Focus 580; Literacy: the Teaching of Grammar and Spelling

In this part of focus who we will be continuing with that an occasional series that we have been doing roughly once a month now since going back to last fall looking at various aspects of literacy and we're doing this with the help and the cooperation of the folks at the National Council of Teachers of English an organization that's based in banner we have on past programs taught quite a bit about reading and writing. And this morning the subject is something a little certainly related but different something we haven't touched on so far and that is spelling and how it is in school. We teach children to spell or perhaps help them learn to spell. Our guest is Dr. Sandra wild. She's done a lot of research and speaking on the issue spelling and also phonics. She's professor of curriculum and instruction at Portland State University in Oregon and has done a lot of work in the area of invented spelling which isn't and certainly we're going to talk a lot about this but which is the tendency of children to make up spellings for words sometimes novel spellings

that conform generally to how those words sound. And this is an area of some controversy whether or not you let children do that. And at what point you start to move them from the spelling that that seems to serve them well enough to what is the conventional spelling. As we talked this morning questions of course are welcome. The number here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Now we do also have a toll free line and that means that if you were listening here in and around Indiana and Illinois you can use that number if it would be a long distance call for you. Also if there are people listening over the internet as long as you're in the United States you may also use the toll free line and that he has 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 0 3 3 3 w. I allow which probably doesn't make it any easier. Three three three w y l l and toll free 800 1:58 W while I'm Dr. Wilde.

Hello good morning. Thank you for talking with us. I'm delighted. In an article that. You wrote You make what seems to be a me who is you know not an educator and kind of an outsider and that's a pretty dramatic statement. And that is is this you write that the changes that have taken place in how elementary school children learn to spell are among the most profound changes in literacy education in recent years. It seems to be saying a lot. Yes. And I think they're particularly profound because it involves such a deeper understanding of how children learn than the traditional approach which I think probably many in your listening audience grow up with which is where you have a spelling book and you learn 20 words a week. The newer research shows us that the invented spelling the children do isn't just random It isn't just misspelling that it's based on how they're coming to understand the language and so they start out representing sounds and then eventually you start to see things like they're using double letters because they've seen those and they're reading.

And a sophisticated teacher can actually look at a child's and then it's spelling and tell you something about where that child's development is in terms of how they understand language. I think also that you make it what it is an interesting point something that perhaps would be helpful for people to keep in mind and that is learning to spell is a developmental issue and that we're used to the idea that. Children will develop certain kinds of behaviors will be able to do certain kinds of things at certain times we have benchmarks for those but we also are willing to say well all kids are different and we're going to be flexible about when they do certain things and when they don't. But we're accepting of the idea that for many activities and many behaviors you know that there's a readiness issue. But it seems that in the past we haven't approached spelling that way we've had this idea that this you're going to learn to spell either at this age or this grade level and this is and you're going to do it at this rate and we're going to do it in this way. And it didn't really seem to appreciate the fact that children perhaps there are indeed reading as issues about spelling.

Yes that's exactly right. And you never got partial credit on a spelling test for really good and then it's belly even. And here's an example of the developmental nature of it. If you take the word last a very beginning writer might just get the first letter like a kid in kindergarten might just get the L and then a kid who's getting pretty good at relating sounds and letters might spell it out. They sickly one letter for each sound and then in an older kid I've seen the spelling L A U H G. And so the kid has all the right letters put in the wrong order and the child has obviously seen the word Ancram and just doesn't have it quite right you know that is further along than that than the child itself which is fanatically. Here I guess maybe it's a good time to start talking and we have a caller and I want to get to them in a moment. Well I will promise that person we're not going to make them wait forever but here to talk a little bit about invented spelling and I think as as you say

people of our age probably grew up in the era when we were we had did have spelling books. We had spelling tests and every week we were presented with some seemingly fairly random list of words just isolated as themselves out in the world and said All right this week you're going to learn these words and we're going to give you a test and next week we're going to give you a different list of words. And that was the way that we did it. Now it seems that there's more much more flexibility and perhaps it has to do with the fact that we want children too. Like to read and write to be interested in those things to have them be fun and when it comes to writing. We're trying to get them to focus on content on storytelling and maybe we decided that if every week you know they're doing their best to tell an interesting story and they're getting into telling stories that if they get back a paper that's one that's marked wall to wall with red. When we say this is wrong and this is wrong and this is wrong that's going to turn him off. So we have some greater tolerance for the fact that at least at the

beginning we're going to say OK let's focus on meaning and content and will and will as we go along will look at things like spelling and grammar. That's exactly right. And very young children kindergarten and first grade are doing writing now in a way they never used to and in large part that's because of invented spelling they're able to write independently. Basically once they know the names of the letters they can start relating letters and sounds and do invented spelling. And in addition to enabling them to write it's also you could say it's a way that they teach themselves about phonics because phonics is about relationships between letters and sounds and that's exactly what they're focusing on so it's really valuable for a number of reasons. And for young children invented spelling isn't even controversial in the profession. This is of opinion have more to do with how House and how quickly you want to make the transition into standards knowing that everybody agrees that invented spelling is excellent for beginning

writers. Well I think that the place where we get in the controversy has to do it's not within the reach it another within the English teaching profession but it has to do with parents and others looking at this and having a problem with the notion of invented spelling and the people coming out and saying Well see there you go again. What's happened is we've we've slipped we've departed from the basics. Those things that are the most important and now teachers are they've they've given up they've said they're approaching spelling it as if it really didn't matter and I think teachers are really trying to turn around and say No that's that's. Of course we believe that spelling is important. It's just the way that we're approaching is different. Yeah that's exactly right and I think for instance everybody would agree that by around the L end of elementary school around fifth grade we would like most students the vast majority of students to be able to produce a piece of writing that is as close to correctly spelled as possible. And then the question is how you get there I think the

contemporary educational view is that you start out by having children bright and large quantity and within his selling and then you gradually move towards more correctness rather than saying well you aren't allowed to write until you know how to spell the words right. Because this way there is they're able to get the benefit of doing all that writing and then they also learn about how to work with spelling as part of the writing process about how to proofread your own writing about how to find the words that you don't know how to spell and so on. We have a caller I want to get to and just very quickly for anyone who has tuned in in the last few minutes here I'd like to also reintroduce our guest Sandra Wilde is professor of curriculum and instruction at Portland State University in Oregon and has done a lot of work and does a lot of speaking particularly with teachers on the issue of spelling and how these children learn to spell and how teachers can help them learn to spell. Questions of course are welcome here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9

4 5 5. Also we have toll free line good anywhere that you can hear us 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. We do have a caller here to bring in. First one is Reka and that's on our toll free line. Line 4. Well I don't know. Yes I haven't been clear about that they have they don't contribute anything to the word I was going for another brick and there are things like the go to single mothers group comment on double letters. Oh yes double letters are so interesting I'm glad you asked that the the thing that makes a letter so challenging is that you don't hear two sounds like in the word. Butter b you t t e r. You only hear one t sound the reason that we have the double letters a lot of the K A lot of the time is so that it gives us information about the vowel that comes before the double letter. Like for instance the word ham or the double and tells us that that's a short vowel that that's an asset. If it were just H A M E R it would be pronounced

painter. And I think our spelling system the spelling system of English in a lot of ways doesn't seem very logical it doesn't always directly reflect the sounds and it's because the spelling system is doing other things other than just reflecting a single found things like a consonant spelling a little tell you about the vowels that preceded it. We have other spellings that are there for historical reasons the word nice. K. and I F E use to be pronounced something like Tunisia. The K was pronounced that Prince ation is changed the spelling is remain the same and so people often think that well shouldn't we be moving towards a more logical spelling system. People come along regularly who say let's try and reform the stone system to make it more phonetic but language justice. Work that way it isn't going to happen. And so I think for adults double letters are one of the things that adults get wrong most often in spelling not knowing if it's a double that or

not. And it's often one of those things that you just do have to check because it's not going to change anytime soon. The biggest piece of it I think is we tend to just remember the spellings of many many thousands of words. And that's why we get it right most of the time. But occasionally we just aren't sure if a word has a double that or not. And we do have to look it up thank you very much. I thank you for thanks to the CO. I do think that it's a very interesting point because as you say often people complain about spelling because the spelling and the pronunciation don't line up and they say. And as you say to that over time people have tried to introduce simplified spellings and I think what else would you say is true is that over time. Deliberate efforts to reform language have generally always failed. Yes people just don't they don't take well to being told. Language Of course changes and it seems to have a mind of its own but people don't seem to respond very well to two forced efforts to get people

to change. So we're confronted with spellings that that when you look at them and then you hear the way they're pronounced it doesn't make a whole lot of sense I guess it. It is interesting and to keep in mind that there are on some level the spelling does make sense. There is an explanation for why it is we spell one way and perhaps pronounce another and that that. That may be something in the way that some of us older kids learned wasn't was never really explained to us or was never really part of the instructional process of course we'd say well it doesn't make things right and here's a couple examples where it doesn't seem to make sense but it really does if you think of the words medical and medicine the letters C and also as words in medical. It makes a case found in medicine that makes an ass sound. Now it might seem more logical to use AK in an ass in those words instead of AC. But having the C in there shows us that those words have a meaning relation. Another example is

the word one. You would think it would be spelled Wu and in fact that's the way a lot of young children to spell it. But the reason is that although any you can see it in relationship to the word only that one and only are spelled in a very similar way and that reflects like with nice. The fact that several centuries ago they were pronounced much more similarly than the spelling of one or sorry the prince ation of one change something like Own up to the present day Prince ation of one which doesn't seem logical that the spelling does preserve the meaning relationship. We're talking about the fact that perhaps the traditional way of teaching spelling was spelling with spelling lists and that what that seems to suggest is that the idea was that spelling is just something that you have to memorize it's a myth. Wrote in that that it doesn't really make any any sense per se it's just a matter of you just have to learn this is the way that it's spelled. Have we

have we abandoned that are we still saying that in in some respects it really is a matter of memorization and you can't you can't rationalize spelling. It's something that you just have to have to accept. It really is a little bit of both. There definitely are patterns in how we spell words and I think those are useful for for children to explore for instance there are a lot of different ways to spell the long o sound you see it in the word loan and in the word loan. L O N E. And I think it can be interesting to talk about with those kids and help make them more aware of it when they're aware of those patterns they can come up with a good invented spelling that they may not come up with the correct spelling. For instance you have to know which word loan you're talking about to be able to spell it right. Fortunately a lot of the memorizing happens unconsciously through reading the single biggest contributor to kids learning how to spell. A lot of words is doing a

lot of reading and it's volume of reading that really makes a difference if you see a word in print one time you'll probably remember something about the spelling. If you see it in print 100 times you're very likely to remember it. There also are differences between people and natural selling ability. Somebody that has a lot of it is able to pick up words more readily from their reading. My quick and dirty test for the actual spelling ability is if you're in a restaurant and you see one word misspelled on the menu does that leap right out at you. If it does then you're more likely to be the kind of person that's that's just aware of spelling and how to spell words and whether they're spelled right. If not you're going to have to work a little harder at it. And I think there can be a little room for small amounts of sort of formal memorization of words particularly common words that you that you miss a lot. Like one thing I hear all the time from teachers is these kids are in fourth grade and they can't spell they correctly they

spell t h a Y which is logical of course that's the way it sounds. And it's actually not very hard to just say to kids OK this word that way you're getting wrong all the time. Would that be nice to just learn it so you don't have to proofread it the whole rest of your life. And then once you're realized OK this is the word I have trouble with then you can just think of a way to remember it because I think they're going well is it eight and eight and I think it's an A or an A and I think it's an E and you can just say for instance well I'm this can remember that the word day is Plus a Y and then you're always going to have something to pin a to and be able to get it right. We have some of the callers and next person in line. Dan Phil won them before. Oh yeah. Spelling seeing the kid on the National Spelling Bee on TV to want a real good up there in Washington. They don't spell by rote memory they like they don't the rules about the Latin word or a Greek word and they're going to like long division and on and they did the one here and the local area I wrote

memory you know I guess the idea Why don't I tell you the 88 there again it's the Latin word therefore means that. Yeah the kids that go into the National Spelling Bee are wonderful in fact there is a documentary film that was just one of the Oscar nominees called Spellbound that I saw that follows the journey of several of these kids to the National Spelling Bee and they do everything they learn they have huge wordlist that they worked from and there actually is quite a bit of rote memorising what they do but they also learn about the roots of the words the Greek and the Latin roots in particular because that can help them and it's a word that they aren't quite sure about if they know it's a Greek root that's going to tell them that for instance if they hear a case that might be a C-H and the spelling they learn words that most of us have never even heard of. And spend huge amounts of time studying them. There are kids that are just really interested in everything about words that you know that the kind

of kid that can sit down read a dictionary for fun and it was really interesting to see the film that these kids stories about the the family support and it also becomes a gets to a point of you're learning so many darn words. It's it's beyond even the point of being interested in and they do do a huge amount of just memory crunching of big long lists of words. Nothing is an old term phonics. Yes OK a lot of teachers walk under that. I learned I was a kid in school you know to be in sight read a little bit going anywhere in college would be different from teenagers and they don't know what they think they know what they don't know all of it. Yeah they only know a small percentage of it and they can not even read it themselves. The next chart a beginning of a dictionary. Yes. Phonics is more complex than people realize and I think often you hear people say well I learn to read by phonics. I think most people in this country learn to read through basal readers which are the Dick Cheney and Sally

books or the classic example the basal reader. Those were usually a mixture of sight words and then some phonics which which is learning about sounds and letters. But actually I. It's pretty it would be pretty hard to learn to read just through phonics and not having the support of of reading an entire story as well because the rules are extremely complex. For instance most adults if they were to look at a word that starts with the letters C and like let me make of a nonsense words. C E P must also look at that and say something like why I think that says Sep rather than saying I think that says kep but most adults would not be able to say what the rule is for when you pronounce a C like it and when you pronounce it like a K.. I think we all of us who know how to read have a lot of phonics knowledge in our heads that were not consciously aware of that. We use it unconsciously to figure out words that we don't know.

OK thank you. Well thanks for the KO. I want to get back real quick to the one notion and that is I think I really think that a lot of people believe that with an with an awful lot of things people you're either good at it or you're not. Yeah it is you're either you're virtually you're either boring to be able to do it or you're not and I think that educators would try to say well that's really not true. It may indeed be that certain people. Have inborn abilities for certain things. It's also the case that different people learn differently and so the issue is not were you born to be good at this or not. But how can we best teach you and help you to learn that thing. So when it comes to spelling What do you say. If people say if people just say well you know I'm just a bad speller. As if that was as if they were born that way. Right. Well you know and part of the issue is I think is that spelling is one of the few areas where we expect 100 percent performance it's right up there with brain surgery in terms of standards for it. People who

do enough reading to have learned the style in a lot of a lot of words even if they don't have a lot of natural spelling ability as adults they tend to sell about 95 percent correctly. And that's you know that's really in a performance in anybody's book. But since we're looking for 100 percent. People often don't achieve that and then they feel very apologetic about it. It that's come a little bit harder to some people just just like anything comes harder to some people than others. I interviewed a seventh grader several years ago who was not a very good speller and really had to work at it. He was a perfectly good reader and writer. He had a very good attitude about it he said. Well I'm not very good at spelling but that I'm really good in sports and other kids aren't. So it all evens out. I thought that was that was very healthy. I think people that it doesn't come as easily to have to work a little harder at it. It's useful to realize that everybody can lead the craft of proofreading. Everybody can learn how to make sure that a job application letter

is correctly filed and it doesn't come that easily to you. The strategy may be to find a friend who's a really good speller to proofread it. And I do have a little very informal theory that good spellers and weaker spellers tend to marry each other so this is always somebody to ask for help. And I. Think it's just one of those things that even if it doesn't come easily to you you can develop a level of competence at it like for instance people that aren't very good at math to figure out some way to either balance their checkbook or manage their finances so they get by without balancing their checkbook and adapt to it and they're able to function I think in a society that looks for 100 percent skill and performance. There are ways to adapt to that. And interestingly many professional writers are not very good spellers. But we don't know that because their publishers have copy editors who are very good spellers and who proofread their manuscripts for them.

Well every day I say a little prayer of thanks for spell check. Allison I'm Terrell's Miller often often only half jokingly say that's why I'm a broadcaster. And I found that my college students now they use spell check that they often don't proofread so often they'll turn in papers with the right feeling of the wrong word. That's that's the that is the problem with spell check if it's a real word the spell checker will say it's just fine but exactly if it's not the right word then that's a problem. Our guest this morning Sandra Wilde She's professor of curriculum and instruction at Portland State University in Oregon and has done a lot of work in the area of spelling that is how we learn to spell and how teachers can best help students to learn to spell. This program has been one of the occasional series we've been doing now for some time looking at various aspects of literacy we've been doing this with the help of the folks at the National Council of Teachers of English. It's based in Bana and by the way if you're interested in learning more about the organization and you have access to the Internet you can look at their website which is w w w dot in C T E dot or r g. We have some other callers

here. And next we'll talk with someone in Champaign and line one. Oh well I just thought it was it very interesting as I watched my two grandchildren my granddaughter learned to read on her own at about the age of three and she's a prolific reader a very good speller and a very good writer. My grandson who struggled with reading all through now I think in some ways till he was about 9 or 10 you know is a terrible speller. He uses the very inventive spelling I always know what he's going through. Hope that I will know that these two are in the same family with the same upbringing are just so very very different. I thought it was very interesting as I watched him develop this way. Yes it really is an individual difference. Do you know how their parents are installers. My daughter is very literate and I have a very good speller

and their father is a very cautious and meticulous speller. He generally does exactly the right thing. He grew up in the English system where at 14 you're out of school he and she went through university. But she was always a good speller. And I don't know about it in her early years but he's very very capable of writing well and easy going. But veracious reader he and the reason I asked is sometimes when children have one parent who's a good speller one who's less good spellers the children will be a mixed bag I think. There really may be something genetic to it. Just in terms of just the general differences in temperament you can see in two children the same family that you can have one child whose spelling comes very easily to it and another one which doesn't mean another thing that I noticed.

Mary would read books and books and books and David would say why don't you read to me this particular he and he would much rather do that than. And he loved having them read to him. Yeah but he had maybe just came a little harder too until he hit the subject that he really wanted to know about now isn't he great. Yeah. Yeah and it probably has been probably since he has started reading more. His spelling is better than it would be if he weren't in the reading that. I think it's so important that we de-stigmatize spelling because often kids who don't spell very well think that they're stupid and that they're incompetent and it can make them even more reluctant to write. This has been my worry. He's just gone through. He's in seventh grade British equivalent and he's just gone through an assessment because we found his spelling was so far below what it should be and I'm I'm I think he will straighten himself out he's bright enough. I just hope they don't over emphasize this.

Exactly you know and I think we need to say to children well look this is just something that's easier for some people than others just like all kinds of things. Some kids can run faster than others more easily. You know some kids have good vision Some kids need glasses at a young age like I do. Personally I'm really really near-sighted and thank goodness for contact lenses that nobody has ever said to me that it's my fault that I'm easy and that's why I can't see very well we realize it's just a difference between people and we don't put a stigma on it and I think we need to approach them in the same way. It bothers me that it's made to be so much to the forefront and I think that my grandson has felt sort of shy about doing anything because he's afraid he will be wrong. Yeah and then sometimes you see students not taking as many risks in their writing because they don't use the bigger words because they don't know how to spell them and I'm sure like they sell it wrong it'll be a big problem.

And I had thought I can't put this contribution in. Sure thank you. Well thanks very much. Let's go on to another caller this next person. Well I I think what's it like when I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the difference between visual memory and I guess what you call word memory when I think when I hear it I mean I see the AP and somebody else might see a cat there and I've wondered about what differences that is there research on differences in visual memory vs. work kind of memory. Yeah. Good spelling is very much a visual I think when young children start out their phonetic spellers because they haven't seen a lot of words in print. And so all they have to go on is the sounds and the knowing what letters might might go with the sound. And I think when you think about spelling that said it's sort of a different level completely from having like a picture in your head

of what the word means because with spelling you really have to know what the letters are there's a sequence of letters. Good spellers I think just are do you pay more attention to visual detail and if it's not on a conscious level it's not like for instance when I see that misspelled word on the menu it's not that I'm going over the menu with a fine tooth comb and trying to see if I can catch them in something. It really just does leap out at me it's something that I just can't help noticing right. And not everybody has as much of that I think everybody does to some extent. But here is an example for instance if there's a fairly long word a lot of us there are fairly lot more words that we almost know how to spell but that don't have quite right. And often what it is is that we have a pretty good visual sense of it from having seen it in print but I don't I'm wondering from people right to your face guy the guy

the object the Rev.. People if they die they actually lie. Is there any research on our neck and obviously that people who see the word are probably better spellers are right. Not that I know of. I think in practice all of us who are literate probably have some combination of that I don't think people people break down and into just one of the other and I think it's more a difference of because we all attended the meaning of words of course right. That's how we communicate. I think it's probably just a question of well like for instance another example and I do. I confess I am a naturally good speller. If I hear somebody whose name and it's an unfamiliar name may be from another language I have a very hard time remembering it until I can see the spelling of it. Other people can remember it just from the sound. So I think I am very much focused on letters and that way other people ask Is there something

like a photographic memory for words that are in print. I mean very thing you know like somebody would look at a word once and remember it. Yeah i know i sure that that would be interesting to do a study of some really really good spellers who never get anything wrong and and present them with a list of words. My hunch is if it did exist it would probably be very rare for her. It may be it may be the same people can learn all their lines for a play after just reading them once. Yeah I think some people are able to LIKE I CAN I like Hayes and I'll be able to see the praise I'll know where a word or a sentence is located on a page that I've you know read a while ago or whatever and it is not a photographic memory but it is kind of like be aware that you have a little do don't next to the next. That sentence or next that word or whatever. Right and you are good spellers. Yeah yeah I would have guessed that. Yeah I was wondering if there is something like that. Their Temple Grandin

has written a book called visual thinking and she does she's like cystic and he talks about thinking and pictures and so again I was I was thinking about the difference between thinking in pictures and thinking in words. Yeah I haven't read her book bad that I know her story is a very interesting one because she's autistic but quite articulate rightness able to really explain what thinking is like for her. Thank you. Well thanks for the call. We ensure that we would like ideally I guess we'd like people when they write to spell things correctly the first time. But if if if not that then what we encourage people to do is to proof. And then look for things that are spelled incorrectly and someone has coined the term for this spelling conscience yet is that something we would like people to try to develop so that indeed once they have written one thing something first time they'll go back and look at it

and perhaps as you suggest if there are things that are spelled incorrectly that they will jump off the page and immediately they'll say oh I see this is this is not right. What exactly does that mean and how does one develop a spelling conscience. Well one of the hardest things to develop in children is the sense of why they should even care about it. And I think often they'll say hey you can read it what's the problem. And it is tedious and I think the two things most important to focus on with children and I'm talking now that children in the upper elementary carried through third through fifth grade or prime years to go to work on this. The first thing you want to do is get them so they're getting. A reasonable number of words correct in the first draft and I think that is accomplished through having them do a lot of reading and then also through working on those common words that they miss a lot like they and girl and for and every teacher has almost the same list of words that kids miss a lot.

However if you're going to write freely and you're going to express your ideas you're going to often be writing words that you don't know how to spell. And so then it's a matter of getting them out quickly in the first draft and going back and proofreading the first part is developing even an interest in proofreading or caring about it other than the fact that the teacher wants me to do it. And it's not even a communication issue because people usually can read it once you're beyond a fairly beginning stage and it's still going well. Thing I think is useful to talk about is just it's part of what writers do. It's part of taking pride as your work in a writer. When I talk to students as a published author I tell them Well I know I could send a manuscript to my publisher that was full of invented spellings and they'd fix it. But I don't do that I try and said that and in really good shape I try and correct all the spellings just because it's part of who I am a surprise to her I wanted to be done really really well. And I think whatever we can do to develop that sense and I think there's also the

etiquette issue and in terms of particularly as you get older as you get into high school and beyond when you're out of applying for jobs when you're out in the work world people are really fussy about spelling and so life is going to go better for you if you can can do the proofreading get this going to erect it. In terms of how you proofread It's challenging because there's two steps first you have to find the words are spelled wrong. Then you have to fix them. Finding them for young children is not hard because they know that well there's all these words I didn't know how to spell. And they're able just to pick them out and say yeah I know I invented that one for older kids and for adults it's harder because the word often looks right. It's often very close or it's the right spelling of a wrong word. So sometimes you may even have to go through slowly word by word flag every word that you're a little bit unsure as and I think spell checkers are very valuable. But you need to have a step beyond the spell checker and then to be to know well how do I find the word in the dictionary if I

don't know how to spell it. Again spell checkers are useful there it can find words more quickly than you can find them in a dictionary. And then there is the issue of well how do I know that I caught them all. And sometimes that's going to involve showing it to somebody else because even good spellers your eyes can just skip over the misspelling particularly if you've read something over and over again. And it's something I think there's a lot of room for instruction and it's something that a spelling book really can't do a spelling textbook. It's something that you really need to work with your own writing and just have a lot of practice in doing it. We have about 10 minutes left in this part of focus library we have a couple of other callers like introducing. Guest Dr. Sandra Wilde She's professor of curriculum and instruction at Portland State University in Oregon and has done a lot of work in this area that it's spelling how it is that children learn to spell and how teachers can help them learn to spell. And questions are welcome. The next person in line is in Sarah Gordo on our

line of before. Hello. Good morning. My question has to do with a classic rule that was wrong more than it seems to be right. I before E except after c as a kid who grew up in the 50s whenever all the emphasis was on math and science running across rules that didn't make any sense really you set me. Can you give a percentage of how often that rule is wrong and do you have other favorite rules of spelling that are wrong almost flew off to the right. Oh ok that's a great question actually. That's one of the few rules that is correct often enough to be worth teaching. There was a guy named Leonard We he did a study on this in 1932 and he came up with the four spelling rules that are worth teaching. That's it for the I think. Sorry rol is right

most of the time. If you use the long version of it which is I before E except after c or when sounded like a as in neighbor and way. OK. If you can remember all that's got to be the full rule. Yes exactly you have to have the full ruler or it's not going to work well enough I think when we use the full version it's probably probably correct about 90 percent of the time they're here exceptions the word weird as an exception. Also something important to realize about that rule. For it to work you have to know that the word that it's either i.e. urry are I for instance the word friend a young child with spell just with a letter e.g. because he just hear a short E sound that if you know the word friend a c there I e e e a high then the rule will work. Then it will help you. The other three rolls that letter we've had just have to do with changing root words before suffix without dropping the E likely to change come to come in you drop the e about doubling the consonant when the change hop to hopped you double the

P and then about change in y. When you go Friday to Friday change the Y to I. The spelling books look like they have a lot of rules but that most of them are really just descriptions of patterns like a spelling book might have been one of her lessons. The long effect is often spelled A or double E or by that then it won't tell you how to know which of the spellings applies in a particular word. Just because there isn't any way to know you have to just know the word. There are a couple other roles that work some of the time like for instance a Y for the sound A is more likely to occur at the ends of words like play and day and stay and then in the middle with words like rain and plain carry. Here's a good one for adults that does the work that most people have never been taught. Do you often get confused about whether a word ends with a b and e r i b l e.

OK nobody knows you have to just know the word people think but it actually has to do with what the root word is. For instance the word livable is a b l e but the word visible is Ellie. The reason is that livable has a word that you can sort of see right there is the root you basically take the lives and add the ending and then you have to drop the e of course because that's going rule the visible doesn't come from a word. And so if you think a war of words like a likable agreeable word like that you can always see the root word right there and then it's a bialy whereas words like legible. Well it doesn't have ledges the root word so it's ideally that one actually works most of the time. One more quick rule question. From comms wiring from from W.. Can you give an example of a word where w is of vowels.

Oh yeah it's the word. So the job you the W are actually live. Let me think of a better example. The word brow is a better example there that the oh in the W together make the alst sound and so the W is technically considered part of the foul spelling whereas in the word winning it makes a consonant sound at the beginning of the word. So it's never valid by itself but usually with an O and make itself at all sound. OK thank you thank you at least one more here. The scholars in champagne. And one fellow Oh yes I got in asking about the relationship between various inherited factors and your ability to do well in the first one of these is the is there any relationship between a person's natural ability for mathematics and science as compared with the liberal arts from a

person by an arts person. Well yeah I think that's a hard one to answer because there are so many things go into something like that I I think certainly people some people do have more math abilities than others that might tend to go into a mathematical field because of that that I think there'd be so many other issues of temperament and stuff and I don't think there are any of the stuff we can say that there's a single gene that does this. I think with the selling I think we can say descriptively that it just does seem to come more easily to some people than others and it does appear to be probably inborn. OK thank you. And the other one is How about. What I would call a discriminating ear. A person who can hear words pronounced correctly but they might not be able to. I mean they are not able to discriminate between the words. Myself I grew up in the southwest and I originally had prime

trouble for spelling the word I spelled it right. I thankfully heard it being fed raw or easy. Oh yeah yeah right. I have it here which does not discriminate between these various sounds. Yeah and you know what it's actually not that you don't have NOT to have an ear that doesn't discriminate. You just grew up in a region where people pronounce things one way and people in another part of the country pronounce them in a different way. OK OK so nothing wrong with you it's just a regional variation. And young children tend to spell words the way they pronounce them and then as they get older they have to learn. Well it's not only smell the way it's pronounced and sometimes it's going to reflect the way that people speak in their part of the country. For instance many parts of the South. The words that I pronounce pecan and P and P E and P I N people

will pronounce them both about the same. He and. In Oregon where I live the proper name D A W and and d o and people pronounce the saying they pronounce them Don. I grew up in New Jersey and I'm going to exaggerate a little but I grew up pronouncing them gone on and on. People in Oregon young children in Oregon are going to be likely to spell those names the singing young kids on the East Coast are going to be more likely to spell them differently now that they hear the different way they actually pronounce them differently and people around them do you too. OK thank you very much. Oh and thanks for the call. Well you know I think that we're about we have about used our time and we have a couple of callers and I couple have to apologize to them and say I don't really think that we have time to take the call. I did want to ask you a question. We don't really have time for you to give a complete answer but you know there has for a number of years now been a lot of controversy involving whole language and phonics and which is the right way to teach reading reading and the whole business of

caught up in this is also the question about the way to teach spelling. And there's been a lot of controversy or controversy about invented spelling. Are we is there enough of a movement against that so that we're talking about going back to the older ways that we have taught spelling with workbooks and word lists and people saying oh and that spelling is wrong and we should not even from the very start we should be doing that. I think there is some pressure to go back in that direction and I think a number of states are included in spelling tests in the state testing that they're doing which makes teachers feel pressured to go back to worthless. I think that's a shame because we really do all have the same goal which is to have kids pretty much by the end of elementary school be able to produce a piece of writing that's correctly spelled. I think what makes the most sense is just to work with kids in a commonsense way have them do a lot of reading have them focus on proofreading their spelling when they write learning how to spell those common words and have it be something that that's really

in mastering the whole literacy process not just something that you do 15 minutes a day. Well thanks very much for talking with us thank you for having me. Our guest Dr. Sandra Wiles He's professor of curriculum and instruction at Portland State University in Oregon and also our thanks to the folks at the National Council of Teachers of English in Urbana for setting up the program for us.