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Spelling

When assessing Kindergarten and Year 1 students for reading difficulties, we should always test spelling. Here’s why.

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A while back, a worried parent asked me why I was planning to test her early Year 1 child’s spelling skills when the child’s main difficulty was reading. Understandably, she didn’t want her child to be tested without a good reason.

It was a great question! I explained that early reading decoding and spelling skills are linked. But I was unhappy that I couldn’t answer the question more precisely or with more detail. 

So I went away and looked at the research: 

Should we test spelling when assessing late Kindergarten and Year 1 students with early reading difficulties?

Yes.  

There are two key reasons:

(a) Spelling in Kindergarten is a proxy – a good stand-in – for phonological awareness and letter knowledge (e.g. McBride-Chang & Ho, 2005).

Many young school-aged children spell by segmenting spoken words into phonemes (speech sounds) and then assigning letters to the phonemes. For example, when spelling the spoken word /maet/, many late Kindergarten children can segment the spoken word into three speech sounds – /m/, /ae/, /t/ – then assign or link letters to the speech sounds – <m>, <a> and <t> – to form the written word ‘mat’.  This is an example of early ‘encoding’. 

(The opposite of ‘encoding’ is ‘decoding’, an essential reading skill where you look at a written word, e.g. ‘mat’, identify each letter – <m>, <a>, <t> – link each letter to an associated speech sound – <m>, <ae>, <t> – and blend or ‘synthesise’ them together to produce the spoken word /maet/.) 

(b) Post-Kindergarten spelling is a significant predictor of word reading in later grades. 

Early spelling has a unique role in the prediction of later reading and writing performance. Specifically, post-Kindergarten spelling is a good predictor of later reading success even after controlling for post-Kindergarten phonological awareness, reading and letter-sound knowledge, and pre-Kindergarten vocabulary (e.g. Treiman et al., 2019).  

By the end of Kindergarten, typical learners of English writing have some knowledge about which spellings are appropriate for specific words (e.g. when spelling irregular words, e.g. ‘said’) or positions in words (e.g. knowing to use ‘ay’ when spelling ‘tray’, instead of <ai>, <ae> or <a>). In other words, spelling is more than just a proxy for phonological awareness and letter-sound knowledge.

Should we spend time explicitly teaching children with reading difficulties how to spell?

Yes, again. 

You can read why here. 

Clinical bottom line

Early spelling has a unique role in predicting later reading success.  When we assess young school-age children with reading difficulties, we should always assess their spelling: both for information about their phonological awareness skills and letter-sound knowledge; and because it is a predictor of word reading ability in later grades beyond measures of phonological awareness and letter-sound knowledge.

Related articles:

Principal source:  Treiman, R.,  Hulslander, J., Olson, R.K., Willcutt, B.B., & Kessler, B. (2019). The Unique Role of Early Spelling in the Prediction of Later Literacy Performance. Scientific Studies of Reading, 23:5, 437-444.

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Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

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Should we spend time teaching our kids to spell? If so, how, and what should we teach them?

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Learning to spell is hard and time-consuming. Should we invest precious school time teaching kids how to spell? I think so. Here’s why:

1. Teachers, bosses and peers judge people who can’t spell negatively

Misspelled words:

  • make writing more difficult to read (Graham et al., 2008); and
  • cause readers to devalue the quality of a writer’s message (Marshall & Powers, 1969).

At school, papers with misspelled words are scored more harshly by teachers for the quality of ideas than the same papers with no spelling errors (Graham et al., 2011). This is consistent with my experience in the corporate and finance sectors: many professionals (me included!) judge spelling errors as a sign of sloppiness and even incompetence – especially in business communications like resumes and business proposals.

2. Spelling problems detract from a person’s writing quality and can reduce motivation to write

For example:

  • if kids have to think hard about how to spell words correctly, they may have less brainpower to expend on the content of what they are writing. They may forget ideas they have yet to write down (Graham et al., 2002);
  • spelling problems can affect a child’s choice of words: they may choose a more general or even incorrect word to describe an object or idea simply because they are unsure of how to spell the more exact word precisely (Graham & Harris, 2005); and
  • kids who are aware that they have spelling problems may avoid writing whenever possible, and become convinced that they “can’t write”, leading to less writing practice and development (Berninger et al., 1991).

3. Learning to spell improves other literacy skills

Learning to spell can improve a child’s:

4. Spelling skills improve more when they are expressly taught to kids than when they are not taught to kids

For decades, researchers have argued about whether spelling should be explicitly taught to kids, or whether it’s better for kids to figure out spelling “naturally”, i.e. without being taught, e.g. from reading lots of stuff and recognising spelling patterns – so-called “statistical learning”. In other words, researchers argue about whether spelling should be “taught” or “caught”.

The weight of good quality, peer-reviewed evidence tells us that:

  • to learn a skill from our environment (e.g. spelling) without being explicitly taught it, we need to pay attention to the to-be-learned material (e.g. Toro et al., 2005). It’s true that kids do learn some spelling patterns from their environment and interests, e.g. how to spell their name. But, for many kids, printed words are simply not attractive enough for them to pay enough attention to spelling as they read. For example, a study showed that, on average, 4 year olds spent only around 5% of the time paying attention to written words when being read to by parents, with the majority of their time spent looking at the pictures (e.g. Evans & Saint-Aubin, 2005; Justice et al., 2008). This is not surprising: unlike with speech, humans did not evolve to pay attention to writing (Treiman, 2018); and
  • the best way to improve a child’s performance on a skill such as spelling, is to focus on the skill directly. In other words, to improve spelling, you need to practice spelling (and not other skills, such as working memory or pattern recognition) (Smith et al., 2015; McArthur & Castles, 2017; Treiman, 2018);
  • children learn to spell more efficiently and effectively when they receive systematic instruction about spelling than when they do not. A major meta-analysis of peer-reviewed spelling studies showed that direct and systematic spelling instruction:
    • improves students’ spelling skills by slightly more than one-half of a standard deviation, across a range of ages/years of school (from Kindergarten to Year 10!);
    • results in long-term gains;
    • results in gains that transfer to students’ performance in some writing tasks; and
    • improves phonological awareness and reading skills, including word reading and comprehension skills (but – interestingly – not fluency) (Graham & Santangelo, 2014).

5. Components of effective spelling programs

Spelling programs come in many shapes and sizes, ranging from practising lists of spelling words, to teaching specific spelling skills, to more sophisticated programs targeting a range of spelling skills. Consistent with our approach to literacy teaching and the weight of peer-reviewed evidence, we favour a phonics-based approach to teaching spelling, combined with phonological and morphological awareness training. This includes teaching students:

  • phonological awareness skills like blending sounds most often linked to letters to form words (and segmenting words into sounds);
  • links between combinations of letters and different speech sounds, e.g. “sh”, “ee”, “ou”, “ow”, “ai”, “ay”, “oi,”, “oy”, “oa”, “er”, “ir”, “ur”, “wor”, “ear”, “au”, “ck”, “ng”, “ch”, “ph”, and “ough”;
  • common spelling probabilities and patterns, including context rules (sometimes referred to as “graphotactics”), such as:
    • English words rarely ending in the letters “i”, “v” or “u” (hence “spy”, “love”, “have”, and “blue”);
    • “ck” being used to signify /k/ after a short vowel (hence “black” and “kicking”);
    • “ll” and “ff” being used to signify /l/ and /f/ after a short vowel in stressed syllables (hence “full” and “biff”);
    • vowel letters at the end of open syllables signifying a long vowel sound (hence “navy”, “be”, “I”, “no” and “music”);
    • using a silent “e” at the end of a word to signify a long vowel (hence “like” and “mate”); and
    • “c” signifying a /s/ sound when followed by “i”, “e” or “y” (hence “circle”, “ceiling” and “cycle”);
  • syllable segmentation tactics (recognising that, usually, each syllable in English contains at least one vowel sound); and
  • morphological awareness skills such as the meanings of common:
    • prefixes, e.g. “un”, “dis”, “super”, “sub”, “pro”, “pre”, “con”, “trans”, “ex”, “in”, “uni”, bi”, “tri”, “quad” and “bene”; and
    • suffixes, e.g. “s”, “es”, “ed”, “ing”, “er”, “est”, “ful”, “less”, “able”, “ous”, and “ness”; and
    • common word roots.

While the purpose of this article is not to promote any specific spelling program, we use a range of spelling and word attack programs in our clinic, including Spelfabet, Spalding and Yoshimoto’s morphological awareness programs. We’re also fans of Sounds-Write and other phonics-based programs that aim to teach kids to read through writing.

Clinical bottom line

Kids should be taught to spell because:

  • it improves their spelling, phonological awareness and some reading skills; and
  • poor spelling skills can affect academic and work achievements.

Kids can learn spelling skills through reading/exposure to print – through statistical learning – but progress depends on how much attention they pay to spelling when reading. Many kids don’t pay much attention to spelling patterns when they read.

Structured spelling instruction is more effective and efficient than statistical learning. Spelling programs that focus directly on spelling are more likely to benefit spelling than interventions that focus on other skills, such as working memory or pattern recognition.

Related articles:

Principal references:

  1. Graham, S. & Santangelo. (2014). Does Spelling instruction make students better spellers, readers, and writers? A meta-analytic review. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 27, 1703-1743.
  2. Treiman, R. (2018). Statistical Learning and Spelling. Language, Speech, and Hearing in Schools, 49, 644-652.

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Banter Speech & Language Banter Speech & Language
Banter Speech & Language is an independent firm of speech pathologists for adults and children. We help clients in our local area, including Concord, Concord West, North Strathfield, Rhodes, and Strathfield, and all other suburbs of Sydney.

Banter Speech & Language is owned and managed by David Kinnane, a Hanen- and LSVT LOUD-certified speech-language pathologist with post-graduate training in the PreLit early literacy preparation program by MultiLit, the Spalding Method for literacy, the Lidcombe and Camperdown Programs for stuttering, and Voicecraft for voice disorders. David is also a Certified PESL Instructor for accent modification.

David holds a Master of Speech Language Pathology from the University of Sydney, where he was a Dean’s Scholar. David is a Practising Member of Speech Pathology Australia and a Certified Practising Speech Pathologist (CPSP). David sits on Speech Pathology Australia’s Ethics Board and Professional Standards Advisory Committee.

Why is English spelling so hard? Why and how should we teach it?

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Literacy involves three skills: reading, writing and spelling. But many literacy programs focus only on reading and writing.

Lots of us – including the Oxford English Dictionary – define literacy as the ability to read and write. But spelling is an additional, separate skill from reading or writing.

In some ways, spelling is harder than reading or writing:

  •  There are far more spellings for a sound than pronunciations for letters. There is only one way to pronounce the word spelt by the letters s-e-e-p. But there are several ways of writing the sounds /si:p/, e.g. seep, seap, sepe, siep, and seip.
  • Spelling lacks the automaticity we associate with handwriting or typing. For example, most people can write their signature and high frequency words like “the” without thinking about it. But, more than 30 years after learning the words, I still have pause and think when spelling “occasion”, “embarrass” or “harassment”.

Why is spelling in English so hard?

I get asked this a lot – especially by young students. As David Crystal tells us in his excellent book “Spell it Out”, there are actually lots of reasons, including the following:

  • There are only 26 letters in our alphabet, but we have up to 44 different speech sounds in English.
  • In Early Anglo-Saxon England, the monks decided to use the 23 letter Roman alphabet to develop the English writing system. Adapting the Roman alphabet to English meant adding what ended up being additional letters, including some Anglo-Saxon letters, including Germanic letters called eth, thorn, ash and wynn.
  • English spelling inherited weaknesses of the Old English alphabet: (1) some letters had more than one sound; and (2) some sounds were shown by 2+ letters.
  • Various strategies were used by different writers to show long vowels – sometimes double vowels were used, sometimes a “silent e” was added, sometimes additional vowel letters were added (e.g. meat, piece).
  • Some first writers in English showed short vowels in content words by doubling the following consonant (e.g. lass).
  • After the Battle of Hastings in 1066, the victorious Normans introduced lots of spelling exceptions to basic rules, and even replaced some of the letters of the alphabet including thorn, eth, and wynn (ash – ae –  would survive until the 13th century, and can still be seen in the British English spelling of words like “encyclopaedia”, “paediatrician”, and “aednauseum”). This caused lots of problems.
  • Additions of suffixes in English (e.g. ance, ity, ment, tion) change the pronunciation of the root word by changing the stress pattern. Scribes kept the spelling of the root words the same, even though the pronunciation was different.
  • In the 16th century, Latin was held in such high regard that writers started spelling English words as they were in Latin. They also changed the spelling of words they thought looked “too Anglo-Saxon”, to make them look more French. More problems ensued.
  • Several Old English words had their spellings changed by French scribes even though they contained letters used in French. Some new spelling patterns were the result, e.g. “ce” and “que” suffixes, replacement of some “th” spellings with “d” (e.g. in “murder”, formerly “morther”).
  • Sometimes Old English sounds began to be used in new word positions. The old spelling would not always work, which led to some changes, e.g. the introduction of the letter “j” before long vowels (as in “jewel”).
  • Some of the consonants in Old English began to be used in new ways to distinguish words, e.g. /s/ and /z/ to distinguish “bus” from “buzz”, /f/ and /v/ to distinguish “save” and “safe”.
  • The style of handwriting used by medieval scribes caused some sequences of letters to look identical. Workarounds had to be found, which lead to some irregular spellings, e.g. “flying”.
  • Homonyms sometimes were distinguished by different spellings, e.g. you, ewe, yew, and U.
  • Older spellings were sometimes changed to conform to patterns used in other words. Lots of words contain gh, sh, th and ch. This is why we have lots of words beginning with a “wh” (like “who”, “what”, “whistle”) when we actually pronounce them “hw” or “w”.
  • In the late Middle English period we had the 200 year Great Vowel Shift (beginning in the early 15th century) when people started to say vowels further toward the front of the mouth. All the long vowels changed and the spelling of all words with a long vowel was affected. But short vowels were unaffected. As a result, the spellings of many words no longer reflect the sounds.
  • The arrival of printing in the 15th century brought a greater degree of order to spelling than had existed with the monks and scribes. But different printers used difficult spellings.
  • During the 16th century, people turned to the study of word origins – etymology – to try to regularise English spelling. This resulted in lots more silent letters, e.g. in “island”. Different etymologies also explain many tricky words, e.g. privilege, precede, deign, dependant/dependent, stationery/stationary. They also explain the different spellings of the “sh” sounds in spatial, facial, and emotion.
  • English spelling was shaped by influential dictionary writers, including Dr Johnson and Noah Webster.
  • English spelling was further refined by the big publishing and printing companies, many of which developed style guides (e.g. The Times, The Chicago Manual of Style, or the Oxford University’s Hart’s Rules).
  • Many regional differences in spelling have developed and continue to develop, e.g. colour/color, and the use of the “ise/ize” suffix.
  • Corporate names and marketing efforts have had an effect on spelling, e.g. words like “FaceBook”, “lite” and “thru”.
  • A new source of spelling variation is the Internet. Although many decry its influence, some think it may help simplify irregular spellings over time.

How should spelling be taught? A short history

Throughout history, educators have taken different approaches to spelling instruction:

  • In the 16th century, the general assumption was that, once a child had learned to read, the ability to spell would automatically follow. Even as late as 1750, Lord Chesterfield was advising his son that “[r]eading with care will secure everybody from false spelling.”
  • By the 18th century, the prevailing view was that spelling had to be taught formally. Letter-naming, word tables, spelling rules, word lists, spelling memory drills and spelling bees became common.
  • At the end of the 19th century, Joseph Mayer Rice published an influential study called “The Futility of the Spelling Grind” and the Rational Spelling Book – which showed there was no relationship between the amount of time spent learning spelling and spelling ability. These and other works along the same lines convinced many educators that there had to be a better way than memorising lists of unrelated words.
  • During the 20th century, the idea resurfaced that increasing the quantity of reading is the best way of improving spelling, and the focus shifted back to reading. But some interpreted this idea as suggesting that correct spelling was unimportant.
  • And the debate rages on.

My view

No-one is born with an ability to spell. Everyone has to learn how to do it. The key question is how to do it most effectively.

I’d argue that the best way for children to learn spelling is to incorporate elements of both the approaches above:

  • Spelling should be explicitly taught. Spelling principles and lists can be helpful if they are the right principles and lists.
  • Word lists should contain:
    • high frequency, relevant words that children will actually use to write; and
    • groups of related words (word families).
  • spelling is about internalising letter sequences in words. To this end:
    • children should be encouraged to read as much as possible – and not just formal texts – anything. The more children see spellings – whether regular or irregular – the more readily they will start to use them in their writing.
    • children should be taught to use dictionaries and thesauruses to build their own lists of words that matter to them; and
    • children should be told stories about word origins to help them remember how to spell them, e.g. “annus” means year in Latin, hence “annual”, “ped” means foot, hence “pedicure”, “phot” means light and “graph” means “writing” in Greek, hence “photograph”.
  • Rather than talking about rules with lots of exceptions, teach children principles of spelling probability, e.g. “q” is almost always followed by a “u”, English words don’t usually end in a “v” or a “u” – hence the need to add a silent “e” to words like “have” and “blue”, and a silent “e” at the end of a word often makes the vowel long (the so-called “bossy e”).
  • Spelling is often described as a bridge between reading and writing. Therefore, when providing phonics-based reading instruction, children should also be taught:
    • all the sounds each letter can make, e.g.:
      • the letter “c” can say /k/, as in “cat”, or /s/ as in “circle”, “ceiling” and “cycle”;
      • the letter “o” has three sounds, as in “dot”, “dope” and “do”; and
      • the letter “y” has three sounds, as in “yellow”, “my” and “valley” – the latter two are needed because English words do not often end it the letter “i” (which also makes those sounds); and
    • high-frequency letter sequences and the sounds they make, e.g.:
      • “ck” says /k/, and is never used at the start of a word;
      • “kn” says /n/, “ph” says /f/, “er”, “ir”, “ur”, and “ear” all say the “er” sound, “or”, “aw”, “au” and “augh” all make an “or” sound, and “oo” has two sounds, as in “foot” and “boot”,

so they can think about spelling options for unfamiliar words. These elements are important features of the Spalding Method.

Principal source: Crystal, D. (2012). Spell it Out. The Singular Story of English Spelling. Profile Books, London.

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Banter Speech & Language Banter Speech & Language
Banter Speech & Language is an independent firm of speech pathologists for adults and children. We help clients in our local area, including Concord, Rhodes, Strathfield and all other suburbs of Sydney’s Inner West.

Banter Speech & Language is owned and managed by David Kinnane, a Hanen- and LSVT LOUD-certified speech-language pathologist with post-graduate training in the Spalding Method for literacy, the Lidcombe and Camperdown Programs for stuttering, and Voicecraft for voice disorders. David is also a Certified PESL Instructor for accent modification.

David holds a Master of Speech Language Pathology from the University of Sydney, where he was a Dean’s Scholar. David is a Practising Member of Speech Pathology Australia and a Certified Practising Speech Pathologist (CPSP).