Practice/Practise

Yes, even for a furiner the distinction is simple enough.

Must say I was always stunned that so many English students did not understand the simple concepts of noun, adjective, verb, adverb, direct and indirect object - which are key to learning German right from the start, and some elements of more sophisticated French. Always had to spend 1 week with each classe making sure they understood the above in English- after about half a term studying German- then continue.

Practice/practise, licence/license etc: The schools I went to never taught us to spell these, hence I had no idea whatsoever that two different spellings existed, let alone when to use them! On no occasion was my spelling of them ever corrected in my written work.
English grammar was not taught in English lessons at my secondary school in the 1970s, yet I got a decent mark in my 16+ exam. I do remember an art teacher correcting me on my written use of me versus I, and the French teacher teaching me to use singular verbs with nouns such as 'the team', but despite being a very conscientious student, I learned bugger all from the English teachers! I actually feel quite angry about it, looking back.

It wasn't until I was a mature student in my thirties that a tutor finally corrected my spelling and made me aware of the grammatical difference, but I often wonder how many other grammatical rules I'm still unaware of!

We had to analyse sentences in English lessons at school. It helped no end later with learning German and French, where there are definite distinctions between the accusative and dative - the pronouns and the endings all have to match, or you change the meaning of the sentence completely.

As for "practice" and "practise", I always remember the difference is the same as "Advice" and "Advise". There you can hear the difference and it is clear which is the noun and which is the verb. If it's something you're doing (advising, practising) then it's the "s". If it's something you can put an article in front of ("the", or even "some", "any") then it's the noun and it's "advice", "practice".

Great analysis JackyB. I went to a Grammar School and wasn't taught formal English grammar. Soon learned it at Law School though!

Not quite the same, but people seem to have difficulty with the difference between 'affect' (verb) and 'effect' (noun). They don't know which is the noun and which is the verb.

I think that's why people plump for the use of 'impact' for both instead. Which greatly offends my pedantic soul as 'impact' as a verb has a completely different meaning from 'affect'.

I know some clever clogs point out the 'affect' can be used as a noun, too, but as this usage is mostly found in academic papers on psychology it is hardly an everyday usage! Also 'effect' can be a verb, but it's rarely used as such nowadays.

I used to get annoyed with fellow teahers over, practice and practise. The young ones never got it right.

I was taught to always go to advise and advice as a pattern for all similar words. It works for me.

I've never been sure of the difference between practice & practise, so it's good to get the explanation.

In my primary school we did lots of splitting sentences into various parts of speech. At scondary school, everyone seemed to be clued up when we did languages so I guess they had been taught grammar in primary too.

It doesn't happen nowadays, tho. My daughter learned a lot about English grammar when she took up Esperanto.

A memory jogger for the -ice or -ise words is that ice is a noun and so is advice, practice, and so on. That doesn't help, of course, for anyone who doesn't know what a noun is.
(Definition at dictionary.reference.com/ - "The part of speech that names a person, place, thing, or idea.")

I went to Grammar school in 1948 and we were certainly taught good English which has mostly stayed with me. Now maths is a different story, I think you need a particular type of brain for that.

Bless you Mrs. Ryder. She was the primary school teacher that had a dozen words on the blackboard every morning and whilst she was doing registration we had to use a dictionary to find out if they were noun, verb etc. and the meaning. Most of it seems to have stuck

In English the noun is Licence. But is US speak it is License. I know of British software companies who have thrown towel in and used license for both noun and verb