In a world of spell-checking devices and texting abbreviations, one researcher says learning to spell is as important as ever – and more complex than we might realise.
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A child's first encounter with spelling might be simply sounding out words and letters but Charles Sturt University PhD student Tessa Daffern has discovered primary school children should be taught multiple spelling strategies from a young age.
Mrs Daffern's research has examined how children learn to spell to help teachers improve how the important skill is taught in the classroom.
Her research involved 1400 grade 3 to 6 students from 17 Canberra schools and an analysis of the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy results alongside Mrs Daffern's own spelling assessment tool.
It found spelling was a strong predictor of a student's performance in written composition, more so than grammar and punctuation, while children were capable of learning different elements of spelling simultaneously from a young age.
Mrs Daffern's research found students developed phonology knowledge, such as corresponding sounds and letters, and orthographic knowledge, letter patterns and words containing "igh" or silent letters, alongside morphological knowledge, including word parts and their meanings.
"There's an assumption that teachers should begin with a phonics approach to spelling but research shows that even from an early age children need to be taught other aspects of spelling," she said
"Students are actually capable of learning aspects of morphology, which is more complex and has a longer development span."
Regularly co-ordinating the three elements of spelling in the classroom through quality literature and writing tasks could make the process much easier for students – and enable more thinking space for other aspects of writing.
"Over time, children can become more automatic in that process," Mrs Daffern said.
"If children have to stop and think about, 'how do i spell this word', it interferes with the flow of their thinking and just makes writing more arduous. We want them to have a level of proficiency with their spelling that they can start to concentrate more easily on other important processes in writing."
And a simple spell-check isn't enough.
"It doesn't provide all the answers," she said.
"The fact we have so many homophones, words that sound the same but have different spelling and meanings, for example, spell-check doesn't pick up on those."
