Spelling

Mrs. Vilasini Diwakar

Madras Dyslexia Association
In collaboration with
Indian Institute of Technology-Madras

Lecture-19
Spelling-Segment 1 Introduction

Hello friends. Welcome back to the teaching strategies for children with specific learning
difficulties or dyslexia. I am Vilasini Diwakar. Having done the reading segment we are now
getting into the spelling area of the child’s learning process. Now spelling is a very important
skill area for the child. Good spelling reveals the confidence level of the child, the knowledge
level of the child and is a very important segment in the writing process.

Of course today we can use technology to help us with the spelling, but even then one would
require to know the spelling to use it effectively. What is done in class? Spelling is generally not
taught in class, most often children are given difficult words, put up on the board and made them
to learn to come back for a dictation next day. Is not that how we all learnt spelling? In our own
lives most of us learn spelling by repeatedly saying the word aloud. Most of the time we also
write it several times.

Basically what we are doing is we are encouraging the rote memory of the child and we learnt it
like that. If children without any difficulties probably that might still work today. But children
who have difficulty in learning, they are not going to learn that way. What they are going to do is
they are going to learn if we teach the spellings in the multisensory method. And that is what we
are going to see in this spelling segment.
(Refer Slide Time: 02:02)
Now let us take a look at this slide that you are seeing. Take a minute or 2 to read it, if you can. I
am sure all of us will be able to read it. And the reason why we can do that is because we have a
knowledge bank of vocabulary already in our brains. This knowledge bank helps us to recognize
these words even though they are spelled wrong. If you see there are letters in the word, there are
sequences in which the letters are being put but it is not the right sequence.

So what is spelling then? We say that this word in this passage is spelt wrong because we know
that it looks wrong. Oh just by the way this passage was written by a very famous dyslexic. So,
we are able to visually see that the words are spelt wrong in this passage and we know that we
can understand the word because we have the vocabulary in our heads. This comes and leads us
to the fact that there is a definition for spelling.
(Refer Slide Time: 03:24)
So, let us now see what is the definition for spelling? Formation of words with the traditional
arrangement of letters. In the passage that we saw previously, we realize that though he had the
right sentiments to express, he had the knowledge to express, unfortunately because his words
were spelt wrong, it would looked as if this was written by an amateur child who is just started to
write. Spelling has to follow certain rules, certain regulations.

There must be an accepted pattern to spell, that accepted pattern is set as a traditional list. We
have to have words and letters in the right sequence. What happens if it does not come in the
right sequence?
(Refer Slide Time: 04:17)
Let us take a look at the next slide. Yes once again we have a passage here where the spelling is
not right. But if you look closely you will find that the first and the last letter of every word is
correct. Now there is studies to backup this theory that if the first and the last letters are correct
you can most probably 99% make out the word that is there. Agreed yes we can make out. But
we still have got a very bad impression of the person who has written this.

We feel that this person does not have the knowledge of English to write, even though the words
sound correct. So, let us take 1 look at 1 word that is there in this passage which is spelt wrong
but we know what is the right word. For instance the word first, now in the sentence the only
important thing is that the first and the last letter be in the right place, first is spelt wrong, it is
spelled as frist.

So, the child obviously has known the first letter and the last letter, but does not know the
sequence of letter in between. So this goes against our definition of spelling which is the
traditional arrangement of letters. Even though we might spell the word phonetically, if the
spelling is not right he would still be marked round in his papers. Today we evaluate the
knowledge of the child by written exams and in the written exams if he has a spelling wrong, he
loses out on the marks.

But he knows what he has written and probably he has written it phonetically, but that is not
acceptable for us when we are correcting his papers. So, this child needs to be taught. Now
spelling is a difficult skill area, not everyone can become masters in spelling. We have seen that
reading is a decoding activity and spelling is an encoding activity. What do we mean by
decoding? Decoding is an area where we have the visual symbols, and all we need to do is to
embed it with the sounds. Whereas in encoding it is just the opposite, we hear the sounds first
and we need to map it to the symbols that we have. Now that is definitely more difficult because
the child’s auditory processing can take time and especially for a dyslexic child, he will find it
difficult if he has not mastered the sounds. So spelling can be taught, there are rules, there are
regulations and there are system and structure.
A child with specific learning difficulties learns so much better when there is structure and when
there is a system. So lets set forth and try to teach this child spelling.
(Refer Slide Time: 07:34)