IV. CAN SPECIAL DEFECT IN SPELLING BE OVERCOME?
Spelling has received relatively little study as a process, in comparison with the attention which has been given to reading and arithmetic. We have no variety of experiments carried out to improve poor spellers, as we have in the case of poor readers. In 1918 the present writer reported, with Miss Winford, the results of studying and teaching a group of poor spellers, from the fifth grade. The experiment extended over two periods of ten weeks each, but the time was largely devoted to observations of the errors made, measurements of intelligence, and inventions of incentives for arousing interest in spelling as a group project. No child was taken individually, and given intensive instruction, as with the boy, X, in reading, reported in Chapter IV.
During the period of class teaching, all the poor spellers improved, as measured by the Ayres scale, but the three very poorest still remained at the bottom of the class. By intensive individual instruction any one of these three might have made much greater improvement.
We are, therefore, now in need of experiments carried out to improve poor spellers. Such experiments must include precise measurements of intelligence, ability to spell, ability to read, and amount of time expended. They must include a description of the sensory equipment of the spellers, and information on all points listed under the suggested outline for the examination of poor spellers. There must be an adequate account of method used, and objective measurements of improvement must be presented.
From knowledge of spelling as a process of habit formation, it would be predicted that any child of average intelligence, and normal sensory capacity, can learn to spell, if sufficient drill be undergone. English spelling is, however, relatively resistant to learning, because of the specific character of the connections to be made. Very few generalizations are possible, each word being to so great an extent a special matter. For this reason it is very important to teach first the words most commonly used. These have been ascertained by research in the Russell Sage Foundation.
V. DOES READING TEACH SPELLING?
In the Atlantic Monthly of October, 1921, an enemy of simplified spelling writes as follows: “Spelling is not a craft by itself: it is a part of writing and reading, training of eye and hand. When a boy writes ‘starboard martyr’ for ‘Stabat Mater,’ or ‘forehead’ for ‘forward,’ he writes what he hears; the fault is not with his ear but with his visual image of the words. It means that he is not a reader, and is not accustomed to the appearance of the words. To try to teach him the distinctions by lists of letters alone would be about as useless as to try to teach him to distinguish people he never saw by means of verbal descriptions.”[[15]]
Fig. 10.—Composition written at school by X in December, 1920. X was then in grade 5B. The facts are correctly understood, but the spelling does not show great profit from previous reading of the text in history.
Have psychologists produced any evidence to show whether the view is correct, that reading will teach spelling? The positive correlation between ability to read and ability to spell does not, of course, give light on this question. Neither does correlation between amount of reading done and ability to spell, for the positive correlation, which would undoubtedly appear, might mean only that general intelligence determines both the amount of reading and accuracy of spelling, to the extent of positive correlation found.