Myths about Spelling. ‘If you want to learn to spell you should read more.’ Reading and spelling are two different skills. Reading depends on your recognition skills. Spelling depends on your skills of recall. It’s still important for you to read, though, as it helps you visualise the correct spellings.

‘There is no logic in English spelling – that’s why it’s so hard.’ The English spelling system is 85% regular. There are rules and conventions but many English words come from other languages, so the spelling of some words is dependent on how that word is spelled in the original language. khaki ‘kh’ ?? A Hindi word. gnu ‘gnu’?? An African Bantu word.

‘There is one correct way to learn spellings.’ There are many effective ways of learning to spell. Some people can see or visualise words and store them in their memories. (Catchers) Others use an oral way of learning to spell – learning the sounds that make up words. This is the basis of the Phonics work we do.

‘I make spelling mistakes because I don’t speak properly.’ Accent or dialect can affect how we speak a word. If you have a strong accent it can make spelling some words a little more difficult. Irish people may drop the ‘h’ in three and say ‘tree’ instead. No accent or dialect has a particular advantage.

‘If you get stuck, just sound it out.’ This method can work, but there are many cases of similar sounding words with different meanings: they’re, their and there Find different ways to learn spellings eg visual ones, or look at the structure of a word.

‘If you learn the rules, you’ll be able to spell.’ Unfortunately, most ‘rules’ in English are not rules at all, just regularities. For every rule there is an exception. i before e except after c (but ‘neighbour’ and ‘weight’ are exceptions to the rule) Our Phonics work will look at regularities in words – found, sound, round – we will find patterns that will make it easier to learn batches of correctly spelled words.

‘Look it up in a dictionary.’ Dictionary skills are useful, but looking for ‘enough’ under ‘inuff’ will be a waste of time. Dictionaries are very useful if you are making just small errors. eg. independant for independent. We have a special dictionary which you might find useful – the ACE Spelling Dictionary.

‘Disguise your spellings with messy handwriting.’ Clever! But it doesn’t help much. You need a clearly written word to learn a word visually. Good handwriting can help you learn spellings.

‘I don’t want to learn to write, I just want to learn to spell.’ Spelling cannot be learned in isolation. We need to regularly write the words we want to learn to spell. We need practice. We need to understand the word. We need to understand when to use the word – in context. Without writing we have no need for the spellings! The points above are the basis of our lessons.

Another S.J.Dillingham Production for Salendine Nook High School 2003