Spelling is the writing
of one or more words with letters and diacritics. In addition, the term often,
but not always, means an accepted standard spelling or the process of naming
the letters. In the sense of a standard, spelling is one of the elements of orthography
and a prescriptive element of alphabetic languages.[1]
Spelling is a complex
written language skill that draws upon a number of language abilities and
knowledge. Phonological skills appear to be critical, in addition to
orthographic knowledge, memory for word images (mental orthographic images),
awareness of morphological structures and semantic relationships where knowledge
of word parts and related words, as well as knowledge of spelling rules.
Spelling has traditionally been viewed as an integral part of the reading
process as suggested by moderate to high correlations between scores on reading
and spelling tests.[2]
Based on the definition
above, researcher concludes that spelling is a complex independent standing of
a word in an order alphabetically that draws upon a number of language
abilities and knowledge.
Spellings attempt to
transcribe the sounds of the language into alphabetic letters, but phonetic
spellings are exceptions in many languages for various reasons. Pronunciation
changes over time in all languages, and spelling reforms are irregular in most
languages and rare in some. In addition, words from other languages may be
adopted without being adapted to the spelling system, non-standard spellings
are often adopted after extensive common usage, and different meanings of a
word or homophones may be deliberately spelled in different ways to
differentiate them visually.
Whereas uniformity in
the spelling of words is one of the features of a standard language in modern
times, and official languages usually prescribe standard spelling, minority
languages and regional languages often lack this trait. Here, standard language
refers to a language variety used by a group of people in their public
discourse. Alternatively, varieties become standard by undergoing a process of
standardization, during which it is organized for description in grammars and
dictionaries and encoded in such reference works. Typically, varieties that
become standardized are the local dialects spoken in the centers of economy and
government, where a need arises for a variety that will serve more than local
needs. A standard language can be either pluricentric. [3]
Furthermore, it is a relatively recent
development in various major languages in national contexts, linked to the
compiling of dictionaries, the finding of national academies and other
institutions of language maintenance, including compulsory mass education.
Moreover, English particularly has absorbed into common usage and dictionary
acceptance huge numbers of words from foreign languages, particularly French.
These may now have a spelling as in the original form or may be somewhat
altered in the transition into English. In many respects, a general principle
could be stated that retaining the original spelling is important since it
reflects the origin of a word and hence adds an extra nuance to its meaning.
Whilst reading and
spelling skills do interrelate, research findings suggest that there may be
separate mechanisms for each activity and that spelling involves two processing
systems phonological and lexical. Moreover, researchers contend that the
mastery of spelling presents a greater challenge for learners than learning to
read. According to Westwood that spelling differs from reading in that it
requires accurate retrieval and reproduction of sequences of letters which
cannot be guessed from the text (textual cues) or from sentence construction
(syntactical cues).[4]
a.
Stage of Spelling
Adam cites according to
stage theory, children begin spelling with minimal knowledge of the alphabet.
The mastery of the letters of the alphabet provides a strong findation for
learning to read and spell. As children learn the alphabet, they learn how to
represent some sounds of words with letters but not all of them.[5] Some
authors argue that spelling development is more complex than stage theory
suggests and that children, from the beginning of their contact with print, rely
on multiple strategies and many types of knowledge when they spell.[6]
As their spelling
skills progress, children learn about patterns of letters in words or
orthographic knowledge. They begin to use morphological knowledge or knowledge
about the structure of words (e.g., dirt/dirty; farm/farmer are related) and
strategies such as visual checking.[7]
However, Treiman finds that grade one children are not yet aware of morphology
and consistently misspelled inflected words such as “helped” as “helpt”.[8]
Sprenger-Charolles and Casalis also note that the development of correct
spelling for one word may occur at a different rate than the correct spelling
of another word. They find that this development depended on factors such as
environmental exposure and the difficulty of the type or sequence of letters
use in a word.[9]
Phonological awareness
also plays an important role in spelling development. Despite the irregularities
of the pronunciation of some phonemes (units of sound), children appear to
quickly learn and use their phonological knowledge to assist in their spelling
of words. Many beginning spellers use a letter-name strategy (“b” for “bee”) to
spell a word. By grade one, most students can break a word into its onset and
rime or syllables but may experience some problems breaking words into their
individual phonemes.[10]Although
first and second language spelling may develop in a similar pattern, it appears
that certain error types may be due to differences in the nature of the
orthography.
Muats in her article “How Children Learn to Spell” has divided
several stages of children development in spelling.[11]
1)
Visual Memory and Spelling Memory
While visual memory,
"orthographic" memory is vital for learning to spell, it doesn't work
alone. Spelling memory for letter sequences is enhanced by a child's awareness
of phonemes, or speech sounds. At more advanced levels, spelling memory draws
on a child's knowledge of word structure, words' meaningful parts, and a word's
relationship to other words, and so on. Word knowledge builds systematically on
other word knowledge.
2)
Pre-communicative Writing Stage
Most young children who
are exposed to print in their homes spontaneously begin to experiment with
writing. Although they may know the names of some letters, recognize letter
forms, and realize that letters represent speech sounds, they may not
understand what a word is or realize that print represents words and that
spaces represent boundaries between them. Reading at this stage is
"logographic," meaning that a child guesses at whole words based on
their visual features
3)
Semi-phonetic Stage
After children have
experimented with imitative writing and developed an awareness of alphabet
letter names, a shift occurs. They begin to realize that letters represent
speech sounds. For example, a child may use a few letters, usually consonants,
to represent words, syllables, initial letters, or pieces of words. Often these
consonants correspond to an alphabet letter name. At this stage, children may
use their knowledge of letter names and partial phonetic cues to read, but
their ability to identify and segment word sounds is still limited.
4)
Phonetic
Spelling Stage
As children gain more
knowledge of print and develop an awareness of speech sounds, sound-letter
correspondences, and letter names, they often employ a "one letter spells
one sound" strategy. This typically occurs in kindergarten and early first
grade. At this point, children "spell" by matching sounds to letters
and consistently representing all of a word's sounds. To do this they rely on
how words feel in their mouths.
5)
Transitional
Spelling Stage
After children gain
more experience with print, receive systematic instruction, and improve their
reading ability, they begin to understand that most sounds are represented by
letter combinations. They see that syllables are spelled in predictable ways
and meaningful parts of words, such as grammatical endings and Latin and Greek
roots and affixes, are preserved in English.
6)
Integration
Stage
As students move from
phonetic (sound) to syllabic (syllable) and morphemic (meaning) spelling, which
typically occurs after the fourth grade, instruction should yield several
things: Students should begin to consistently spell meaningful parts such as
roots, prefixes, and suffixes. They should know that homophones, learned in
meaningful phrases, demonstrate an important principle of English spelling that
the meaning of a word can determine how it is spelled.
7)
Middle Grades
Stages
As they learn more
words and store more examples of common spelling patterns in their memory, they
rely increasingly on analogy strategies to spell. They learn new words because
they are associated in memory with words that share their patterns. This is why
it's important to emphasize sound and spelling patterns: Although students must
memorize many specific words, the more they are aware of the familiar letter
sequences and repeated patterns in the writing system, the easier they can
recall them.
b.
Spelling Errors in English
In English, as opposed
to Indonesian, the spelling patterns of normal and disabled readers have been
widely investigated, spelling errors of individuals with dyslexia are similar
to those of younger children. Nelson analyzes the spelling errors of dyslexic
and normal spelling-level-matched children and classified their errors into
three categories: order errors, phonetically inaccurate errors, and
orthographically illegal errors. In both groups, more phonetically inaccurate
misspellings are made than either of the other two error types. Also, there is
no significant difference between the groups in the frequency of the three
error types, which indicates that the quality of the dyslexic children’s
spelling is essentially normal.[12] Furthermore,
Moats analyzes the spelling errors of adolescent dyslexic students. She divides
the errors into three categories:[13]
1)
Orthographic errors
Using the wrong symbol
but that represented the speech sounds in some plausible manner (e.g.
homophones),
2)
Phonological errors
Error in omissions,
substitutions, additions, or errors in the way speech sounds were represented,
3)
Morphological error
Errors that occurred on
inflected morphemes. The poorer spellers make more errors than the better
spellers on certain phonological and morphological constructions. Specifically,
the poorer spellers make a disproportionately large numbers of errors in their
representation of liquid and nasal consonants, especially after vowels, and in
their spellings of the inflections -ed and -s.
Snowling, Goulandris,
and Defty cites the development of literacy skills among dyslexic children
compare to reading age controls and chronological age controls. Their spelling
errors are analyzed and classified into three categories:[14]
a)
Phonetic errors
These errors are caused
by the inappropriate application of letter-sound correspondence rules (e.g.
cigarette-sigaret).
b)
Semi Phonetic errors
These errors contain a
single phonemic error and could be created by omission of a single phoneme,
addition of a phoneme and substitution of one phoneme with a similar one.
c)
Dysphonetic errors
All other errors that does
not represent the sound structure of the word correctly (e.g. million-miyel).
The researchers find dysphonetic errors to be prominent among dyslexic
children, suggesting that they have problems with the use of phonological
spelling strategies, and they attribute this to a phonological delay.
c.
Strategies for Spelling Improvement
Learning proper
spelling by rote is a traditional element of elementary education. The ubiquity
of the phonics method of teaching reading, which emphasizes the importance of
"sounding out" spelling in learning to read, also puts a premium on
the prescriptive learning of spelling. For these reasons, divergence from
standard spelling is often perceived as an indicator of low intelligence,
illiteracy, or lower class standing. [15]
Following Strategies are used for improvement of spelling:[16]
1)
Phonemes grapheme relationship
First strategy used is
alphabets and their sounds. Subjects are taught to sound the alphabets and how
to relate these sounds with their symbols. In auditory perception of letter
sounds, knowledge of phonics and structural analysis is given to develop their
skills in applying the phonic generalization.
2)
Missing letters
Different words with
missing letters are written on the paper. It is asked to recognize the correct
word, to see the missing word and then to fill the blanks by recognizing its
sound.
3)
Letter clues
The entire word is
covered up and then gradually exposing each successive letter until the
subjects could guess the correct word. For example garden, beautiful, mother,
uncle, sparrow, carrot etc.
4)
Spell the word by pictures
Pictures are pasted on
charts and Subjects are asked to spell the name of that thing by using learned
skills of how to spell.
5)
Mixed up letters
Words with no sequence are
given to Subjects and are asked to write these words in order. For example fish
as fshi, kite as ekti, flag as glaf etc.
6)
Highlight words
Highlight words
strategy is used by highlighting the difficult part of the word. Then Subjects are
asked to make a mental picture of that word, read the word aloud and spell it
aloud. For example, “SepArate” then were asked to think how the difficult part
looks or sounds. So, while writing, “separate” they might be thinking “sep A
rate” and thinking of that bold, “red A”.
7)
Tactile exercises
The tactile exercise is
provided by sand tray, felt or wooden letters. The revisualization of specific
letters is strengthening by having the child trace the letter in various media,
such as clay, salt and sand.
8)
Syllables
The syllables of the
words are taught to the subjects for example Indonesia as indo-ne-sia. They
have to say the word syllable by syllable, spell the word orally and then trace
the word in air or over the word itself with the finger.
9)
Counseling and motivation
Counseling and
motivation is very important for students. While using all above mentioned
strategies, continuous counseling and motivation is provided. Sincerity and
motivation of teachers is also recognized before subjects.
[5]
Joy Ronda. The concurrent development of spelling
skills in two languages. (Canada: International Electronic Journal of Elementary
Education, 2011) p. 107
[6] Id.,
[7] L.C. Ehri. Sources of Difficulty in Learning to Spell and Read. (Greenwich: CT
JAI, 1986). p. 121
[8] Ronda., Op.Cit., p. 107
[10] R. Treiman. Beginning to Spell. (England: Cambridge University Press, 1993). p.
78
[11] http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/how-children-learn-spell, accessed on 25th
June 2013
[12]
Salim Abu-Rabia & Rana
Sammour. Spelling Errors’ Analysis of
Regular and Dyslexic Bilingual Arabic-English Students. Open Journal of
Modern Linguistics ISSN/EISSN: 21642818 21642834. Retrieved by: http://www.scirp.org/journal/ojml.
(Israel: Scientific Research Publishing, 2013). p. 60
[16] Mehwish Rashid, Muhammad Imran
Yousuf & Muhammad Imran. Strategies
for Spelling Improvements.
Journal: Academic Research International ISSN/EISSN: 22239944 22239553
Year: 2012 Volume: 3 Issue: 1. (Pakistan: SAVAP International, 2012). p. 65-66
