The Top Ten Habits of Struggling Spellers - and How to Fix Them

Written language, like mathematics, follows patterns. Some people pick up and can use the patterns easily, others cannot.

Intelligence is no predictor of who might struggle to spell.

What I have learned after seeing many thousands of spelling tests, is that poor spelling also follows patterns.

Spelling For Life is my attempt to undo those patterns and explicitly teach workable, reliable habits.

Here are the basic patterns and the assumptions/absence of knowledge these patterns are based on; you may have seen some or all of these before.

Poor spellers often:

1. have little or no knowledge of the terms vowel and consonant;

2. have gaps in their knowledge of the relationship between symbols and sounds;

3. cannot reliably break words into syllables;

4. have little or no knowledge of prefixes and suffixes and how to add them to base words.

Furthermore, poor spellers will add complexity to unfamiliar words in an attempt to spell correctly. For example, they often:

1. end -y words with the letters -ey ("aney" for any, "easey" for easy);

2. place the letter e word-finally when not appropriate ("adde" for add, "begane" for began);

3. insert the letters -er- to represent a single vowel in an unstressed syllable ("investergate" for investigate, "dervide" for divide).

And finally, poor spellers have trouble inferring general spelling rules from exposure to written language alone. For example, they often:

1. omit the letter e word-finally ("alik" for alike, "min" for mine);

2. use sounding out and auditory cues only, so that their spelling is purely phonetic ("fier" for fire, "tabl" for table);

3. are unsure of where to insert double consonants ("writen" for written, "geting" for getting).

All this can and should be explicitly taught. Spelling For Life does this.

If you would like a sample of the text or are interested in becoming a Spelling For Life teacher, teacher/trainer or school, contact us using this form.