About Me

I am Aishwarya M, a language and literacy teacher in Mysore, India. 

I stumbled into the world of Structured Word Inquiry in 2020 when I began to learn about remedial education for English Language Learners and students with learning difficulties and disabilities. SWI has since transformed my spelling instruction and teaching in general. 

My website can be found at https://www.teachingtenets.com/ 

Find my Substack at https://teachingtenets.substack.com/ 

About This Site

This site is essentially my e-notebook, or more precisely, the notebook of a student of Structured Word Inquiry. 

Why I Created This Site

Since I began studying English words through SWI, I have written down word sums and matrices in my physical notebook. 

I originally thought that the notebook would be a reference when planning lessons or teaching. But, the notebook soon became unmanageable. Although I have tried to keep it organized, it's hard to find bases/words when I need them immediately. 

Additionally, there are times when I spend hours investigating words only to later find that I had investigated (and subsequently forgotten) the same word two months earlier and had written down all word sums neatly in the book. 

Of course, there are other advantages, such as sharing my notes easily with students and other teachers. But, they are incidental. My primary objective is to write, manage, and maintain my notes. 

What Words I Add Here

I don't add word sums that are easy and obvious to me. 

For example, 

cat + s --> cats 

find + ing --> finding 

I add word sums that gave me a pause during my teaching and learning, led to questions I had not thought of before, and eventually led to answers I didn't know before. 

Needless to say, readers might find some of these word sums easy and obvious. 

Why Word Sums? Why Not Matrices?

Matrices are definitely more succinct, more elegant, and perhaps more useful than word sums. 

I would have loved to have a dictionary of matrices. But, they are time-consuming to create, and words in images can't be searched using CTRL + F. This site exists because I couldn't CTRL + F in my physical notebook. 

Why This Site Is Public

Originally, I didn't want to make my notes public. Now, I have come to realize the many advantages: 

1. I can share it easily with students and colleagues. 

2. Other students/teachers of SWI can find me on the web and correct me when I get something wrong. 

3. I may, inadvertently, end up helping someone like me in some corner of the earth. Although the chances are small, they exist. 

How to Use This Site

• Bases are grouped by their initial letters; i.e., all bases that begin with, say, A are grouped together. 

• Initial letters are again grouped together for ease of navigation: 

  • A-E; F-J; K-O; P-T; U-Z

• For example, if you're looking for the base <struct>:

  • Hover over the P-T in the navigation bar on top and click on S.

  • Bases beginning with <s> are arranged in alphabetical order. You can either scroll down to find <struct> or use CTRL+F and type "struct" 

  • Uncollapse the entry for <struct> to find my (incomplete) list of word sums that have the base <struct>

• You can also use the search bar to search for any word. 

• Twin bases are written together. For example, you can look at <duct> and <duce> here.

• As shown below, bound bases have a blue background color, and free bases have a white background. 

Errors 

The word sums I put here are usually the ones that I am certain of. When I have even the slightest doubt about the structure of a word, I investigate further, ask for help, and confirm that I have understood correctly. But sometimes, I have hypotheses that I'm still gathering evidence for. As all students of word inquiry would attest, some investigations get paused at times. Or, I might just be wrong in some cases. So, there will be errors on this site because I am constantly learning, and that means I am constantly making mistakes. 

One of the reasons for making this site public is to get my mistakes corrected. So, if you find an error, or have a question, please don't hesitate to write to me at teachingtenets@gmail.com. I will respond in about a week's time. 

Gratitude

All my education in this field has been from the internet. I am incredibly grateful to the scholars who make such learning possible for someone like me who can't afford most courses (even if they're online) and books. Their blogs and websites are my textbooks. Their engagement with me on Twitter, despite being a stranger who lives many thousand miles away, is a testament to the power of the internet and unconditional kindness. 

This is a partial list of my teachers from afar in alphabetical order: 

1. Etymonline

2. Gina Cooke 

3. Peter Bowers

4. Real Spelling