Case study assignment:

An able writer who is a weak speller

How important is spelling?

The arguments about this emotive subject seem to revolve around a question of definition: is
spelling merely a surface feature of writing, or a fundamental aspect of the language? In
Spelling: Caught or Taught?, Margaret Peters (1985) sets out The case for good spelling,
arguing that if spelling correctly is not important why is so much attention given to the whole
question? One of the reasons correct spelling is important, she writes, is the ....question of
courtesy. Not to speak clearly, not to write legibly and not to spell correctly are marks of
discourtesy. Weak spelling is just as bad in this respect as mumbling over a telephone.
Weak spelling is blamed by some on falling standards in education, and is seen as a symptom
of contemporary indifference to the finer points of manners and behaviour. This has been linked
by some to a philosophy of education that places less emphasis on the technical aspects of
reading and writing, and instead focuses on encouraging self-expression through and
enjoyment of language. In The New Orthodoxy Examined, John Marenbon urges us to reject
every tenet of this doctrine which favours appropriateness to correctness, discovery to
instruction, and which treats spelling and grammar as surface features of writing, to which
teachers should not pay too much attention. The article implies that only rigorous and
disciplined teaching, with emphasis on pointing out and correcting all mistakes, can enable
pupils to read and write properly. In America, too, spelling is considered a national
priority.....Spelling is a form of etiquette. Brian Cox points out how the teaching of English
language and literature raises crucial questions about our value systems and our concepts of
national identity... While these political arguments may have their place, the fact remains that
spelling remains a source of difficulty for many people, in childhood and into adulthood.
English spelling is difficult and more than half the population has problems with it. In a typical
class of thirty pupils, five will misspell more than ten per cent of the words they write and
another ten will misspell between five to ten per cent.
Presidents, professional writers, doctors, and other persons with advanced education can have
spelling impediments that make them no more proficient than hod-carriers. As Harold Rosen of
The London Institute of Education has said, "Any idiot can tell a genius he has made a spelling
mistake."
Of all the encoding skills, spelling tends to be viewed by teachers and students alike as the
most arbitrary, the most resistant to instruction, and the least related to intelligence (a myth that
has comforted many bad spellers). It is the one area of writing where English teachers
themselves will admit ineptness.
Why is spelling so difficult?
Problems with spelling, as with other difficulties in writing generally, arise from what Mina
Shaughnessy (1977) calls a central condition of ill-preparedness with formal written language.
Reasons for this include the fact that our use of English is founded in spoken rather than written
language, and the fact that in speech we tend to use forms of English that differ widely from
Standard English.
The ability to spell grows slowly out of a number of different encounters with words: with the
sounds of words (phonological encounters), the looks of words on paper (visual encounters),
the feel of words as the hand moves to form them in writing (kinesthetic encounters), and the
meanings of words as they take their places in the contexts of sentences (semantic
encounters).

The English language is noted for the irregularities of its spellings, which gives rise to the idea
that there is only one way to learn most of them: by rote, or serial memory. There is also a
widespread belief that spelling difficulties are inherited, passed down from generation to
generation genetically. So, if a pupil has a poor visual memory and finds discriminating between
different sounds difficult, as well as poor handwriting and parents who cannot spell, the odds
appear to be against them as far as spelling is concerned. These factors must account in part
for the fatalistic attitude of many poor spellers who accept their lack of ability and do little to
remedy it.
Can spelling be taught?
In an essay entitled A developmental perspective of formal spelling instruction through
alphabet, pattern and meaning, Henderson and Templeton challenge the notions that spellings
in English are largely irregular, and that learning by rote is the only appropriate strategy to learn
them. They identify three ordering principles... alphabetic, within-word pattern, and meaning.
Alphabetic means that letters match sounds in a more or less orderly way from left to right, but
it is the more or less aspect of the system that causes learners problems, such as the varied
pronunciations of the digraph gh in ghost, high and rough. However, there is a logic to the
sequencing of letters in English that is predictable, which the within-word pattern can supply.
For example, gh can represent an f sound (as in rough) at the end of a word, but not at the
beginning, where it can only represent a g sound as in ghost.
The sound a letter or letters represent within a syllable depends on position and on the other
letters that surround it... There are therefore patterns in English spelling...children can master
these sequences when they know that such patterns exist and that it is pattern rather than
simple alphabetic sequence that they must search out, attend to and learn.
Meaning, the third ordering principle, is simply that words or parts of words having the same or
similar meaning tend to be spelled the same. This means that, for example, the word meat is
spelled the same in all contexts where it is a type of food, while meet is spelled the same
where it describes people getting together. In the same way, a root word such as finite does
not change in a commonly misspelt word such as definitely (to which it also has a semantic
link), in spite of the difference in pronunciation. As Henderson and Templeton point out,
Because the meaning.. does not change significantly, spelling maintains this relationship
visually rather than changing to represent the changing sounds.
It would appear, therefore, that there are structured approaches to spelling which can be taught,
and which make the teachers exhortations to look it up, proofread and learn it seem little
more than surface remedies. Margaret Peters defines the traditional approach to spelling
errors (where pupils may be asked to write out a spelling correction three times, for example) as
rote correction techniques. She recommends the use of what she calls rational correction
techniques which involve associating words that look the same however they sound, and a
systematic routine of learning and self-correcting.
In Spel...is a Four Letter Word, J.Richard Gentry argues for a developmental approach to
spelling from an early age, so that learning to spell can be an enjoyable process of discovery for
the child, rather than an experience of failure which might inhibit future progress. Rather than
describing good spelling as a form of etiquette, Gentry calls it merely a convenience... expert
spellers must have the knowledge and ability to honor (sic) certain conventions purely for the
sake of correctness. He quotes Andrew Jackson, a pitiful speller, as saying "Its a damn poor
mind that can think of only one way to spell a word".

Gentry is not opposed to formal instruction in spelling, as long as spelling is not removed from
the context of writing, where by isolating it, there is a risk of children becoming inhibited
because of the fear of being wrong. Being wrong, says Gentry, is as natural in learning to spell
as falling off in learning to ride a bike. In both instances, learning cannot take place without
error. Not only should spelling errors be tolerated, they should be expected. Very young children
should be encouraged to invent their own spellings as a way of testing and modifying
hypotheses about spelling. This is the way children learn.
If we accept that merely pointing out errors and leaving the rest to the child is ineffective, how
can we begin to address the problem of spelling?
Strategies for teaching spelling
Mina Shaughnessy describes how teachers can easily confirm a pupils belief that she is a born
misspeller by simply pointing out errors without introducing strategies and techniques to
overcome them. By exhibiting confidence in our own ability to address and deal with spelling
problems, we can generate confidence in our pupils, and help them to develop a positive selfimage of themselves as spellers. For adult bad spellers, the discovery that intelligent effort can
reduce spelling errors significantly and that the domain of spelling is not quite as unruly as it
once appeared can generate a will to work on the problem.
Another important tactic is to involve pupils in improving their spelling through encouraging them
to describe themselves as spellers, and to get them to participate in diagnosing their specific
spelling difficulties. This involves supplying the pupil with a spelling vocabulary; the technical
terms which we use to break language down into its components. J. Richard Gentry includes a
spelling vocabulary in a list of things which he considers appropriate to a systematic and
logical program (sic) of word study as part of formal spelling instructions. The list also includes
phonics, prefixes, suffixes, word endings, compound words, homonyms, word origins,
proofreading, and dictionary skills.
In her chapter entitled Teaching the catching of spelling for those who have not already caught
it, Margaret Peters emphasises the importance of looking with intent. Having proved that
spelling is not caught through reading alone, or through listening, she isolates the visual sense
as the most important where spelling is concerned. She writes that we as parents and teachers
are largely responsible for directing children to what we think is important in the world around
them, and in a sense we teach them how to look. This applies to spelling, as we only look with
intent at a word if we need to or want to reproduce it, and so the way in which we are taught to
look at the interesting features of words relates to the way we learn and make sense of other
words as our vocabularies expand. The proof that spelling is a visual skill is that as adults we
often write a word down before we can be sure of the spelling. In summarising the importance of
the visual mode, Peters points out that:
'Vision is our preferred sense as animals, just as a dogs frame of reference is smell.
We learn the serial probability of words through visual familiarity with written language'.
Crucially, it is words which look alike however they sound that form meaningful connections,
through being connected in groups according to their visual pattern.
Our habit of writing words down to check the spelling is a form of active self-testing which is
universally acknowledged as an effective way to learn.

We do not learn anything and we certainly do not remember what we have learned, unless we
have actively attended to what we are learning. It is unlikely that the young child will attend to
words unless an adult has specifically drawn his attention to them and to their structure.
Peters argues that by teaching children identify likenesses within words, they are able to
generalise to other words which have the same internal structure, so that they learn to spell by
relating letter strings. By using word banks where problematic letter strings in one word are
identified in others, children learn to generalise, which is more effective than teaching rules, the
application of which is beyond the developmental level of many children. This method is called
associative learning.
...We implicitly associate structurally similar words. This is because the probability of words
conforming to spelling precedent is very high, and it is by becoming familiar with spelling
precedents that we become good spellers. In other words, familiarity with a coding system is
half the battle in learning to spell.
Peters is against the use of sound (or auditory syllabification) as a way into spelling, as at
each stage of spelling a word in this way a range of possible options are available, of which only
one is correct. She favours learning the sequence of the word as a whole, visually and
kinaesthetically.
One other very important aspect of spelling identified by Peters is handwriting, which is the first
stage in acquiring the fluency that will ultimately enable a child to communicate and express
herself effectively through writing. From being able to form letters properly, the child can then
concentrate on letter pattern and word structure. In the first chapter of Spelling: Caught or
Taught?, Margaret Peters points out how good spelling is connected with freedom to write... it is
only when we have achieved that machine-like spelling of which Schonell spoke (1942), spelling
that is automatic, predictable, and infallible, that we are really free to write with confidence, with
no backward glances to see if a word looks right, and with no offering of a less precise
synonym or phrase because the right one is difficult to spell. Without the techniques at their
command, she argues, free or creative writing cannot be fulfilling for pupils.
Much of what Margaret Peters writes about teaching spelling applies to pre- and primary school,
and emphasises the importance of the role of the parents in developing an interest in written
language. What about the role of the teacher in secondary education, where teachers will still
encounter serious spelling problems in pupils who are not considered to have special
educational needs?
Teaching spelling at secondary level
There is no question that the behaviour of the teacher determines, more than any other single
factor, whether a child learns or does not learn to spell.... the child who has been talked to and
read to tends to catch spelling within that network of linguistic abilities that is the heritage of the
favoured child. It is the less-favoured child who vitally needs to be taught what he has not been
fortunate enough to have caught.... attainment at nine years still bears some vestigial influence
from home, family order and size, but at eleven this has disappeared and it is the teacher that is
the determining factor.
Gentry advocates devoting sixty to seventy-five minutes to formal spelling instruction per week,
which, given the scale of spelling problems at the secondary level, may not be as extreme as it
sounds. He suggests some teaching strategies to create an effective spelling programme. The
first of these is that spelling should be taught across the curriculum, not just in spelling lessons

in English. This seems appropriate in view of the fact that pupils will encounter patterns of
words, word families, roots of words and their derivations in subjects such as science and maths
that are unlikely to occur in English. To be effective, however, a unified approach would be
needed, where all teachers would use similar methods in teaching spelling. Also, it would mean
that time would be taken up with language study in subjects with an already crowded
curriculum, and so the prospect of cross-curricular spelling work seems unlikely.
Secondly, Gentry identifies frequent writing as important, because children develop, practice
and consolidate their skills through constant use. Thus spelling practice occurs in formal
contexts, and at other times. Both Henderson/Templeton and Gentry emphasise the importance
of purposeful writing , as opposed to exercises and drills. Both writers highlight the significance
of informal spelling instruction, which conveys to students an attitude of inquiry and a routine
for analysing words. To Gentry, the key to both formal and informal teaching is developing in
young writers a positive spelling consciousness which consists of an interest in words, an
enjoyment of word study, learning of spelling skills, and posing questions about spelling.
Thirdly, children should be encouraged to invent spellings for words they do not know. The value
of this is that it engages children in thinking about words, and also gives them a chance to
demonstrate their existing skills, an aspect of valuing what a child can do rather than pointing
out what it cannot. Gentry believes that children who are encouraged to invent spellings will
refine those spellings and progress developmentally towards correctness.... As a speller
matures, emphasis on correctness should increase... there is no evidence that invented
spellings become habitual. As teachers, he says, our role is to apply the criterion of appropriacy
rather than correctness. For example, only final drafts of compositions being readied for
publication should have to be spelled correctly. We should take into account all the factors that
may lie behind a childs problems with spelling, and make allowances, while attempting to
address them in our teaching.
Marking childrens work
When it comes to marking pupils writing, we should be concerned with the quality, not the
quantity of errors. For example, where a child has spelled a word incorrectly but in a way that
conforms to the code (eg sed for said), it should be of less concern than a word written in a
way that does not conform to an English spelling pattern, (eg w-a-h-t for what). Focusing on
what Peters calls the hard spot in a word, (eg aus in because) and underlining it, rather than
underlining or crossing out the whole word, is another way of recognising what the child already
knows, and it identifies that particular string as one that the child is having trouble with.
Self-correction is another strategy that Peters suggests, where the child is encouraged to
underline the words she knows to be wrong. The correct spelling can be written in the margin by
the teacher and then written in by the pupil using the look, cover, write, check routine. In this
way the teacher can also identify words that the pupil is not seeing are wrong, and can address
the error. Alternatively, instead of highlighting incorrect words, a teacher can tick all the words
that a pupil has spelled correctly, which is another way of recognising what a child knows and
can do.
She points out that repetitive copying of spelling mistakes does not help a child to learn them
because copying does not involve the use of the visual memory. Both Peters and Gentry agree
that it is essential that a teacher does not correct every error and cover a piece of work in red
pen, because of the effect this will have on the childs self-concept of herself as a speller.
Reason and Boote make some interesting suggestions about marking. They stress that many
pupils cannot give attention to both ideas and spelling/ punctuation/presentation when writing,
so there may be times when a teacher should make it possible for them to concentrate on

expressing ideas without being concerned with technical aspects. They suggest that the teacher
can write to the childs dictation, or that the teacher can type out the childs written work without
having to correct it first, although a teacher in mainstream education is unlikely to have time to
work in this way. Now that IT is widely in use in schools, it is easier for pupils to produce written
work that is more correct than what they can write by hand, but using IT is still laborious for
those that lack keyboard skills, and in spite of advances in wordprocessing software, computers
cannot eliminate technical error.
Another useful idea is that the teacher establishes a marking system that pupils can become
familiar with. This can reduce the amount of red pen that it is necessary to put on a piece of
work, and it can also be used by the pupils when they are self-correcting or marking each
others work.
The teachers role
In discussing teacher variables and how they relate to children learning to spell, Margaret
Peters concludes that the attitude and approach of the teacher is crucial to pupils achievement.
The variables are as follows:
If teachers know how and what to teach in spelling, as long as they are consistent in attitude
(does she mean persevere?), then pupils will make progress no matter what level they start at.
If teachers respond to pupils requests for words and production of lists stemming from their
requests the teaching material will be appropriate.
If teachers find the optimal study time, pupils will benefit; research has shown that too much
time spent on spelling can be detrimental.
If teachers use a rational correction technique (including attending to the quality, not the
quantity of errors, encouraging pupils to self-correct and participate in marking their work,
teaching dictionary skills, and drawing attention to visual similarities between words) as
opposed to a rote technique, pupils spelling errors will be addressed more effectively.
If teachers encourage pupils to use well-formed and swift handwriting, they can achieve fluency
in technical aspects of writing as these become automatic.
If teachers are able to inculcate in a child a positive self-image as a speller, progress can be
made even in the weakest spellers.
The testing and assessment of spelling
Normative tests such as Schonnells Graded Spelling Test are often used in schools. A
normative test measures how well the child is performing compared with other children of the
same age, and the result is a spelling age which indicates whether the child is behind or ahead,
by comparing it to its chronological age at the time of the test.
Academic and Personal History
Date of birth: 24/4/87
Spelling age: 10.1 (Tested on 20/9/98 at age llyr 4mo)
Reading age: Accuracy: 10.3 11.5 (Tested on 8/12/98 at age 11yr 7mo)
Comprehension: 9.10 11.4

Classwork
He is achieving below his ability due to his behaviour and needs support to stay on task. He is
described as having average cognitive ability, and has literacy skills and a reading age which
enable him to work independently in class. It is his lack of concentration and application that
cause him problems. He often has difficulty concentrating for even short periods of time. He
lacks in organisational skills and his work is usually untidy.
He is keen to participate in class discussion, often has good, original ideas, and is usually eager
to get on with his work. He has produced some excellent work which shows that he has an
active, lively imagination and can engage with themes and ideas. As such he is one of the more
able in the class, and makes a valuable contribution in whole class discussion.
He has a good vocabulary, and although he has problems with spelling he is not constrained by
them. He would rather guess the spelling of a word than not use it, often producing
phonologically plausible spellings of difficult polysyllabic words (such as explonashon for
explanation). Spelling is his main problem in writing, as his work shows very little evidence of
difficulties with grammar and punctuation. He uses full stops, commas, speech marks and
capital letters correctly most of the time, and uses tenses and first- or third-person narration
consistently throughout a piece of work. No words in his written work present the reader with
doubts as to legibility or meaning, in spite of errors in spelling, as mistakes are usually
phonically consistent.His reading is good, and his knowledge of phonics means he can tackle
most words. His confidence, articulation and extensive vocabulary means that his oral work can
be very good.
Homework
Can be a problem; homework is not always completed or handed in on time.
Behaviour
He is extremely restless and therefore distracts and is distracted easily. Although he is capable
of making a valid verbal contribution, his comments are often misplaced or inappropriate to the
situation. He is statemented for behaviour and is allocated 20 hours with an LSA (Learning
support assistant). He responds well to one-to-one interaction in the classroom. He has been on
a target contract which attempts to get him to follow normal classroom procedures such as
putting his hand up, and behaviour at school is linked to rewards at home, with varying degrees
of success. A tutors report described him as undisciplined and lacking in normal social
awareness and consideration of others. He lacks social graces and has a dishevelled
appearance. Factors such as these mean that he is considered to have low self-esteem, which
is something that a positive and productive relationship with a teacher could easily improve.
Educational records indicate that he has personality clashes with some teachers who do not find
his lovable rogue persona as charming as other teachers do.
Social relationships
He does not seem to be a member of any close peer groups and generally does not integrate
well into the classroom situation.
Personal background
He is the youngest child of a caring family, with a brother 10 years older and a sister 12 years
older. He seems to be allowed a considerable amount of freedom out of school, which may
account for his unwillingness to conform to the restrictions placed on him in school.

An overview of the subjects spelling

He stands a good chance of becoming a reasonably competent speller, if a developmental view
of his present ability is taken. Diagnostic assessment of his work reveals clear patterns in his
errors 2which teaching strategies could attempt to remedy. In three pieces of work he made a
total of 92 errors, but only two of these errors contained the wrong number of syllables;
rembers for remembers and juners for juniors. This indicates that he has a good
phonological awareness and has word attack strategies that enable him to sound a word out.
The fact that the largest class of errors (20%) involve the schwa or unstressed vowel supports
the theory that he uses predominantly phonological strategies rather than visual memory to spell
words. The frequent use of homophones (9%) is another indicator of an over-reliance on the
sound rather than knowledge of the visual features of the word. Also, the next most common
error (14%) is the omission of an unstressed vowel, and then (12%) the omission of an
unstressed consonant, which indicates that his lack of awareness of letter strings and withinword patterns is causing spelling errors. In 71% of these errors, the first and last letter of the
word is correct, which again points to good knowledge of single letter phonic equivalents, but
uncertainty regarding within-word patterns.
In the case of errors with doubled consonants, (either doubled incorrectly or not doubled), 14
out of 16 errors of this kind occurred with mid-word consonants. Since errors within words are
less readily susceptible to detection by visual scanning than those occurring at or near the
beginnings or ends of words, it would seem likely that the subject has poor final scanning habits
and abilities.
Just as contractions are uncommon, reversals or transpositions which result in a spelling which
is not phonically consistent are rare (3%) in his work. This indicates that he has a good grasp of
the alphabetic nature of English spelling, which means that letters generally match sounds from
left to right in a word.
Addressing these spelling problems
In my experience, most poor spellers have a certain degree of weakness in the visual recall of
words but the most difficult children to teach are those whose weakness is predominantly
auditory.
There is some evidence... that spelling and the ability to visualise are closely related.... creative
writing and figurative uses of language certainly depend on the ability to communicate visual
impressions... (therefore) a deficiency in the ability to visualise can produce both poor spelling
and an unimaginative prose style.
The hypothesis in the second quotation is certainly contradicted by the subject in this case
study, whose prose style is lively and imaginative; "When they finished they got his remains and
danced with the skeleton, and played charades with him". It seems more likely that his visual
recall, not his ability to visualise, is weak. If the first statement is true, then the prospects for
improving his spelling are good, because he seems to have good auditory abilities, as his grasp
of syllabification and the phonically consistent mistakes he produces prove.
Mina Shaughnessy describes several different causes of misspellings:
Unpredictabilities within English spelling

Pronunciation

Homophones

Unfamiliarity with the structure of words

Failure to remember or see words

All of these factors could be implicated in the subjects difficulties with spelling. From what is
known about him both in and out of school, it is possible to identify the failure to remember or
see words as the key factor in his spelling difficulties. Although he reads and speaks well, and is
by no means an incompetent writer, it is obvious from observing him that reading and writing are
not his pastimes of choice, and it is not likely that they are actively encouraged at home. Without
this reinforcement, says Shaughnessy, it is very difficult to progress with written language;
...people who do little reading and writing are inevitably bad spellers, for without constant
experience with written words, it is impossible to absorb the sound-letter correspondences that
govern English spelling, to build a memory for the looks and feel of words, or to become a close
observer of letters.
Crucially for the subject of this case study, this inexperience with written words leads him to rely
too heavily on the sounds in words when writing, but his uncertain knowledge of the complete
range of sound-letter correspondences means that he is unable to spell correctly with this
strategy alone. His inexperience means that he has not developed a habit of seeing.... (a)
visual acuity with words and letters which also prevents him from identifying his own mistakes
as he does not know how a word should look.
In terms of improving his spelling, therefore, it could be argued that simply reading more could
help to establish a greater awareness of patterns within the language. Most writers on the
subject seem to agree that teaching children rules regarding spelling can only be of limited use,
as often they do not have the required level of concrete mental operations to employ them,
assuming that the rule could be stated in an accessible form in the first place. For a child of his
age, ability and nature, encouraging him to read is a difficult task, and would depend on
introducing him to books that appeal, while reinforcing the value, importance and relevance of
reading at all times. He is at the age when he might respond well to a male role model and a
buddy reading scheme or suchlike.
Other strategies that might be useful in addressing the spelling problems of this child could
include:
Point out and reinforce all the things he does well in his writing. In particular, encourage him to
continue using his extensive vocabulary, and to continue inventing spellings.
Alongside this, create a word list based on words he has used and is therefore more interested
in; use them to show how there are, for example, word families, root words, and letter strings
which are common to words which he is misspelling.
Since he is competitive and responds to a reward system, use testing and rewards as a way of
consolidating knowledge about spelling that has been taught.
Get him to write (as well as read) more. Not only is his behaviour better when he has a task to
do, but his handwriting (which is a spelling-related skill) needs practice to become fluent, and
purposeful writing will give him the chance to use and thereby consolidate any knowledge about
spelling that he has gained.
Choose teaching strategies that will engage him, such as team games, wordplay exercises,
crosswords and wordsearches (doing and devising), and spelling games.

Get him to correct his own work and introduce him to simple diagnostic tools that will enable him
to identify mistakes and make connections between words that he is misspelling.
Use a rational marking scheme which he understands.
How researching spelling has altered my own perceptions
I chose to research spelling because as a competent and confident speller, I realised that this
was an area in which my implicit subject knowledge was strong, but I did not have the
theoretical awareness to underpin teaching strategies for improving pupils spelling. I had in fact
begun to apply the surface remedies of encouraging pupils to look it up and learn it, without
looking at the deeper causes of their problems with spelling. One pupil had responded to my list
of five spellings to learn by writing them out three times, which my subsequent reading (of
Spelling: Caught or Taught?) had shown was ineffective, since it does not stimulate the visual
memory and is a form of rote learning, not active learning.
The case study, through the use of diagnostic assessment and the focus on one pupils specific
difficulties with spelling, helped me to find a way to put the theory into practice, which is a form
of active learning in itself. The critical moment in the process was when I came to analyse the
findings of the diagnostic assessment. This was a moment of anxiety as well, when my doubts
about my ability as a researcher were the greatest. However, by identifying patterns in the
subjects spelling, I was then able to think about teaching strategies to address his problem,
which is common to many other poor spellers; that of a weak visual memory compounded by
lack of experience with written language.
I decided to attempt to implement my findings and planned a lesson on spelling, which was
based around a list of words drawn from pupils work, as recommended in the literature. The
strategy was to identify within-word patterns and letter strings which pupils have problems with,
such as the ie in friend, field and flies, or the mm in commit and immense. At the
beginning of the class, as I took the register, I gave each pupil a word and asked them to write it
down in the back of their exercise books. It was a word that I had already drawn their attention
to by putting it in a list of words that they needed to learn as a target for improving their
writing. Next, I explained auditory syllabification and visual memory as two ways of
remembering spellings, gave examples, and asked pupils for ways in which they remember
difficult words. They came up with a surprising range, including mnemonics, rhymes and songs.
Then I organised the class into groups of between two and five, according to the letter string
they misspell, and asked them first to identify the hard spot that they have problems with. They
went on to think of other words which feature the same letter string, working together to build up
a list of words, and using dictionaries to check spellings where necessary. They seemed to
enjoy the task, and I realised that they were looking with intent at words that might otherwise
be difficult to contemplate; that they were beginning to see order in what, to a weak speller,
might normally be the chaos of written language.
Having generated a list of words collaboratively, I got them to work individually and in silence for
the last 15 minutes of the class on a story, in which they had to use as many of the words on the
list as possible. The objective was to get them to use their own words in a story that they would
enjoy writing, which is what I understand purposeful writing to be. The less able, who also tend
to be the weaker spellers, had the shorter lists and were able to produce a story in which all the
words from the list were used, spelled correctly, and which was not simply a spelling drill.
Naturally, the stories threw up plenty of new misspellings, which will provide the material for
future diagnosis and spelling lessons!

The lesson gave me confidence that pupils are or can be interested in spelling, if it is presented
in a way that challenges them, and convinced me that rote techniques are too sterile and
repetitive to be effective. I felt that pupils had begun to be aware of their own spelling problems,
but had also learned some new vocabulary and made it their own by using it in a story. Also,
the experience of teaching spelling validated the research I have done, and convinced me of its
value. I feel more confident about my own ability to teach spelling, and have a good general
understanding of the subject to build on.
In terms of the needs of the subject of the case study, teaching alone will probably never make
him a strong speller. He is one of those less-favoured children who has not caught spelling
because reading and writing have never been important activities in his life. He needs sustained
exposure towritten language, and constant use of it, to which work on spelling in a classroom
can only ever supplement. However, there is certainly a place for systematic teaching of
spelling, if this can be done in a rational way by a teacher with a consistent attitude. However,
while this might seem straightforward in principle, in practice it is rarely done. There seems to
be resistance to the teaching of spelling throughout the English teaching profession, in spite of
all the research that has shown it can be effective.
This seems to be for a variety of reasons: one of these is that the systematic/incidental debate
is still alive and well; another is that the constraints of the curriculum do not allow time for it,
certainly not 60 to 75 minutes a week to spelling alone out of a mere 180; another is that many
English teachers do not believe that they have the ability to teach the subject, having never
been taught themselves, and because they too might have problems with their own spelling
which create insecurity; at the secondary level there are teachers who feel that teaching spelling
is the job of the primary teacher, especially now that Literacy Hour is established and time for
teaching basic skills has been built in to the school day. This point of view is easy to
understand, but there is a strong argument for reorganising English teaching around basic skills
at secondary level, based on the number of school leavers whose problems with words are not
adequately addressed. At least, teachers could incorporate more explicit spelling teaching into
their existing schemes of work, and encourage pupils such as the subject of this case study to
see that.... words are interesting!

Bibliography
Brindley, S, ed.
Gentry, J.R.

(1994) Teaching English,

(1987) Spel... is a Four Letter Word,

Routledge
Scholastic

Graves, D.H. (1983) Writing: Teachers and Children at Work,

Newkirk, T, et al. (1989)
Peters, M.L.

Writing in Schools Reader, Deakin University

(1985) Spelling: Caught or Taught?

Pumfrey, P.D, ed. (1990)

Heinemann

Routledge

Childrens Difficulties in Reading, Spelling and Writing,

Falmer Press

Reason, R, and Boote, R. (1986)

Manual,

Learning Difficulties in Reading and Writing: A Teachers

NFER-Nelson

Shaughnessy, M.P. (1977) Errors and Expectations,

Wade, B, and Wedell, K. (1974)
University of Birmingham

OUP New York

Spelling: Task and Learner in Educational Review,

Wray, D, et al. (1988) Teacher Handbooks: Developing Childrens Writing,

Scholastic

Also consulted:
Course notes on Approaching Spelling