FACING THE SPELLING

DIFFICULTIES:THE CASE OF
GRADE TWO LEARNERS
BY: CHARLENE O. SABIDO
MAED
 ABSTRACT
Education for All (EFA) is a global movement led by UNESCO aiming to meet the learning needs of all children,

youth and adults. Through EFA, uses strengthening of quality education and the implementation of the No Child Left

Behind Policy. Inspite of these move of the education sector, still learners experience difficulty in spelling. This study

identified the spelling difficulty of Grade 2 learners and identified the possible ways to improve spelling instruction.

A case study was done based on the cognitive theory of Piaget and Constructivist theory. Thematic method was used

to interpret the data gathered. It was found out that the spelling difficulty of learners were on the silent letters and

critical vowel sounds. It was also identified that it is important to study and use different strategies and techniques

to teach spelling to the learners for them to spell correctly the words. The findings of the study will serve as guide to

come up with interventions addressing this deficiency which will be beneficial to the students, teachers, parents and

the school in general.

 Background of study

 Education is a basic human right, thus the Education for All (EFA)

movement is a global commitment to provide quality basic education

for all children, youth and adults. In 2020, 189 countries and their

partners adopted the two EFA goals that align the Millennium

Development goals which refer to universal primary education and

gender parity. (C. Chabbott, 2013)

 The Filipino people have deep concern for education because it occupies

a central place in political, economical, social, and cultural life in the

Philippines. The government allocates a high budget every year for

Philippine Education and guarantees that every Filipino has a right to

quality education that provides all learners with capabilities they require

to become economically productive, develop sustainable livelihoods,

contribute to peaceful and democratic societies and enhance individual

well being. (Z Leonardo-Educational Researcher, 2004)

 A good quality education is one that provides all learners
with capabilities they require to become economically
productive, develop sustainable livelihoods, contribute
to peaceful and democratic societies and enhance
individual well being. The learning outcomes that are
required vary according to context but at the end of
basic education cycle must include threshold levels of
literacy and numeracy, basic scientific knowledge and
life skills including awareness and prevention of disease.
Capacity development to improve the quality of teachers
and other education stakeholders is crucial throughout the process.
(UNESCO, 2000)
 In the “No Filipino Child Left Behind Policy Act of 200 “by the year 2014 , all

Filipino children of compulsory age must have completed elementary education

and by the year 2018 all Filipinos must have obtained and completed high school

education. The quality of the teacher is one of the biggest indicators of future

student success. It is the main obligation of the teacher to make the performance

of the pupils at its peak. (P Cortes- World Development, 2015)

 Teachers know that one of the things pupils dislike the most is

studying for spelling test. Memorizing spelling words can be boring,

and oftentimes pupils tend to forget how to spell the words soon after

the test is over. The problem of spelling has concerned teachers

especially in the implementation of Mother tongue as medium of

instruction for almost of the subjects in Grade 2, hence the conduct of

the study aims to identify the spelling difficulties and the possible

solutions to the problem for the improvement of spelling ability and

instruction.
Literature Review

The following literature provides the spelling difficulties of learners and different ways to teach spelling

effectively.

In a world where we have easy access to spell check software on our computers and smartphones, the ability

to spell is important. Researchers consider spelling to be the highest regarded skills of expressive writing and

spelling is often considered to be an indication of education level or intelligence (Vaugh & Bos , 2009). Spelling is

an important skill because it has a positive effect on reading and expressive writing outcomes ( Kohnen , Nickels ,

& Coltheart , 2010; Sayeski , 2011; Wanzek et al.,2006).

Various writers define spelling differently; For instance, spelling is defined as the act of forming words

correctly from individual letters "Hornby , 2000". This means spelling has rules to form words correctly, that is

letters must appear in correct sequence to be meaningful, otherwise it will lead to spelling errors. (Susan, 2011).
 It is widely believed that modern sloppy writing in modern everyday

communication (e.g.-mail, S.M.S, or advertisement) has gain broad acceptance. The scientific professionals

approve of improper spelling in scientific publications and they were considered them as spelling errors as

typing errors that escaped the attention of authors or editor; they described that misspelled word as

distracting and annoying to the reader. More importantly they consider spelling errors in scientific reported

result were obtained with carelessness and that detracts the credibility of written scientific works. We can say

that spelling in a study of phonics as related to the grouping of words for spelling such as an , a man , can ,

etc , it is the study of syllabication because one learn to divide words and spell by syllabication such as , mul-

ti-pli-cation, dictation, re-la-tion. And the study of prefixes and suffixes as well because one can also learn

what they mean and how to use them. It is the study of learning

pronunciation of words correctly to spell correctly. (Susan, 2011)

 Moreover English language was changed faster than the written language, while logged behind those for

pronunciation, these providing another source of divergence of the written form the spoken one (Anthony, 2011;

Kemmer, 2009). Learning the spelling rule of English words is very difficult due to the discrepancy between the

pronunciations of many words and spelling system. Writing down and utterance into its graphemes are not simple

cognitive task getting a pronunciation out of alphabetic. Writing requires people to analyze the sound string down to

the level of component sound (Kemmer, 2009) hence; he further stated that the lack of consistent norms for

written representations, and the changes that took place over time in the English language sound system were all the

forces that led to greater divergence of the written forms and the spoken string, a part from the dialect variation in

English speaking community. The third possible reason could be learner`s lack of desire to learn correct spelling of

English words. Many spelling errors are committed due to inattention of the learners when they spell words. Many

English learners do not give attention to whether they write a word with the correct spelling or not. They simply write the

way they feel rather than the way it is supposed to be written.

Theoretical Framework

This study is anchored on Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development and Constructivist Theory.

Researchers have come to believe that children do not passively absorb all that they are exposed to in their

environment. Rather they are active, constructive thinkers and learners. They use whatever level of cognitive structures and

processing strategies they’ve acquired to select from their environment what is meaningful to them and transform it in

accordance with their current abilities and understanding. Essentially, developmental researchers have come to accept

Piaget’s idea that children’s cognitive structures dictate both what they notice in their environment and how they interpret

it. (“Cognitive Development: Past , Present and Future” Deveopmental Psychology, November 1992 , Volume 28, Number

6,pp.998-1005.)

Constructivist Theorist believe that pupils bring with them prior knowledge to assist in new learning situations and

that pupils construct their own knowledge based upon the prior knowledge (Williams , 2014). When learning to spell, pupils

are required to call upon their vocabulary and their understanding on the rules and sounds involved within their verbal

language before they are able to construct a written language.

Problem Statement

Eventhough there are movements in education to have

quality education and policy to cater the needs of the learners, the

teachers still have problems on the spelling ability of elementary

pupils. These problems should be identified and should be given

solution to fully embrace quality education and implement policies of

the Department of Education.

Purpose of the Study

This study was conducted to know the spelling difficulties of grade 2 learners and the possible solutions

that would help the teachers teach spelling effectively.

II. RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The following are the specific questions that the study answered:

1. What are the spelling difficulties of Grade 2 learners?

2. What should be done to address the spelling difficulties of Grade 2 learners?

III. METHODOLOGY

The case study method was used with six identified steps: 1. Determining the research question and

defining it. 2. Choosing the cases and stating how the data is to be gathered and the techniques for analysis to

used. 3. Preparing to collect the data. 4. Collecting the data. 5. Analyzing the data. 6. Preparing the report.
Research Design

The research used the qualitative descriptive case study. The researcher got the responses of the teachers on the

spelling difficulty of grade two learners as well as the things they could do to improve the spelling ability as well as instruction.

Research Setting

The Department of Education Dagami North District is the locale of the study. The schools where the teachers are assigned to

teach are located within Region VIII. Dagami North Central School is one of the reseach setting located at the back of

Municipality Hall of Dagami Town Proper which is the workplace of the researcher. The other schools were Balilit Elementary

School located at Brgy. Balilit Dagami , Leyte , Caluctogan Elementary School located at Brgy. Caluctogan Dagami, Leyte and

Abaca Elementary School located at Brgy. Abaca Dagami, Leyte considering these schools were near to my workplace.

Research Participants

There were seven teacher- participants in this study. The teachers are teaching all the learning areas in grade 2.

Sampling

The respondents are purposively identified because they are class advisers of grade 2 learners.
Data Collection Tool/s

The tool used in this study was an interview guide with two questions: 1). What particular difficulties do your Grade 2 learners

experience? 2). What can you suggest to help learners improve their spelling skills?

Data Gathering Procedure

First the researcher made the interview guide. Then Identified who will be the respondents. After that I asked the respondents if I could

make an interview with them. Lastly, a schedule had been made to interview them. The data gathered were personally analyzed by the

researcher.

Data Saturation

Responses with repetition are not anymore included in the study. However, those with low frequency responses were still included

because they are considered important data that will help answer the questions.

Data Analysis

The study adapted the Thematic Method to analyze the responses of the participants with the following steps: (Braun and Clark, 2006) 1.)

Familiarize the data. 2). Assign preliminary codes to the data in order to describe the data. 3). Search for patterns/ themes in the codes. 4).

Review themes. 5). Define and name themes. 6). Produce the report. Thematic analysis is a method of identifying , analyzing and reporting

patterns within data.”(Braun an Clarke , 2006)

Ethical Consideration
The consent of the participants were sought and the researcher made sure of the privacy of their responses.
•RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
After doing the process, the following themes are made with the categories taken from the coded data.
Theme 1: Spelling Difficulties of Grade 2 Learners

After analyzing the responses of the responses to the first question regarding the spelling difficulty, the teachers
observed that the grade two learners had difficulty to spell on the words with silent letters , critical vowel sounds or letters
“o and u” “e and i, syllabication ,pronunciation and reading ability that would affect the spelling ability if the child could
not read as well as understand the word. They had also observed that in the implementation of the K to 12 program which
made Mother Tongue as the medium of instruction of almost all the subjects except for Filipino and English affects the
spelling ability of the pupils.
Silent letters are letters that you can’t hear when you say the word but are there when you write the word. It can be
either vowels or consonants For example answers , knee ,wrong , knife , who ,male , name and like.
The critical vowel sounds made it difficult also for the learners to spell for example the word “ball” they will write it as
“bol”,. And if the child had no knowledge yet of syllabication then there is also difficulty on how to spell the word. However
if sometime the teacher did not pronounced well the words and the pupil did not hear it well then there is also a tendency
to misspell the word.
And the last is the reading ability of the learner, of course the child could not spell the word if he/she can’t read first.
 Theme 2: Ways to Improve Spelling Skills

The teachers gave ideas on how to improve the spelling of grade 2 learners: The first one is
constant spelling drill before every start of the lesson. 2). Exposure to the words with silent letters
or have the word wall in the classroom. 3.) Singing letter sounds in English as well as reciting
rhymes every morning. 4.) Showing pictures of words 5). Giving more time and attention to teach
the children with more patience and love.
They believe that with constant spelling drill the child could spell better and with exposure to
the different words everyday using pictures could help them a lot spell the words correctly. In every
lesson that they take it is also advisable to let them sing songs and recite rhymes that would also
develop their ability to spell.
IV. SUMMARY , CONCLUSIONS , RECOMMENDATIONS

Summary

Conclusions

The spelling difficulties of the grade 2 learners are silent letters in a certain word and the critical vowel sounds because if the child could not

recognize and distinguish the sounds with spoken words then the child could not translate these sounds to print. And since the vowel letters also of the

English alphabet had different sounds so it is very hard for the learners to spell the words. So therefore, it is important to study and use different

strategies and techniques to teach spelling to the learners for them to spell correctly the words.

Recommendations

The following are recommended to improve the spelling ability of grade 2 learners:

1. Develop spelling skills directly and systematically.

2. Start simple spelling words and then if the student masters the basic sounds and skills proceed to the difficult ones.

3. Directly teach and practice common spelling patterns grouped together.

4. Directly teach and practice the common spelling guidelines.

5. Practice the students with spelling words.

6. Directly teach the irregular or unusual spelling of a certain word.

7. Directly teach the students to sound out and spell by syllable.

8. Design a spelling program that would establish a foundation of mastery of the sounds and also reading.