Spelling Rules
There is nothing 'natural' about reading
and writing.
The alphabetic system was DEVISED for the purpose of
preserving speech by representing it in a visual
form.
I remember watching the
student (Australian - not Scottish) who looked for 'orful'
in a dictionary because it didn't 'look right'. He couldn't
find it, but knew of no other alternative for the 'or' such
as 'au' or 'aw'. Another student, searching for 'thank' was
looking under 'f'. Yet another looked for 'dread' under the
'b' section, one surmises that even if he had searched
under 'd' and found no reference to 'dred' he would not
have known to try 'ea' as in 'dead'.
Yes, spelling is a complex task for those
lacking the capacity of 'magical visual recall'. The
dictionary is a best seller because the majority of the
population need one on hand. However, without a knowledge
of the alternative ways of representing sounds and the
general rules of spelling, they can be locked out of using
that dictionary.
It is the tutor's task to
make sure that the student is fully competent in spelling.
Whilst the student may not know how to spell every word in
the English Language, he/she should be able to use a
dictionary with confidence.
There are many who will claim that
spelling is a visual task: one simply recalls a word with
similar appearance. This is easy for the individual who has
excellent visual recall and can easily access a memory of
how a word looks. We therefore jump to the conclusion that
this is therefore the best way for everyone to learn how to
spell. This is of course a very simplistic conclusion
because we do not all possess equal ability to recall
visual information. A student with poor visual recall will
fail miserably if forced to rely on such a
method.
Spelling can also be an
auditory task in that, by listening to the sounds that we
utter and matching that with the written symbol, we are
able to write down those sounds. Unfortunately it is not so
easy because there are multiple ways of representing the
same sound. There is 'ay' as in 'play' and 'ai' as in
'rain' and 'a_e' as in 'rare'! There are homophones such as
'pain' and 'pane' that even sound exactly the same! Whilst
'sounding out' is a supportive skill for all students, a
CRITICAL component for those with low visual recall and
those with significant sequencing difficulties. Good solid
teaching enables students to cope with the anomalies of
English spelling demonstrated above.
Tactile or proprioceptive (muscle) memory
is yet another support system. How many times do you hear
someone say, when asked to spell a word, "Let me write it
down."?
Most of the population
will at various times need each of the three support
functions. For example when asked to spell a word like
'conscientious', we may use our sounding of syllables -
'con' is easy - the next bit could also be sounded but we
may choose to relate it to the word 'science', with which
we are already familiar; visually we have to note if it has
a 'ti' and not 'ci' or 'si' and finally 'ous' is merely a
familiar suffix. So we would likely say - "Let me write
it." However, if we misspell it as "consciencious'' we may
notice that it doesn't look right. By writing it down we
convert the difficult task of retrieving a visual memory of
the word into a simple 'visual recognition' task.
As you will now
appreciate, those of us not blessed with a superb visual
memory require quite a lot of knowledge to 'hang it all
together'. It is the tutor's job to teach ALL the
strategies that are required. The student can then find
his/her own 'best balance' of learned skills to apply to
the task of SPELLING.
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