Language Arts Grade Five

Unit Fourteen, Lesson Three: Frequently Confused Words

  1. common
  2. computer
  3. compass
  4. commute
  5. company
  6. display
  7. exhibit
  8. unearth
  9. diggings
  10. ancient
  1. sentence
  2. against
  3. usually
  4. remember
  5. shall
  6. dinosaur
  7. chlorophyll
  8. sunlight
  9. energy
  10. process
Frequently Confused Words

Sometimes it's really hard to figure out which confusing word should be used in a sentence. Consider this example: 


	The (desert/dessert) is hot and dry.
The problem here is that both a desert and a dessert could be hot and dry. For instance, we know that Death Valley is both hot and dry. We also can imagine a hot and dry cookie, for example.

A similar problem occurs with this sentence: 


	Jill did not want to discuss (personal/personnel) matters.
If Jill is a person in charge of firing and hiring employees (personnel) at some company, she is likely to consider it unprofessional to talk about matters relating to their continuing employment. On the other hand, Jill may have a private (personal) problem which she doesn't want to discuss at all or at least not with certain people.

Here are a few more frequently confused words: 


	advice/advise			casual/causal

	coma/comma			a lot/allot

	are/our				angle/angel

	cease/seize			choose/chose

	costume/custom			unit/unite

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