ABSTRACT
A combination of visual perception to see letters, auditory perception to hear them and tactile perception to write them and accurate visual, auditory and kinaesthetic memory are all needed in order to spell. In the writer's view, formal teaching of spelling should not begin until children are reading and writing fairly fluently. Spelling bees may be fun—for some children—but are pretty unproductive, and for those children who spell almost entirely by sight quite bewildering. The teaching of spelling must include visual, auditory and kinaesthetic perceptual cues. Every teacher has been asked for the spelling of a word already written on the board or in the child's book—which proves the problem still facing the questioner—that of finding it to copy. A parallel is the sequence of touch-typing—individual letters are typed, followed by groups of letters which occur frequently in English spelling—during which time brain pathways are established.
