• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Banter Speech & Language

Banter Speech & Language

Sydney speech pathologists helping adults and children speak for themselves.

  • Home
  • Our Speech Pathologists
  • Shop
    • Speech
    • Language
    • Stuttering
    • Reading
    • Decodable Readers
    • Writing
    • Primary School
    • High School
    • Online resources
    • Business Templates
    • NDIS Templates
    • NDIS Training
    • Courses
  • Cart
  • Banter Supervision
  • Contact Us
  • Show Search
Hide Search
You are here: Home / Spelling / For students with spelling difficulties, where should we start?

For students with spelling difficulties, where should we start?

David Kinnane · 7 March 2021 ·


Spelling is hard. Lots of things can go wrong. To help students, you need to be able to spot, sort, and address their spelling error patterns. 

There are five types of knowledge needed for spelling, and 15 main error types:

1. Phonological (speech sound-related) errors, include:

  • omissions of vowels or consonants (e.g. “da” for “dad”, “sug” for “slug”, “mst” for “most”, “repile” for “reptile”);
  • additions of vowels or consonants (e.g. “filum” for “film”);
  • substitutions for consonants based on phonological processes (e.g. “bat” for “pat”, “tattle” for “cattle”, “wabbit” for “rabbit”, and “free” for “three”); and
  • substitutions of vowels resulting in non-words (e.g. “cortain” for “certain”).

Read more about common developmental phonological processes here.

2. Orthographic (spelling system-related) errors include mistakes about:

  • pattern frequencies (e.g. “aparrently” for “apparently”); and
  • rules (e.g. “morfed” for “morphed”, “hoping” for “hopping”).

3. Mental graphic representation (visual memory-related) errors include mistakes with:

  • exceptions to rules (e.g. “feild” for “field”); and
  • irregular nouns or verbs (e.g. “breaked” for “broke”, “mouses” for “mice”).

4. Morphological (root word/affix-related) errors include:

  • derivational errors (e.g. “scarely” for “scarily”); 
  • inflectional errors (e.g. “car” for “cars”, “walk” for “walking”); and 
  • contraction errors (e.g. “Im” for “I’m”, “dont” for “don’t”).

Read more about morphological awareness here.

5. Morphological-semantic (meaning-related) errors include mistakes with:

  • homophones (e.g. “bare” for “bear”, “new” for “knew”) – for more information about homophones watch our video here;
  • compound words (e.g. “over worked” for “overworked”);
  • word boundaries (e.g. “dairycow” for “dairy cow”); and
  • consonant/vowel changes resulting in real words (e.g. “angle” for “angel”).

Knowing these five kinds of knowledge needed for spelling – and 15 error types – can help educators, speech pathologists, families, and others to plan and implement interventions to help students with spelling difficulties.

For an accessible version of the infographic, watch our video infographic:

Key source: Koutsoftas, A.D., Srivastava, P., and Harris, S.B. (2020). Spelling as Part of the Writing Process in Intermediate-Grade Students. Topics in Language Disorders, 40(4), 375-388.

Related articles:

  • 10 common speech error patterns seen in children of 3-5 years of age – and when you should be concerned
  • What else helps struggling readers? The evidence for “morphological awareness” training
  • Light Up Language with Homophones, Homonyms, and Homographs (video blog)
  • Should we spend time teaching our kids to spell? If so, how, and what should we teach them?
  • When assessing Kindergarten and Year 1 students for reading difficulties, we should always test spelling. Here’s why.
  • Why is English spelling so hard? Why and how should we teach it?

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn
  • Email

Print Friendly, PDF & EmailPrint Friendly

Share this:

  • Email
  • Print
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn

Related

Spelling mental graphic representation errors, morphological errors, othographic errors, phonological errors, spelling error types

Primary Sidebar

Get in touch

115 Queen Street
North Strathfield NSW Australia
(02) 87573838
hello@banterspeech.com.au
Monday-Friday: 8.30am to 5.30pm
Saturday: 7.30am to 2.30pm
Closed Sundays and public holidays

Shop at our store

  • Narrative Language Workout for Young Primary Schoolers: The Crow and the Pitcher, a Fable by Aesop $5.99 including GST
  • Basic English Core Vocabulary Barrier Activity: Verbs 1 $3.50 including GST
  • Complex Clusters Complex Cluster Targets for use with a Cycles Approach, Complexity Approach or Contrastive Approach $12.00 including GST
  • Session Plan and Data Collection Sheet Session Plan and Data Collection Worksheet $3.99 including GST
  • No Prep Conjunction Pack: 'Unless' $1.99 including GST
  • Employment Agreement for Admin Assistant in SLP clinic part-time Australian Employment Agreement Template for an Administrative Assistant working in a speech pathology clinic (Part-Time) $95.00 including GST
  • Level Up Language 3 Level Up Your Language Skills 3: Higher Level Oral Language Skills $10.00 including GST
  • Blank's Level 2 and 3 Dinosaurs Picture Resource Blanks 2 and 3 Dinosaurs Picture Resource $4.99 including GST

Store categories

March Featured Resource

  • Blanks 4: Language comprehension booster: What could you do when..? $4.99 including GST

Recent articles

  • Screencast from How to Supervise Speech Pathologists Properly in Private Practice
  • It’s live! How to Supervise Speech Pathologists Properly in Private Practice
  • How to Supervise Speech Pathologists Properly in Private Practice: Launch Date – 8 April 2021
  • How to supervise speech pathologists properly in private practice – change of launch date

Featured Articles

What do you think about when you think about speech pathology?

Ask Us Anything: 17 things our readers and followers really want to know about speech pathology (but were too shy to ask)!

Language therapy works. But can we make it better?

Stuttering: what do we mean by ‘recovery’?

Lifting the lid on speech therapy: How we assess and treat children with unclear speech – and why

Too many children can’t read. We know what to do. But how should we do it?

I want to help my late talker to speak, but I’m stuck at home. What can I do?

Free Resources

Big book of child speech pathology answers

Getting ready to read at big school

Is your kindy kid really reading

The Scatter-Slayer Adventures

Free decodable: Book 1 of The Scatter-Slayer Adventures. The first in our decodable digital ‘select-your-sequel’ series for reluctant readers, aged 7-12.

Get our free resource

Subscribe to receive our blog articles

Check out our therapy and provider resources Go to our shop

Banter Speech & Language

Copyright © 2021 · BANTER SPEECH & LANGUAGE PTY LIMITED ·

  • Articles
  • Shop
  • Cart
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled

Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.

Non-necessary

Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.

SAVE & ACCEPT
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.