Orthography [writing letters] is closely related to correct processing of phonemes [sounds] in words. Let me simplify what this means.
1.You may not be able to tell the difference between short vowel tones,
so matching the correct vowel letter or letters to the correct vowel tone is difficult without memorizing word spelling.
You may not distinguish between voiced and voiceless consonant sounds, which may cause you to confuse the sounds of */p/ and /b/, /t/ and /d/, /k/ and /g/, /sh/ and /ch/, /th/ as in think and /th/ as in /that/, and/or /s/ and /z/.
*[/ / indicates a sound, ' ' indicates a letter.]
2. You may confuse sounds that sound similar
but are produced in slightly different areas of the mouth. For example, /r/ and /l/ are both ‘liquid’ sounds that sound alike to some people, but are formed in two different areas of the mouth. /f/ and /th/ have only a slight difference in that the /f/ is produced with the teeth and lips and the /th/ is produced with the tongue between the teeth.
3. You do not process all the sounds in words, or you struggle to correctly sequence the sounds as you write.
People who have this problem leave sounds out in blends. Blends are two consonants side by side [st, sm, sn, pr, pl , fl, at the beginning or -rn, -rt, -mp, -ps, etc. on the end.]
Therefore, ‘string’ might be spelled or spoken as ‘sting’ or ‘sing’ and ‘turn’ might be spelled as ‘trun.’
4. You may not have learned the phonic rules for spelling.
and how phonic rules are related to the vowel tones within words. With this problem you might spell ‘catch’ as ‘cach' or 'teach' as 'tetche.’ Many spelling patterns are based on vowel sounds and phonic rules.
5. You have not learned how to spell common prefixes and suffixes.
The -tion ending is an example that people confuse because the letters 'ti' would be spoken as /ti/ [as in /tip/, but in the suffix the letters 'ti' are spoken /sh/. If you do not know this, you might spell a word like ‘emotion’ as ‘emoshun.’
6. You may not know the meanings and differences between words that sound the same but are spelled slightly different.
Examples of these are ‘to’ ‘too’ and ‘two’ or ‘there’ ‘their’ and ‘they’re.’ Using simple mnemonic devices may help with this.
Example: I went TO school with TWO lunches which was TOO much to eat!
I went THERE and found out I was THEIR heir and now THEY’RE giving me all THEIR things!
7. Your visual memory for words with multiple possibilities for vowel spellings may be weak.
For example, the long /a/ phoneme may be spelled as ‘a_e’ as in ate or ‘-ay ‘as in play, or ‘eigh’ as in eight, ‘ai’ as in train, or ‘ey’ as in they. While one can predict to some degree what the possible spelling pattern might be based upon location of the sound within the word, we still need to have repeated exposure to words with two or more possible spellings to create a mental image of how the word should ‘look.’ If visual memory is weak, then you may have trouble spelling words having more thane one way to spell the vowel tone.
That said, if you can at least write one of the vowel spellings, auto correct in your computer will catch the word you wish to write and suggest the correct spelling, that is if the word that you spelled is not another real word.
For example, hare and hair are both real words with quite different meanings. Spell check will not likely catch this spelling error.
8. Lastly, you may not process the unaccented syllable in multiple syllable words, either auditorily or visually.
One must process the ‘schwa’ phoneme of the unaccented syllable AND recall which vowel letter is used for the unaccented syllable in multiple syllable words. Again, if you can represent all the sounds in a multiple syllable word with at least a letter [correct or not] and spell the sounds within the accented syllables and suffixes correctly, the auto correct and spell check features on your computer should get you to the correct spelling of the word.
To Summarize
When students cannot hear or 'process' sounds within words, their authentic writing will naturally contain many orthographic errors. Sometimes just being unable to hear the differences between similar sounds will cause vowel spelling errors, consonant spelling errors, multiple syllable word spelling errors, and misspellings in words with blends. Fortunately, there is a way to train children to process and correct these kinds of spelling mistakes. "Reading Sound Strategies" outlines how to know which kind of spelling error a person struggles with (i.e. processing vowel tones? or consonants? blends?, etc.). Teaching spelling to the struggling speller is simplified because it provides directions, lesson materials and resources for the teacher or parent to train the student TO correctly process the phonemes in question.
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