you always find yourself in a tight spot for writing bad spellings? If yes, you can change your situation by learning and practicing spelling using this spelling quiz game. This spelling game app offers you a rich collection of about 800 misspelled words that people are most likely to write erroneously. With features like spelling quizzes, filling-in-the-blank activities, and spelling facts, you learn not only the speaking but also about the usage, origin, and other interesting facts about the words.
The spelling quiz app, therefore, is not just a learning resource for improving spelling skills; it also helps boost vocabulary. By way of brain-teasing spelling exercises, crossword puzzles, and multiple-choice questions, the app offers a systematic way to self-coach in English for competitive exams too. If you are not a native English speaker, this game may help you gain expertise of a similar level when you practice spelling regularly with it.
App Link: Playstore | App Store
3. Spelling Master – Game
The Spelling Master game is designed to help you improve your spelling skills by taking multiple-level challenges. This game offers support to carve a progressive path of learning spellings by allowing the player to unlock challenges as they accomplish the tasks at the lower levels. Thus, the players gain competency in spelling the words in an incremental fashion.
The facility of reviewing the mistakes after taking a quiz makes it easier for the player to learn correct spellings and gain confidence by scoring points with every correct answer. The listen-and-spell feature gives an online counterpart of the dictation activity that enhances the listening ability and allows the user to decode the spelling by way of decoding the pronunciation of the word.
Practice as many times you want, wherever you want – this game offers a more interesting alternative to reading books that may not be too friendly for adults with poor word decoding abilities.
App Link: Playstore
4. Word Battle: Search Puzzle
Word Battle is an entertaining spelling learning game that allows you to decode and master more than 5,000 challenging words. Oft Often it happens that you feel stuck while writing any word. Also, you may be short of appropriate words while talking about a particular topic. This can be rectified in a playful manner now.
Word battle offers word-building challenges category-wise. You pick the categories such as animals, vegetables, movies, gardens, nutrition, music, and many others, and be conversant with the vocabulary relevant to these.
This spelling game offers a good brain-teasing exercise, builds your confidence by rewarding you on correct attempts, and gives hints to solve puzzles. The last part does provide a better understanding of the words and their relevance too, apart from offering a clear understanding of spellings.
App Link: Playstore | App Store
5. Spelling Words Challenge Games
Spellings do give nightmares even when you are an adult if you are not a native English speaker. Practicing does not require you to fall into a certain age group and so, this app is designed for one and all.
As an adult, when you plan to move to another country or appear in some English proficiency test, you are required to have basic to advanced knowledge of spellings, vocabulary, word formation, and so on. This game offers complete support for gaining proficiency in all these fields. And, if you are a family person, you get to play a brainy game with your kids too!
Starting from the basic words, this game allows you to progress gradually to more complex words. The bonus feature of training the mind to solve puzzles, decode hints, and unscramble jumbled words enhances your word reasoning skills too. If you are searching for a fun way to work your brain and master spellings in the process, this game proves to be a good fit.
App Link: App Store
6. Spelling and Grammar
The Spelling and Grammar app by Eductify is yet another useful resource for adults who wish to polish their language skills. Non-native English speakers often face difficulties with correct spelling and grammar usage while writing. This app, covering numerous topics, is perfect for learning whether you are at home, in the office, or on the go.
The app features tests and quizzes in a multiple-choice format so users can learn to differentiate between right and wrong spellings. You also get to learn about spelling rules, words with irregular spellings, and often misspelled common words. As the app comprises more than a hundred categories of topics to choose and learn from, you will always have something new to learn at your fingertips.
What’s more? The app allows you to create a daily study plan to keep you on track and store your results and performance stats so you can easily measure your progress. So, if you really want to be more confident with your spelling and grammar usage, do give this resource a try!
App Link: Playstore | App Store
7. English Spelling Rules
English spellings can be confused because of various rules. Some letters are silent, whereas puzzling concepts such as homographs, homophones, and homonyms make life harder as well. This app takes away the confusion by teaching you spelling rules. You can know about rules like double-end consonants, silent E, I before E, and other silent word rules that help you learn spellings the algorithmic way.
An easy introduction to commonly misspelled words, the words of common use or daily use, and homophone learning support make this app a suitable learning resource available right at your fingertips.
By practicing regularly on this app, the learners can train themselves to the level of English required for competitive exams too.
App Link: Playstore
8. Advanced Dictionary & Thesaurus
Haven’t we all considered carrying a Thesaurus always at some point in time? This app fulfills that secret wish of yours and how! This app comes with a variety of user-friendly features that make learning spellings a cakewalk for adults. The app contains various intuitive features like search autocomplete, camera search lookup, keyword lookup, and voice search that allow you to learn words any way you prefer.
With more than 1.4 million words, synonyms, antonyms, homophones, etc., this app proves to be the complete spelling learning support. Other additional features like word of the day, word definitions, etc. can help to groom yourself into a complete wordsmith. So, your word-learning endeavor does not need to go through hefty books anymore.
App Link: Playstore | App Store
9. Word of the day: Learn English
Learn spelling and build vocabulary too! Also, you get to train your mind to look for spellings by doing some brain-stimulating puzzles in this spelling learning app for adults. This app allows you to stay updated about new words, the most trending words, the most used words, and the most misspelled words. Thus, you may grow your knowledge of word spellings manifold when you choose to practice spelling and word building with this versatile app.
Now don’t regret not making flashcards, how many of these could you carry in your pockets anyway? This app allows you to have a humongous word base of 20,000 words and counting. Also, features like video explanations of words, guess the meaning activity, and a lot more help you sharpen your spelling skills and help finetune your vocabulary skills too.
App Link: App Store
10. Spelling Notebook: Learn, Test
Maintaining a notebook of words is an old-school concept; this app gives this practice a technological makeover. When you know that you are still lagging in word spelling, you can make things better for yourself with this spelling learning app for students as well as adults. The app offers you a handy solution for learning the spelling of words. It also helps you get ample practice in spelling skill-building by taking various tests.
The app is quite helpful in practicing words that you come across often but don’t know the spelling or meaning of. You can strengthen your spelling ability by using the ‘retest the word spelling’ feature.
App Link: App Store
How to derive the best benefits from spelling games and apps?
Spelling games and apps offer easily accessible learning support to spelling enthusiasts. Some researchers propose that the apps help create a positive learning mood in users and attract them to practice often. So, the user approach outlines how they utilize this mood to build spelling skills. Some approaches include:
- They must make it a point to practice daily
- They should consider starting from the basics to understand the learning gaps
- They can connect with others so that they can build a collaborative learning environment for themselves.
Final Thoughts
For all those who wish to enhance their spelling abilities in a fun and engaging way, the games and apps listed above can prove to be a good choice. From the Spelling Notebook to Word of the Day and the Ultimate English Spelling Quiz, you get a wide range of options for learning and practicing spelling in a fun and enjoyable way.
Daily practice for just a few minutes a day can help improve the vocabulary, writing, spelling, and overall communication skills of adults. So, don’t wait any longer if you have been thinking of improving your spelling skills. Quickly install these apps on your favored device and begin your journey to becoming a confident communicator in your professional and personal life.
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,