Homophones... What's a homophone and why is it important for learning English?

This is a picture I shared on Facebook a few months ago (thanks to Memrise).  It is a message from a secondary school teacher to her class about the need for checking written work for mistakes.  This is called proofreading.  The mistakes that the teacher talks about here are incorrect homophones.  If you don’t know what a homophone is, read the teacher's message again and see if you can find any mistakes (there are lots of them).  Here is the text:

Deer students,

Win you are righting something four my class, bee shore that you are using the write homophones.  Eye cannot tale you enough how unintelligent you look win you use the wrong word.  Their are know excuses four using the wrong words cause you have the education too no better.  Your smart enough to no the differences butt you rush threw you’re work and mess up.

Love, you’re concerned teacher lady, Ms Jenkins ;-)

Do you see what a homophone is now?  I hope you see that it is a word that has the same sound as another word.

When you are doing any sort of writing (emails, exams, essays, etc.) incorrect homophones are just one of the things you should take the time and proofread for when you are finished.  But be careful, don’t rely on Microsoft Word to find all the mistakes for you.  Here are the mistakes that Word 2013 found…

… I promise you there are many more mistakes than those.  How many deliberate mistakes can you find in this message?

Scroll down the page when you are ready to check…

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ORIGINAL TEXT (21 homophone mistakes)

Deer students,

Win you are righting something four my class, bee shore that you are using the write homophones.  Eye cannot tale you enough how unintelligent you look win you use the wrong word.  Their are know excuses four using the wrong words cause you have the education too no better.  Your smart enough to no the differences butt you rush threw you’re work and mess up.

Love, you’re concerned teacher lady, Ms Jenkins ;-)

CORRECTED TEXT

Dear students,

When you are writing something for my class, be sure that you are using the right homophones.  I cannot tell you enough how unintelligent you look when you use the wrong word.  There are no excuses for using the wrong words cause you have the education to know better.  You’re smart enough to know the differences but you rush through your work and mess up.

Love, your concerned teacher lady, Ms Jenkins ;-)

Hope this helps some of you reading this. If you are a teacher and would like to use this example to help your students practise proofreading, then I’ve made a PDF here.

Finally, here are a few funny cartoons that might help you remember some of these homophones (click on the cartoons to see a bigger version).

‘Words are Fun - Chapter 1: Homophones’