ABSTRACT
For many students with learning difficulties, spelling continues to be a problem long after reading skills have improved. In part, this arises because in English language it is impossible to spell every word by a simple translation of sound to letter. But children’s difficulties can also result from too little time and attention devoted in schools to explicit teaching of spelling skills and strategies. Insufficient instruction and corrective feedback in the early years are major causes of poor spelling. For several decades from the 1970s, teaching spelling ceased to feature prominently in the primary school curriculum, due mainly to the influence of the whole-language approach to literacy. Under that approach students were expected to acquire spelling skills simply through daily immersion in the writing process. Teachers were encouraged to ignore spelling mistakes and accept ‘invented’ spellings in order not to focus attention too much on the mechanical aspects of writing. This integrated approach was deemed to be a ‘natural’ way of acquiring spelling skill and therefore regarded as preferable to any form of direct teaching. This unsystematic approach proved inadequate for many children and they failed to become proficient spellers. In recent years, the systematic teaching of spelling has enjoyed something of a renaissance, due to a growing awareness that accurate spelling is important, and children will not necessarily become adequate spellers if they are left to discover spelling principles for themselves. The current view is that a systematic approach to spelling and word study is absolutely essential and leads to measurable improvement in spelling ability. If young writers are provided with direct guidance, scaffolding and feedback in the early stages, their emergent spelling skills can be improved very significantly (Reed, 2012; VanNess et al., 2013). Current teaching approaches aim to help students become more independent, and capable of detecting and self-correcting errors. Guidelines for curriculum in the US, Britain and Australia now require that due attention be given to ensuring that all students can spell and can use appropriate resources to check the spelling of complex words (ACARA, 2014a; CCSS, 2014a; Gov.UK, 2014b).
