ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the research on spelling patterns in the primary grades. In quite a few first grades and kindergartens, children are encouraged to write in a variety of activities and settings, with the understanding that their spellings will be accepted, or that standard spelling will be emphasized only in specific lessons or formal contexts. This change has a longer and better-documented history in Great Britain than in the United States. Research on children's spelling in school has taken a new course in the last decade or so. The basic difference is that people consider spelling to be a psycholinguistic performance, to be understood in terms of linguistic and cognitive concepts. The prevailing attitude toward standard English spelling has also changed in the last decade. Fisher classified the spelling errors of seventy-five first graders in a Maryland classroom, where the reading instruction was of the 'language experience' type.
