ABSTRACT
Spelling is an important part of writing, even in these days of spellcheckers. Learning to spell can be a challenge, particularly for English speakers. Classic theories of spelling development (e.g. Gentry, 1982; Henderson, 1985), which are still influential in the field, may be described as stage theories. These theories postulate that children progress through a sequence of different stages in learning to spell, using different types of information and different processes at each stage. During early stages, phonological skills are primary. These include phonological awareness (the ability to identify sounds in spoken words) and knowledge of letter–sound correspondences. Only during later stages are higher-level sources of information thought to come into play, including orthographic knowledge (knowledge of legal and illegal letter sequences and of how a sound’s spelling may differ depending on such things as its position in a word) and morphological knowledge (knowledge of relations among word forms and how they influence spelling).
