Good spellers, like good readers, have good memories. Fluent readers retrieve most words at sight. They have passed the stage of struggling to associate letter sounds in words. For this reason, they can read faster than they can speak.
Some educators encourage students to apply the likely sounds of letters to encode words—so-called “invented spelling.” Others insist on accurate spelling. Superb phonics skill cannot do the job. Conventional spelling requires memory.
Carmen McGuinness has told us there is variation in the code. She is correct. About 15 of every hundred English words are irregular. They cause some difficulty in decoding and encoding. But there are phonetic words that present difficulty in spelling. These are words that are pronounced alike but have different spellings and meanings—homonyms or homophones.
I frequently read messages like the following: “Most homophones can be taken care of as one teaches the various long vowel and more complex vowel spellings.”
Are “complex vowel spellings” another way of saying, “Vowels in English are a law unto themselves?” Will appropriate teaching of various long vowels “take care of homophones?” Are vowels the only culprits or do variations in consonants have something to do with homophones? Should we delay telling students that phonics has its limitations in spelling (and reading)?
Let’s examine a few of the hundreds of homophones and consider if we can use phonics to teach them or if memory for word meanings and letter order is required: key, quay; new, knew, gnu; rains, reigns, reins; pail, pale; flower, flour; hear, here; we’re, weir; wear, ware; bow, beau; peal, peel; wind, wined, whined; where’s, wares, wears; fair, fare, shown, shone; heir, air; aweigh, away; o’er, oar, or; by, buy, bye; crude, crewed; died, dyed; rude, rued, rood; chews, choose; way, weigh; stayed, staid; tear, tare; rime, rhyme; liken, lichen; news, gnus; sear, seer; wiled, wild; wield, wheeled; great, grate; read, reed; purl, pearl; awl, all; sea, see; blew, blue; wok, walk; him, hymn; fore, four, for; no, know; missed, mist; some, sum; but, butt; must, mussed; wen, when; ate, eight.
Do you want to charge me with “playing the exceptions game?” I plead, “Not guilty. I am playing no game; homophones present real-life spelling problems.”
Is it not wonderful to be able to read and spell words accurately?
Peace.
Re: Spelling Requires Memory
Sequential Spelling by AVKO teaches by means of a systematic introduction of spelling patterns. This is different from other spelling programs I have investigated.
We have used Phono-Graphix and Super-Speller, Spelling Power, and Sanseri’s WISE Guide to Spelling — based on Spalding approach. Also, I have a number of other spelling programs on the shelf that I have looked at — including Rudginsky’s, Natural Speller, and a couple of others. A combination of vision therapy, PACE and Phono-Graphix made my 11yo dd an excellent reader (fluent 6th grade level), but her spelling problems remain severe (2nd/3rd grade level). PG and Super-Speller were fine for phonetic spelling, but did not work for anything else. Spelling Power did not transfer at all to dd’s writing. WISE was just too tedious for us to cope with.
We’ve been using Sequential Spelling for only 2 weeks, so it’s early days for us in this program. However, it seems to be working pretty well so far. Dd is already self-correcting in the program (something she could *never* do before) and spelling some complex words (such as “beginners”) correctly the first time she encounters them. The real test will be whether or not she transfers what she is learning into her written work. However, based on our experience so far, I’d say this is a spelling program worth looking at — especially because it is innovative and different from others on the market.
I have read research that indicates difficulty with non-phonetic spellings usually reflects an insensitivity to visual patterns in words more than it indicates poor visual memory. (My dd, for example, can draw a detailled picture from memory with no problem. However, she still spells “good” as “gud” — except that she has started self-correcting this with AVKO’s approach.) If this is true, the AVKO approach should work for us.
Website is http://www.avko.org
Mary
Re: Spelling Requires Memory
Margo
I am a student intern and am not familiar with too many spelling programs, but I believe in inventive spelling and agree with what you said about visual memory. It is true that homophones and the rules that go along with it are all too confusing, but the more students are exposed to them visually, it will sink in and they’ll someday know the difference. I who speak another language can attest to that, because growing up I found it difficult to get the rules straight, but the more I was corrected and the more I was exposed to them, the better I was differentiating them. So inventive spelling helps as a stepping stone for students to develop their writing and phonemic skills, but correction from the teacher should follow.
KailaR
Re: Spelling Requires Memory
Dear Margo,
Thanks for your request for suggestions about teaching spelling.
Have you considered going with the best? Home school children continue to win top positions at the US National Spelling Bee. There might be a chapter in your area. Parents of home-schooled children are usually willing to share what has worked for them. There are loads of books on home schooling on the shelves of major bookstores. There are also many web sites.
A parent might protest, “A spelling or a reading method that succeeds with children who are not disabled might be ineffective with my LD child. Similarly, a child might want to learn to ski, but he has only one leg. A specialist in teaching sports for the handicapped might succeed whereas a coach of physically fit world champions might fail.”
“Not so,” insist the authors of the XYZ Reading System, “There is one best way to teach reading. It follows that there is one best way to teach spelling. Neither the method nor the materials should be modified for an LD student.”
Am I only imagining controversy in providing spelling instruction for the LD child?
I have the mental picture of a TV documentary showing Vietnamese siblings sitting in rocking chairs on their back porch. Each is holding a dictionary. They were dictating words and attempting to spell them to each other. They were good spellers seeking to improve their skills.
I suspect that good spellers: (l) can see and hear and learned to spell when they were in good physical and emotional health. (2) They learned when they were rested, well nourished, in quiet, temperate, well-lighted surroundings, and believed they were safe. (3) They are intelligent, and they have superb memories. (4) They learned the names and shapes of letters, and they learned to associate them with their most likely sounds in spoken words. (5) They learned to form manuscript letters (with varying degrees of legibility). (6) They wanted to learn to spell words accurately with such commitment that they were willing to study for many hours. (7) They had learned to converse, and then they were taught beginning reading. Some spelling was taught so quickly that the skills appeared to be introduced simultaneously. (8) They were shown models of the accurately spelled words they were to memorize, and they were taught to spell directly in structured lessons. (9) They were introduced to the common words that they would be using to compose their pieces (the, of, and in, to) at an early stage. (10) Spelling mistakes were corrected as soon as possible, and teachers would not accept a piece until all words were spelled accurately.
A 1980’s cartoon strip, SALLY FORTH, by Greg Howard:
Frame 1 of 6: Young girl lying on a carpet writing on a note pad
Girl: “Mom, how do you spell pneumonia?”
Mom: “You should learn to look up words in the dictionary, Honey.”
Girl: (thinks) This is really stupid! In order to look up a word, you have to be able to spell it. But if you can spell it, you wouldn’t have to look it up in the first place.
Girl: “Help!”
Mom: “Coming….”
Girl: “It’ll take me hours to go through all the ‘Ns.’”
Mom: “I’ll give you a hint. Pneumonia is under ‘P.’”
Girl: “I thought this Webster guy was supposed to be some sort of word expert. As far as I’m concerned, it takes a real sicko to confuse little kids by putting ‘N’ words under ‘P.’”
You wrote: “much of spelling must be visual memory”
I agree. Much is visual, and even visual memory is insufficient for hundreds of words. A memory of meaning is required. Accurate spelling requires a person to select the correct letter order and the correct meaning of the homophones he writes.
An excellent reader/speller is similar to a valuable bird dog. Both demonstrate intelligence, attentiveness, cooperation, and eagerness to learn. Once they have committed a task to memory, they are superb retrievers.
There is no substitute for knowing how to map the words we want to read and spell— accurately, automatically, and effortlessly.
Peace.
Arthur:
Once a child can spell phonetically (which I believe involves developing phonemic awareness and some knowledge of how speech maps to symbols), much of spelling must be visual memory. I believe that teachers and programs (such as Super Speller [Phono-Graphix] and Houghton Mifflin [a spelling program by Shane Templeton, a co-author of Words Their Way]) attempt to teach spelling patterns in hopes that some visual memory of these patterns will be developed. This must be why people who read more can spell better.
But in what other ways can accurate spelling be developed? It is true that many of the “rules” do not work often. Most of us know that the “when two vowels go walking” rule does not work even 50% of the time. Any suggestions?
Margo