Quiz playing is a wonderful way to increase your knowledge of English as a Second Language. Remember that all of our ESL quizzes have titles that are both friendly and technical at the same time… In the case of this quiz you might like to tell your friends about “Spelling Bee” but no doubt your teachers will talk about the “Homophones quiz”! If you hear a technical term and you want to find a quiz about the subject then just look through the list of quiz titles until you find what you need.
It can be remarkable sometimes, what versatile use English makes of just 26 letters to represent its whole variety of sounds. Sometimes two very different words will sound alike but not look alike; while another pair might look alike, yet sound different. This is called a homophone.
See how you get on with these homophones!
'Every day I usually read the paper ('reeed'), but I don't think I ever read ('redd') yesterday's one.'
There is a similar problem with the word 'lead': as a noun it sounds like 'led' and means the heavy, bendy metal that is used in the making of church roofs etc. (and also ~ wrongly ~ the 'lead' in a pencil). As a verb it sounds like 'leed', as in 'Who is going to lead the procession?'. But the past form of the verb is 'led' (pronounced as you'd expect from the spelling, to rhyme with 'bed': sometimes a person who has rather foolishly let themself be drawn into a bad situation, might be described as 'easily-led'.)