uch about spelling is puzzling. Our society expectsthat any educated p - PDF document

uch about spelling is puzzling. Our society expectsthat any educated person can spell, yet literate adultscommonly characterize themselves as poor spellersspelling, but we do not know how many, or in relation to whatew state stan-dards specify what, exactly, a student at each grade level should AMERICAN EDUCATOR How Spelling Supports Reading And Why It Is More Regular and Predictable Than You May Think By Louisa C. Moats ocket Science tials for Teachers This is her fourth article for American Educator LLUSTRATEDBYCHARLOTTEFREMAUX dents from allocating a small amount of time to continued,ppropriate spelling instruction. In addition to continuing tolearn the rules of spelling, students can develop a deep under-standing of English by studying the meanings of roots, pre-fixes, and suffixes; families of related words; the historical de-velopment of the English language; and wordsÕ language oforigin. It픀s very likely that this sort of word study (in additionto being intrinsically interesting to many students) would sup-port vocabulary development and facilitate reading by en-abling students to view any new word from the angles ofsound, meaning, language of origin, and syntax. As a result,students would be more likely to be able to figure out the newword픀s meaning as well as how to spell it and how to use itwith precision. hose of us who can spell reasonably well take forgranted the role that spelling plays in daily life. Filingalphabetically; looking up words in a phone book, dic-tionary, or thesaurus; recognizing the right choice from the pos-sibilities presented by a spell checker; writing notes that otherscan readÑand even playing parlor gamesÑare all dependenton spelling. In a literate society, conventional spelling is ex-pected and anything beyond a few small errors is equated withsion on Writing for America픀s Families, Schools, and Colleges20052005eported that 80 percent of the time an employment ap-something any reasonably intelligent person should be able togrief? How can spelling be taught so that it will support readinginstruction as well as help students understand how the spellingThis article attempts to answer both of these questions by firstexploring the nature of the English language픀s writing/spellingsystem and, second, by outlining the key content that studentsshould master in kindergarten through seventh grade. I. Making Sense of the English SpellingSystem (It픀s Not as Irregular as You Think) regular and pattern-Hodges, and Rudor19661966nglish words can bepredictably represent their sound patterns (e.g., back, clay, somewhat complex and as in and when touse Ò as in ). Another 34 percent of English wordswould only have one error if they were spelled on the basis ofound-symbol correspondences alone. spelling of 84 percent of words is mostly predictable. Manymore words could be spelled correctly if other information wastaken into account, such as word meaning and word origin.The authors estimated that only four percent of English wordswere truly irregular. Thus, the spelling of almost any word canbe explained if one or more of the following five principles ofEnglish spelling is taken into account: 1) WordsÕ language of origin and history of use can explain2) WordsÕ meaning and part of speech can determine their3) Speech sounds are spelled with single letters and/or com-4) The spelling of a given sound can vary according to itsposition within a word.5) The spellings of some sounds are governed by establishedconventions of letter sequences and patterns.Each principle is explained in broad strokes and illustratedwith one or more examples over the next several pages. To-so complexÑand why that complexity is well worth the frus-tration it causes for beginning spellers (and readers). The lasteal the order behind the seeming chaos; forthe most part, these three result from well-meaning attemptsto bring regularity to the English language. part of the article is designed to help teachers better under-stand the nature and structure of the English spelling system.wledge for teachers of read-ing, spelling, and writing. As Snow et al. (2005, p. 87) ex-plained, the rules for spelling are very complex, Òso it is notsurprising that many highly literate adults who use those rulescorrectly [and automatically] find it difficult to talk aboutthem or answer questions about them. Teachers who have been AMERICAN EDUCATOR *Typically, that error would occur in spelling a vowel sound; vowels havequite variable (e.g., these wordsall have a long /, sound: use, few, beauty More current and sophisticated analyses of the sound-to-spelling systemel spelling variation is much greater thanTreiman, 2001). Of course, the reliance on Greek continues today in science, mathemat-ics, and philosophy; recently coined terms include synthesizer and cryp- of a word usually changes much more slowly than its pronun-iation, some of our oldest and most common words (such as have retained spellings that rep-resent how they were pronounced eight or 10 centuries ago. Norman French contributed additional sound-symbol cor-respondences, such as the soft for /s/ as in for /j/as in courage for /zh/ as in garage as in was in Old English), for /kw/ as in (which was cwene in Old English), for /k/ as in t/as in No new sound-symbol correspondenceswere contributed by Latin and only a few were adopted fromGreek spelling patterns: for /õù/ as in gym for /f/ as in losophy chorus During and after the Renaissance, however, English adoptedwords from many other languagesÑand their spellings wereadopted as well (e.g., from Spanish; bayou levee from French; from Italian; schmooze from Yiddish). For the most part, these adoptions added wordsto the English language, but unlike the earlier changes inwhich spelling patterns were adopted (e.g., from cwene ), they did not affect already established spelling patterns. The many layers of the English language do make it harderEnglish language has roughly double the number of words ofseemingly comparable languages like German, Spanish, andshow, the layers of languages thatmerged to form modern English have left us with many wordsexpress our ideas. Fortunately, the way English evolved, and particularly theway scholars drew from Latin roots and Greek base words, re-sulted in many families of words with related meanings andsimilar spellings such that whole groups of words in ModernEnglish can be learned together with relative ease. For exam-ple, as Latin was layered on top of Old English, Latin roots to speakto speak to healto healesulted in families ofwords like these: dictionary edict, indict remedy remedial etc. If you are reading carefully youmay be about to protest: These families of words have relatedmeanings and similar spellings, but sometimes their pronunci-ations are different. This brings us to the next principle. 2. WordsÕ meaning and part of speech can determine their spelling. English words are spelled according to both their soundsphonemes, such as /b/phonemes, such as /b/ful parts (mor-phemes, such as the root In contrast, languages likeand letter combinations for sounds; they pretty much stick tothe job of representing phonology. Once you know the sound-ou can read and write in Spanish orFinnish. That may sound great to a struggling speller, but ityou encounter a new word, its spelling English, bycontrast, if you know what to look for, you can find clueswn word픀s meaning. The words edible edit edulous edulity offer an exampleÑall four sharaLatin morpheme ed served in spelling. And the last two also share the morpheme ever, incredulous might be increjulous but then the mean-ingful relationship between edible edulous would beobscured. With written English, readers who knomorphemes cred may access word meaning directly.onunciation in the spelling of hundreds of AMERICAN EDUCATOR Norman French Latin Water Aquifer, Hydroponic ransform This is why linguists describe English spelling as a morphophonological The many layers of the English language do make it harder to learn tospell, but they also provide a rich vocabulary. AMERICAN EDUCATOR sion); b) calling attention to the odd partof the word that must be learned byheart (fr sory memory strategy (Carreker, 2005)that gives the students many ways to re-peatedly practice spelling the word (suchas copying the word while saying the let-word, and covering the word and then(there is rat arat my very close attention to the letter sequenceby visualizing it and recalling it back-wards as well as forwards. suggest introducing irregular wordsat the rate of about three to five perweek, beginning with words the chil-dren write most often (Moats, 2003)and also tend to misspell. If a childlearns a basic high frequency word thewrong way, unlearning it once a habithas been formed is more difficult than ented If students are very poor spellers, con-uction on words they aremost likely to write (Graham, Harris,and Loynachan, 1994). More complex Anglo-Saxon spellingsound in a word, letter patterns/con-ventions, and most common inflec- Guided discovery with word sorting andteacher questioning is a powerful ap-sound in a word (Bear, Invernizzi,tablished conventions (like 큶e ). For ex- phoneme /j/ lends itself to word sortingand guided discovery. Instead of telling wel, and after a long vowel or other consonant),spellings for /j/ and help them figureout what is going on. Once they see thepattern, they should be ready to learnthe rule.Inflections ( Ðed, Ðs, Ðes, Ðing, Ðer, Ðest which are also called grammatical suf-fixes) are morphemes that change thenumber, person, or tense of the word towhich they are added, but they do notchange its part of speech. The spellingerrors in fourth- to sixth-grade students픀writings frequently concern inflections, (Apelet al., 2004; Bryant et al., 1997; Moats,1996). Although inflections are empha-sized (and should be mastered) in thirdgrade, they should be introduced in firstgrade and practiced for several yearsthereafter. IÕll use the suffix plain one teaching strategy. Begin bymaking students aware of the sounds the suffix makes:/d/ as in ;/t/as Next,sort words according to the sound of the makes a new syllable. The endings are easy to ignore or to misspell.Then, the rules for adding endings mustEnglish for adding suffixes to basewords: the doubling rule ( drop rule ( rule ( ). These rules should besecond grade, and practiced for severalyears until they are internalized. Toteach them, start by decomposing famil-iar words with inflections by taking offthe ending and finding the base word: start combining base words and endings. Grade 3: Multisyllable words, including Anglo-Saxon syllabication, Although children should begin practic-grade, by third grade they should beready to master syllabication. Children픀sspelling should be greatly improved ifhow they affect spelling. For example,once children learn about the open,* they can reliably predict when theyshould double consonants in words that syllable. Whenan open syllable is combined with a con-sonant and Ñthere is no doubled conso-nant. In contrast, when a closed syllable bleÑas in double consonant results. To teach how to spell multisyllablewords, consider beginning with com- playground yellowtail advantages: Children more easily detectbase word stays the same.unaccented vowel sound that has beenowel. Teach childrenthat some vowel sounds have the stuffingtaken out of them when they are unac- prob-le m -dept m-mit say the word naturally and mark the syl-lable that has a schwa. Instruction aboutare spelledÑand reminds teachers not torely exclusively on Òspell it by soundingit outÓ because that strategy is limitedwith multisyllable words.Having already learned the commonAnglo-Saxon and Latin suffixes (such as as common Anglo-Saxon and Latin pre-fixes (such as pr旐 re퀀 ). Children need to learn to recog- Open syllables end with a long vowel sound o gram ); closed syllables have a short vowel tel AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS these prefixes and suffixes as stableand meaningful word parts and they Grade 4: Latin-based prefixes, suffixes, androots. Direct teaching about the meaningfulparts of words begins with the mostorigin (Henry, 2003). Prefixes and suf-es have stable spellings and meanings.Suffixes such as added. Roots such as words, such as natal,native tional international tionalistic etc. This is especially helpfulin grades four through eight to help stu-dents develop a larger vocabulary. A the prepositions over on the left Although the relationshipbetween the meaningful parts of a wordand the present-day meaning of a wordrange from transparent, as in before ), to obscure, as in apart- toward part to share part recall and recognition. Grades 5-6: More complex Latin-based forms. Content words (nouns, adjectives, ad-erbs, and verbs) in academic text areposed of prefixes, roots, and/or suffixes.Their study is productive for readingcomprehension, spelling, and vocabu-lary development (Carlisle and Stone,2005). However, more complex wordsspelling of the prefix and/or root. For collaborate is related to the k). The prefix changed form of blend easily into the root. Many other툀chameleonÓ prefixes operate this way.It픀s best to organize word study around aefixes and suffixesenry, 2003; Templeton Grades 6-7: Greek combining forms. Since the Renaissance, scholars haverand olderand olderderived from Greek in math, science,and philosophy texts. Greek word partswork more like compounds than roots.They can be combined more flexibly, asfollows: thermodynamics isotherm chobiology chology -phone am very consistent, and often use the corre- /and ÑL.M. This exercise comes from Spellography program Louisa Moats developed with Bruce pellography on each other as children progress through the lessons. Spellography able. For more information, go to www.sopriswest.com wilderness pronunciation of the morphemes varies.We픀ve dealt with the two big sources of complexity in Eng-lish spelling: the layering of various languages as Englishevolved and the emphasis on meaning instead of sounds. Nowit픀s time to run through the three principles that make Englishspelling more predictable than you may think it is. These prin-ciples provide a framework for understanding those seeminglyendless lists of rules that have given English spelling its badreputation. We픀ll start with the most straightforward principleand then build up to some oddÑbut regularÑspellings, such 3. Speech sounds are spelled with single letters These sound-symbol relationships are known to linguists asphoneme-grapheme correspondences. A phoneme is the small-est speech sound that distinguishes words. The words are all dis-tinguished from one another by one phonemeÑthe vowelphoneme. Graphemes may be composed of one to four let- a dle be Although many phonics programsand assessments speak of Òletter-sound팀 correspondences, themore accurately conceptualized the other way aroundÑas amap between phonemes (sounds) and graphemes (the letters have just 26 letters towork withÑbut we havsoundssoundsmorways to spell those soundsways to spell those soundsTheovide some examples of the variety of graphemeserwhelm-makes the task manageable for teachers and students. Most canect instruction and practice; some arefor the vowel sound /u ince the speech sounds in English can be spelled so manythose of us who cannot just ÒabsorbÓ the right spelling as weead, some memorization of spelling rules is helpful, butmainly we need to practice recognizing and writing groups ofords that share a given pattern. ÒRulesÓ are often predictabletern study and memorization. The next two principles provideframework that makes the patterns a little easier to learn. 4. The spelling of a given sound can vary according to its position within a word. Making sense of when to use which grapheme relies in part onthe position of the sound in the word. Scribes and dictionarywriters invented some of these conventions as our language ab-sorbed new letters, sounds, and words from other languages. Asan example, let픀s focus on the three graphemes most commonly ), and rock ).** The letter represents /k/ most of the time: It is used craft scroll used before the vowel letters (as in corncob and ). The letter can represent /k/ before any vowel, butit is almost always used before (as in and ); in these cases, the letter is taking over for cause when is followed by it has its soft sound /s/(as in cycle ). The letters represent /k/ after astressed short vowel (as in and at the end of one-syllablewords (as in ock Not all consonant or vowel spellings are that complex, butthe choice of grapheme for a given speech sound is often deter-ws it. Here픀s aless complicated example: When the sounds /f/, /l/, or /s/ di-rectly follow a short vowel in one-syllable words, a doubled or is used to spell the sound (as in ass vowel spellings, which can seem terribly complicated becausethey tend to have many graphemes for their short and longthe vowel sound is considered. For example, /ou/ can be spelled Ñit픀s just a matter of where the /ou/ sound ap-pears. If it is at the beginning of a word, use (as in ). If itis in the middle of a word or syllable, is usually correct (as )Ñexcept when /ou/ is followed by only a (as in brown howl ). Lastly, if the /ou/ sound is w w verned and patterns. first written and disseminated, rulesson and Noah Webster worked to accommodate the norms ofregularity. /v/ and /j/. It was not until the 1800s that the letters fully welcomed into the English alphabet (Sacks, 2003). AMERICAN EDUCATOR or more detail on the speech-to-print system, see Moats, 2000 orMoats, 2004. All of these spellings (plus Ð as in come from the Anglo-Saxonlayer of the English language. Three additional spelling for /k/ wereadopted as English evolved over the past thousand years: Ð and from Norman French and chorus from Greek. Examples of Graphemes Speech Sound Examples mitt, comb, hymn /t/ tickle, mitt, sipped /n/ nice, knight, gnat /aw/ call, bought awau, a, ough /u chew, suit, soup ew, ui, ou By then, scribes and writers of dictionaries had determinedthat English words would not end with those letters because the letters from which each was derived. Though it seems odd vents a word from ending in plain Thus, words with shortwels ending in /v/ ( e e ve regularÓ from the an option at the ends of words, the speech sound /j/ may be English uses ecause if it were not for the extraconsonant protection of the letter could reach back over wel say its long vowel Here픀s another example of a spelling convention: The letter ker for the hard /g/ sound in words like ou픀ll need to know one moreexample of the previous principle (that the spelling of a soundits position in a word). Like the letter when is followed by it has its soft sound (/j/ as in ym So, in the case of the letter intervenes between the and the requiring the have its hard /g/ sound. Conventions like these were developed to help people pro-nounce words correctly. Consider the differences in pronunci-ation between these words: (Snow et al., 2005).In each pair, the first word has a short vowel sound that is툀protectedÓ from being a long vowel sound by the double ogether, these five principles explain how English canbe rich and varied, yet contain words spelled in regularand predictable ways. Virtually every word픀s spellingcan be explained by its language of origin, meaning, and/orsound structure. But, as we픀ve seen with the many ways to spell/k/ and /j/, it픀s not as if words are simply predictable or not:The predictability of English words exists on a continuum.Only a few phoneme-grapheme correspondences work all ofthe time (regardless of sound sequence), such as in Most of the correspondences are predictable, but aredetermined by the position of a phoneme in a word and/or aet other correspondences visu-ally represent the meaningful parts of and relationships betweenwords, often at the expense of phoneme-grapheme correspon- are only a small percentage of words in English. Butbecause they are often very common words (coming fromused frequently and, as a result, proba-bly contribute to the widespread myth that English is terriblyirregular. II. Spelling Instruction Five years ago, the National Reading Panel (NRP, 2000) omit-and writingand writingom its list of five essential compo-nents of a comprehensive reading lesson (which were phono-logical awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and compre-hension). At the time, the best evidence on spelling indicatedof the speech sound system, including word boundaries,on the relationship between letters and the sounds) has a posi-ement in the primary grades. As asponse to appropriate reading instruction. challenges at least part of the NRPÕs as-sumption: A group of researchers in Houston who followedom first through fourth grade found that spellingsteady at about the 50th percentile. M20052005schools in two urban environments. The study픀s goal was to AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS Since the speech sounds in Englishhow do we know when to use a particular spelling? quencing Program for reading, spelling, and speech. Austin, Texas: Pro-Ed.Mehta, P., Foorman, B.R., Branum-Martin, L., and Taylor, P.W20052005Literacy as a unidimensional construct: Validation, sources of influ- ific Studies of Reading, 9 M19951995 Spelling: Development, disability, and instruction. Bal-timore, Md.: York Press.M19961996honological spelling errors in the writing of Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, M20002000 Speech to print: Language essentials for teachers. Balti-more, Md.: Brookes Publishing.M20032003 The speech to print workbook. Baltimore, Md.: Paulrookes. M20042004 Language essentials for teachers of reading andLETRSLETRSodule 2, The Speech Sounds of English, and Modulepellography for Teachers. .: Sopris West Educa-tional Services.Moats, L.C. and Rosow20022002 Spellography Longmont, Colo.: Sopris West.Montgomery20012001The effec-tiveness of word processor spell checker programs to produce targetwords for misspellings generated by students with learning disabilities, Journal of Special Education Technology, 16 ational Commission on Writing for America픀s Families, Schools, and owerful Message from State Government. New York: College Board.uman Dev20002000 eporational Reading Panel. Pennington, B. F., McCabe, L.L., Smith, S.D., Lefly, D.L., Bookman, Child Development, 57, S20032003 Language visible: Unraveling the mystery of the alphabetfrom A to Z. New York: Broadway Books.Singer, B. and Bashir20042004evelopmental variations in writing. InStone, C.A., Silliman, E.R., Ehren, B.J., and Apel, K. (Eds.), Hand-acy: Development and disorders, New York: Guilford.Snow, C. E., Griffin, P., and Burns, M. S. (Eds.) (2005). Knowledge toSupport the Teaching of Reading: Preparing Teachers for a Changing Tangel, D. and B19951995ffect of phoneme awareness in-struction on the invented spelling of first-grade children: A one-yearw-up. ournal of Reading Behavior, 27, Templeton, S. and Bear, D. (Eds.) (1992). Development of orthographicacy. ence Erl-Tr20002000The development of spelling skill. Topics in Language Disorders, 20, 19931993egmentation and spelling in-struction as part of a first-grade reading program: Effects on severalmeasures of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 28, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS