Spelling problems

For French and Arabic speakers specially:

If writing is a priority for you:
I have noticed that African francophones and Arabic speakers have difficulty spelling words correctly. Arabic is a very different language from English - treatment of vowels, sentence structure, etc. for example: some write somer for summer, or nait for night.
My assumption is that most of you have learned English at work, so you've heard (more than seen) English. This is normal, as English spelling and pronunciation are not intuitive in most cases.

An awareness of this will also help you pronounce better. If you pronounce better, people will find it easier to understand what you say, you'll feel more confident if they understand without having to repeat (much). In the same way, you'll understand native speakers a bit more easily (although this is not the solution to understanding native speakers!)

To solve this area of the learning process I recommend:

- paying careful attention to how words are spelled
- listening and reading at the same time, again paying close attention to what you hear and what you see.
- try to draw your own conclusions (I hear an u sound but there is oo on paper, for example).
- use dictations resources that I will suggest (englishclub, words in the news from bbc, voanews learning english, ted talks, videos from specific organisations and companies) where you can have access to the transcription so you can check your writing and compare sound and spelling.

REsources
http://learningenglish.voanews.com/
news in English. all the  current affair news come with the transcription. slow and clear and real English. Listen and read carefully a piece of news a few times, then use the audio as a dictation and check.
This website also allows you to double click on any word and you get the MerriamWebster dictionary definition (monolingual).
sometimes you have the transcription on the video, like in Karaokes. Remember, pay careful attention to writing and pronunciation.

https://www.englishclub.com/listening/dictation.htm
explore, easy and intuitive.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/wordsinthenews/
website is no longer updated. However, there is still all the old material available. Short, very short newsarticles and if you go to box "downloads" on the right hand side of "news stories" . Right click on the "Reports" link to listen to the audio.
Video stories, videos and transcript, and vocabulary, clearly pronounced by the presenter/reader.

http://www.ted.com/
Presentations, with transcripts in different languages, with and without subtitles while you listen. super useful, reliable subtiltles. Use them to compare words and pronunciation. Repeat and repeat.
for example, if you want to hear various presentations on Africa - in general - type it in the search engine and choose. Should you prefer to find out more about the Middle East, go ahead, too. Intuitive.

I'll try to prepare a sort of tutorial to show you how to use these website but workload and not having the tools and software in my PC may delay this (webcast?)

I hope you find this useful.