Comments

The spelling ability of pupils is a disgrace. Educationists (progressive/constructivist ed cultists) consider it irrelevant. I know of areas that prohibit the teaching of spelling. Many teachers don't correct bad spelling.

I learned how to spell well on my own through an idiosyncratic method I invented. It doesn't apply to all words and may not suit every pupil.

For the most part, we have an image of a word from reading. This image tells us that a misspelled word looks funny.

My method applies to some troublesome cases. In these cases I mispronounce the word phonetically on purpose. For example, "fortunately" or "laboratory" would come out the way, say, a Spanish speaker would pronounce it phonetically. Because of my method, I am unlikely to misspell words like "fraudulent" or "attendant" or "definitely"...

In my case it helps that I am multilingual.

-- CharlesH - 04 Mar 2006

Ben is, like me, a savant speller, and thank goodness. It's one less thing to have to fight with him over.

But I know a lot of people -- many of them very bright -- with appalling spelling, and it makes them look bad. Spell check only helps a. if you use it, and b. if you are such a poor speller that the word you've misspelled isn't actually part of the language.

Speaking of which, I was in a salon today getting my hair done, and I was sitting next to another person getting her hair done who happened to be a non-stop talking. Now I know a lot of serious talkers, but this girl was over the top; she hardly stopped to take a breath.

Anyway, she was talking to her hairstylist about having lived in the Italian Alps for a while, and wanting ever after to find a place with comparably beautiful mountains.

"I figured the only place with equivocal mountains was here," she said.

It made my skin crawl, I wanted so badly to correct her. Equivocal mountains!

-- CarolynJohnston - 05 Mar 2006

Those mountains just can't make up their minds!

-- BenCalvin - 06 Mar 2006

Weren't there "Delectable Mountains" in Pilgrim's Progress?

-- OldGrouch - 07 Mar 2006

Educationists (progressive/constructivist ed cultists) consider it irrelevant. I know of areas that prohibit the teaching of spelling.

PROHIBIT?????

-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Mar 2006

Ben is, like me, a savant speller, and thank goodness. It's one less thing to have to fight with him over.

I had an UNCONSCIONABLE spike of envy when Carolyn told me Ben could spell.

-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Mar 2006

I almost think spelling is harder to teach than any subject - it sure seems harder than math.

I'm realizing, though, that I need a better way to gauge Christopher's progress (if any).

I'm probably going to get one or both of those books people have recommended, if only so I can keep testing the lists of words to see if Christopher has them.

That's one problem with MEGAWORDS; I don't think the book does enough distributed practice — although I could be totally wrong about this. It's entirely possible that earlier skills are embedded in later word lists; we're spending YEARS of our lives on the schwa sound, that's for sure.

I haven't learned Megawords along with Christopher, so the truth is I have no idea what's going on in the program.

I've discovered that if you're going to use a curriculum, you HAVE to have read it closely & worked through the exercises if you want to know what's going on.

I should have forced myself to do that with Megawords, but I didn't want to take the time to Xerox all the pages.

Maybe I'll buy myself a copy of Book 4, the next one we're coming to, and do the pages along with Christopher.

I'd probably learn a lot....

-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Mar 2006

The two books are:

The ABC’s and All Their Tricks by M. Bishop (from Nick's Mama) and Spelling Power (I'm forgetting who left that recommendation)

-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Mar 2006

In these cases I mispronounce the word phonetically on purpose. For example, "fortunately" or "laboratory" would come out the way, say, a Spanish speaker would pronounce it phonetically. Because of my method, I am unlikely to misspell words like "fraudulent" or "attendant" or "definitely"

I don't quite follow — when do you do this?

I've been doing this for Christopher every time he misspells a word. I'll read it the way he's spelled it.

He doesn't hear it at all.

It's a miracle he's such a good reader.

-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Mar 2006

Catherine,

My 11-year old sounds so much like yours, especially in the spelling department. It's not like he's horrible, but I can't figure out why he can't figure it out. He does the same thing with missing syllables.

Once upon a time, before the age of 40-something, I could spell without much problem and so I never spent much time looking up spelling. I think the visual aspect is more important than we realize. My son will often ask me how to spell a word and if I can't immediately tell him, I just write it out and then I "know." He finds that bizarre.

My son's handwriting is pretty lousy, too, so I can't help but wonder if that isn't part of the problem. No one word looks the same as the last time he wrote it. He doesn't seem to get that extra bit of help.

I had pretty bad handwriting myself, but I came from the 60's where they pounded in handwriting, so I think I'm a lot better off than many kids today, just due to the sheer rote practice. I think a lot of visual imprinting must have happened because usually wrong spelling screams at me (except for that rough period when I kept spelling weird "wierd".)

Megawords does seem to be helping him (at least he's practicing something!), but I can't understand, after all of the sounding out and pounding away at the various syllables, how he can just drop them at school. When I point it out to him at home he sees it easily, but when he's writing away he either doesn't see it, or my other big worry, he just doesn't care. I'm suspicious that it's the latter.

-- SusanS - 07 Mar 2006

-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Mar 2006

My son will often ask me how to spell a word and if I can't immediately tell him, I just write it out and then I "know."

I'll have to notice whether I do this.

I bet I do.

Although....that may just be automaticity — it may be the same thing as when you try to 'think' what a phone number is and can't remember it.

You can only remember it when you don't think about it.

I'm completely mystified by spelling.

It really is a 'savant' skill for me; I can spell Spanish & French, too; I can probably spell German & Italian (and I've never studied either of those languages).

I was stunned when Christopher started taking Spanish and couldn't spell that, either — it simply hadn't occurred to me that IF YOU CAN'T SPELL YOU CAN'T SPELL.

We were studying for his Spanish test last night (well, actually, YESTERDAY MORNING) and he can spell Spanish better than English at this point I think.

The direct one-to-one phonetic nature of Spanish seems to be clicking.

I wonder if Latin will help.

The high school has a fantastic Latin teacher; the parents all attribute their kids high verbal scores to her class.

-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Mar 2006

Susan — did you teach yourself to read?

I've been meaning to take a poll at ktm; I bet a lot of people here learned to read spontaneously.

Christopher is actually in that category; he started reading spontaneously, before anyone else in his Kindergarten class, and before they were being taught to read. (I believe they were being directly taught sound-letter correspondence.)

So even teaching yourself to read isn't a predictor.

-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Mar 2006

I do wonder if there's a visual processing issue.

I'm certain his visual processing is poor; his eyes are funky. I can't get him to look at the math page while we're working, and it's not because he's being disobedient or rebellious.

I've also seen his eyes start to 'jiggle' all over the place.

It's not a strabismus....it's something else.

So it's possible there's some missing visual element of reading that's tripping him up.

I'm going to get out my old copies of MEGAWORDS and see if he can still spell the words from those units.

He can definitely spell squirrel!

That was a HUGE challenge.

I guess my question is: is he generalizing the rules he's learning to new words?

I fear he's not....

-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Mar 2006

equivocal mountains!

-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Mar 2006