Lippincott's Horn-Ashbaugh Speller For Grades One to Eight

by Ernest Horn; Ernest J. Ashbaugh

The Vocabulary.—To solve the first problem one must insure that the pupils will study all words they are likely to use in life outside the school. One must also insure that the pupils' time will not be wasted through their being required to learn words which they will never use. This problem has been solved for you by the authors of the text. The vocabulary of the lessons is taken from a compilation which Doctor Horn has made of ten scientific investigations of the words used in writing letters. These investigations, taken together, represent the careful analysis of over three-quarters of a million running words of correspondence. If you will analyze one letter, you will see what a very great amount of work these investigations have required. It seems very unlikely that any word commonly and frequently used should have been overlooked in all of these investigations.

These ten studies contain all of the information which is available at the present time concerning what words are likely to be used in writing letters. Accordingly, there is no word in this speller which has not been reported in one or more of these investigations. In addition, this vocabulary has been carefully compared with all of the other types of reading and writing vocabularies.

Among these are the studies of children's themes, such as those by Jones, by the teachers of New Orleans, Kansas City, and Richmond, Virginia; the various studies of adult reading vocabularies, such as those by Eldridge and Knowles, aggregating over 140,000 running words; the studies of the vocabulary of school readers, such as those by Packer, Housh, and Miller, aggregating over one-half million running words. No word has been taken from these studies which did not occur in the investigations of the vocabulary of personal and business letters. On the other hand, these studies showed quite clearly that the words found as the result of the analysis of three-quarters of a million running words of correspondence are really basic in any writing vocabulary.

If you will examine the book, you will see that most of the lessons are numbered with arabic numerals. These lessons contain a minimum list of 3998 words found to be used most frequently. You will notice, also, that beginning with grade three there are in each grade supplementary lessons, marked S-1, S-2, etc. These lessons include 580 additional words which are somewhat less frequently used. The supplementary lessons are distributed by grades, so that pupils who finish the minimum work for any grade will have additional lessons to study for the remainder of the year. However, before undertaking these supplementary lessons, the teacher should make sure that her pupils have learned thoroughly the minimum list which contains the important words.

Plan of Review.—The provision for the complete elimination of spelling errors is particularly efficient and thoroughgoing. Not only are those words which most commonly give difficulty arranged for, but the method of testing insures that each pupil will eliminate his own peculiar errors. No pains have been spared to obtain this thoroughness without wasting the pupils' time in mere routine review.

During the week in which each lesson is taught for the first time, each pupil is tested three times on every word in the lesson. He spends his time in concentrated attack on the words which have given him difficulty. One month later this lesson is given as a test, and the words missed by each pupil re-learned by him. At the end of the week this lesson is again given as a test.

In addition, at the beginning of each grade above the first, the words which have been previously taught, but which according to Doctor Ashbaugh's investigation still give difficulty, are thoroughly reviewed. Finally, in the seventh grade, the words which are most frequently missed by grammar grade pupils are given additional review.

It must be kept in mind that these reviews are not haphazard, nor are they a matter of guesswork. Each review list is made up on the basis of the most careful scientific study of persistent errors.

Grading.—The lessons in each grade are those which the pupils in that grade may most profitably study. The words have been graded in the following manner: On the basis of Doctor Horn's compilation of correspondence vocabularies, all of the 4578 words were ranked according to the frequency with which they are used in correspondence. On the basis of Doctor Ashbaugh's study of the difficulty of these words in the various grades, the words were arranged in order of ease of spelling. With these two sources of data, the lessons are arranged so that in general the easiest words and those most commonly and frequently used are placed in the lower grades. In addition, on the basis of scientific analysis of the vocabulary of first, second, and third readers, the authors determined which words occurred most often in these readers. The words included in the lessons for the first three grades are not only easy and fairly common, but are found also in popular readers of the grades in which they are placed. For example, the word "and" was found 23,773 times in the letters analyzed in the various investigations upon which the book is based; and it is misspelled by but four second grade children out of a hundred. It also occurs in every one of ten commonly used first readers. Since it is one of the very commonest words, is easy to spell, and is found in all first readers, it is placed in the first list in the book. In a similar way every lesson in the first three grades has been a matter of computation. The lessons in grades above the third have been made in the same careful fashion, except that occurrences in readers were not taken into consideration. It is clear that the lessons increase gradually in difficulty in each successive grade, and that a pupil who is forced to leave school at the end of grade six or seven will have learned the words which he is most likely to need in writing.

Standard Scores.—By means of standard errors at the close of each lesson, the pupils and teachers may compare results with those of other grades and with those obtained in the country at large. These standards were taken from the Ashbaugh Scale and from a supplementary study conducted by Doctor Ashbaugh and Doctor Horn to determine the standards for words not included in the original scale. It must be kept in mind that these standard errors are high, being the result of the present unfavorable conditions of the teaching of spelling in the country at large. They are used merely for the purpose of comparison. The ideal to keep before your class is that they should learn their lessons so that they will not misspell a single word, but this ideal is intensified by the use of the standard errors.