ABSTRACT
For many low-achieving students, spelling continues to present a problem long after reading skills have improved. In part, this problem arises in the English language because it is impossible to spell every word by a simple translation of sound to single letter (Goswami 2005). Spencer (2002: 16) observes that:
In a perfect orthography there would be one letter for each sound and the number of sounds would exactly match the number of letters. This is not the case with English, although some languages do approach this degree of correspondence. English words usually have more letters than sounds, and it is this discrepancy (the phonetic difference) which is one of the main factors linked to spelling diffi culty.
