You are viewing a free preview of this lesson.
Subscribe to unlock all 8 lessons in this course and every other course on LearningBro.
This lesson is the SPaG engine room. It covers the mistakes that examiners see in every single sitting — the its/it's confusion, the there/their/they're triplet, the misplaced apostrophe, the practice/practise swap. These errors cost marks directly (AO6 on both papers rewards technical accuracy), and they also cost marks indirectly: a response peppered with basic errors reads as less thoughtful, even if the ideas are strong.
By the end of this lesson, you should be able to punctuate possession and contraction confidently, choose the right homophone without pausing, and avoid the eight or ten recurring word-swaps that exam markers see daily.
This lesson develops AO6: use a range of vocabulary and sentence structures for clarity, purpose and effect, with accurate spelling and punctuation. It is also foundational for AO5 — clear meaning depends on correct word choice.
An apostrophe has exactly two jobs in English. Every apostrophe you ever write should be doing one of these:
That's it. Apostrophes never form plurals. Writing apple's when you mean apples (plural) is wrong and extremely visible to examiners.
When a noun owns something, add an apostrophe to the noun.
Add 's.
| Noun | Possessive |
|---|---|
| the dog | the dog's bowl |
| the teacher | the teacher's desk |
| James | James's car (British standard; James' also accepted) |
| the weather | the weather's effect |
Add only ' (apostrophe after the s).
| Plural noun | Possessive |
|---|---|
| the dogs | the dogs' bowls (multiple dogs share) |
| the teachers | the teachers' lounge |
| the students | the students' exam |
Add 's.
| Plural noun | Possessive |
|---|---|
| the children | the children's playground |
| the women | the women's team |
| the people | the people's voice |
| Phrase | Correct form |
|---|---|
| The bag belonging to one boy | the boy's bag |
| The bags belonging to many boys | the boys' bags |
| The voices of children | the children's voices |
| The bike belonging to Chris | Chris's bike (or Chris' bike) |
A contraction joins two words, using the apostrophe to mark the missing letters.
| Full form | Contraction |
|---|---|
| do not | don't |
| I am | I'm |
| you are | you're |
| it is / it has | it's |
| who is / who has | who's |
| they are | they're |
| should have | should've (not should of) |
| would have | would've (not would of) |
| could have | could've (not could of) |
Rule: the apostrophe goes where the letters are missing. Do not → don't; the apostrophe marks the missing o.
This is the single most common SPaG error at GCSE. Learn this rule and you will never get it wrong:
| Form | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| it's | it is OR it has | It's raining. / It's been a long day. |
| its | belonging to it | The dog chased its tail. |
Test: if you can replace the word with it is or it has and the sentence still makes sense, use it's. Otherwise, use its.
Why its has no apostrophe: because possessive pronouns never do. His, hers, ours, theirs, yours, its — none have apostrophes. This is consistent.
Homophones are words that sound the same but are spelled differently and mean different things. The ones below account for the vast majority of GCSE errors.
| Trio/Pair | Meanings | Memory trick |
|---|---|---|
| there / their / they're | there = place/existential; their = belonging to them; they're = they are | there has here inside; their has heir inside (possession); they're = they are |
| your / you're | your = belonging to you; you're = you are | you're has an apostrophe = missing letters |
| to / too / two | to = direction/infinitive; too = also/excessively; two = number 2 | too has an extra o = extra, also |
| who's / whose | who's = who is/has; whose = belonging to whom | whose has no apostrophe (like its) |
| affect / effect | affect = verb, to influence; effect = noun, a result | Affect = Action (verb); Effect = End result (noun) |
| practice / practise | practice = noun; practise = verb (British) | ice = noun; ise = verb |
| advice / advise | advice = noun; advise = verb | same rule as practice/practise |
| license / licence | licence = noun; license = verb (British) | ice = noun; ise = verb |
| principle / principal | principle = rule or ideal; principal = head person/main | the principal is your pal |
| stationary / stationery | stationary = not moving; stationery = pens, paper | stationEry = papEr |
| loose / lose | loose = not tight; lose = fail to keep | loose has two o's (loose like a loose tooth) |
| weather / whether | weather = rain/sun; whether = if | whether has h like if... (or just memorise) |
| accept / except | accept = receive; except = apart from | Accept = Allow in; Except = Exclude |
| break / brake | break = smash/pause; brake = slow down | brake has bra (on a car) |
| bare / bear | bare = uncovered; bear = animal OR to carry | bear with ear (animal has ears) |
| allowed / aloud | allowed = permitted; aloud = audibly | aloud has loud inside |
| passed / past | passed = verb (went by); past = noun/adjective/preposition | passed has a verb ending (-ed) |
| lead / led | lead (as verb) = present tense; led = past tense | lead (the metal) is also pronounced led, which confuses people |
| compliment / complement | compliment = praise; complement = completes | complete and complement share spelling |
| desert / dessert | desert = dry place OR to abandon; dessert = pudding | dessert has two s's — so sweet you want seconds |
Examiner reports year after year list roughly the same errors. If you master these ten, you will be ahead of 80% of the cohort on SPaG.
Subscribe to continue reading
Get full access to this lesson and all 8 lessons in this course.