I'm working mostly with non-native English speakers, and I it becomes apparent that sound-alike words often cause confusion, particularly in business emails.
There are too many of these words to make a separate question for each one:
to/too/two, brake/break, sail/sale, for/four/fore, buy/by/bye, hear/here, were/wear/where, pair/pear/peer, weak/week, seem/seam (I have also seen Siam in this context :), tail/tale, and many others.
I'm trying to nail them together by helping my friends and colleagues to learn them quickly and effectively.
I'm looking for an effective didactic method to help my colleagues grasp these words.
More details, if it matters: their native languages are primarily Thai and Chinese; many of them are working from homes, so it is not effective to buy books for each of them or arrange study in a school; most of them are rather familiar with formal and natural sciences, not humanities.
Answer
Why don't you try making limericks or tongue twisters for them? Something like
They were wearing wool when they realised they were not where they should have been.
It seemed that the seam had broken.
He braked slowly trying not to break the precious cargo.
The mouse with the long tail had a very interesting tale to tell.
The salesman was happy to make a new sale, now he could afford the sails on his boat.
A week had passed and he was slowly getting weaker.
Things like this for example and then use them to point out the semantic differences. Also you can use it to help reinforce phrasal verbs.
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