Spelling - Consonant doubling 1: Activity 3

Sort the examples into two groups

Answers

• DON'T DOUBLE GROUP: rich + -est → richest, wash + -ing → washing, swift + -est → swiftest, faster + -er → faster, crisp + -er → crisper, lunch + -ing → lunching, box + -ing → boxing, mix + -er → mixer

Do these examples follow our suggested rules or do we need to change them?

• Many of them involve base words which end in more than one consonant letter (spelling one or more consonant sounds), e.g. sh, ft, sp, nch. We only need to think about consonant doubling when the base word ends in a consonant sound spelled by a single letter.
• Some of them end in the single consonant letter x. This letter does not double because it represents two consonant sounds, ‘ks’.