Here's the famous poem by T.S.Watt (1954) which originally appeared in The Guardian and that has been used countless times in the English class.
The poem is read by Joanne Rudling, from How to spell.
The words highlighted in bold in the poem are those which I think an Intermediate 2 student should know. The rest of the words the poem illustrates would fall into the advanced level.
I take it you already know
Of tough and cough and dough?
But what about, hiccough, thorough and through?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead
For goodness sake don't call it 'deed'!
Watch out for meat and great and threat...
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.
(meat-suite, great-straight, threat-debt.)
There isn't a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, or broth in brother,
And here is not in there
But ear is in dear and fear
But not in bear and pear;
And then there's dose and rose
But lose, goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart
Come, come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I'd learned to speak it when I was five!
But will I write it before I die?
I hope so, I say with a sigh!
