The Phonemic or Alphabetic Phase in Spelling Development

This chapter deals with some of the characteristics of the phonemic or alphabetic phase of
spelling development of which the foundations will have been laid in the nave phase:

it discusses the need for the teacher to keep a close watch on each childs progress so as
to be able to match spelling work to developmental needs;
it elaborates the idea that childrens learning ranges from initial awareness, through
increasing familiarity to eventual secure mastery. In this it offers a rationale for the use of
the accompanying Wordcards and indeed for other work that is relevant to spelling that
the teacher decides to attempt;
it then gives examples of the sort of content of the Wordcards and how they deal with
various consonants and vowels, digraphs, clusters and so on;
it acknowledges that in the meantime children will require to spell words that they do not
know how to spell and it discusses the various sorts of help that the teacher might give
and which she can encourage the child to find and accept;
it considers some of the strategies that many children evolve in order to cope with
spelling. This allows us understand the spellings that sometimes appear in childrens
writing that are plausible but incorrect. They are not so much errors as intelligent
hypotheses that, unfortunately, do not work if the criterion is correctness;
it discusses the roles of the visual, auditory and kinaesthetic modalities and the place of
memory in spelling;
it devotes some space to the links between grammar and spelling. First there is a broad
account of grammar which it is hoped many teachers at all levels will find useful.
Broadly, the suggestion is that of all the resources of language grammar is the most
pervasive and, probably, the most useful to the child. And so it points to the implications
for spelling;
finally, it offers an account of the childs growing understanding of contingency, by
which is meant the likelihood of spellings being one thing rather than another, and his
development of a growing sense of regularity.

Finding out what a child knows and can do

The picture we have painted of a childs spelling development is one in which secure
foundations have been laid over a period of time. Some of these foundations may seem to have
little to do with spelling but they are nevertheless vital. We have mentioned the concept of a
word, the orientation of written language, the general correspondence between words spoken and
words written and so on. On top of these comes the alphabetic principle when this is
understood the child is ready for more direct work on spelling. We write more direct because
we are thinking still of a gradualist approach.

There is no substitute for the close watch that a teacher can keep on a child. One useful way by
means of which this observing can be helped is through the use of dictation. There are several
reasons for this. First, though, we should make it clear that we refer to dictation from child to
teacher and not at this point from teacher to child. When a teacher takes dictation from a child
she is in fact using a powerful investigatory and diagnostic tool. Understanding a childs
understandings is crucial for her. This kind of dictation may sound extremely formal but it is not
intended to be so. It may well come after discussion with and prompts from the teacher. At the
end, though, the child has to take responsibility for what he wants the teacher to write down.

Other kinds of observations will also help in understanding what the child is up to. The way a
child plays with language games, the pleasure he gets from sounds, the way in which he is able
to point to examples of words can all assist the teacher to form an idea of what the child knows
about the writing system.

Dictation, though, is particularly valuable in this respect. As early as the Naive phase there is
much to be said in support of the argument that Nursery classes and some Reception classes
might begin to use it profitably. Thus there might be a Literacy Table as a permanent or
occasional feature of the Nursery with a teacher or assistant in place. Children should then be
encouraged to come to that table to have things written down for them by the teacher as a child
makes up a story or report. Sometimes the composition of what is written will be a collaborative
effort between child and teacher, though the handwriting will be the work of the adult. Such
occasions, when language is written down at the suggestion of the child, gives that child the
chance to observe the one-one-correspondence between a word as spoken and the same word as
it is written. This one-to-one principle works invariably at that level. The activity also reinforces
the childs awareness of layout and handwriting practices.

Whilst this is in progress the teacher can learn a great deal about the childs general
understanding of the relationship between speech and written symbol. She will find whether the
child understands this one-to-one principle for words and whether he comprehends that spaces
have to be left between words and that his own speech will have to be segmented either by
himself or by the teacher into separate words. As collaboration between teacher and child grows,
the teacher will be able to learn more by asking the child to contribute the spellings of words or
of parts of words. It is important to remember that such understandings and abilities come rather
slowly, not as matters of information baldly imparted to the child.

Another way of finding out what phase a child is in and what he knows is through the use of the
Wordcards. These can be used for diagnosis and the ones specially labelled Dipsticks are
intended for this purpose.

Secure and insecure learning

Earlier, in a previous chapter, we referred to an important characteristic of learning that it may

be insecure and asserted that when this is so progress is best served by a gradualist approach. We
now want to explore further some of the implications for spelling.

It is generally agreed that by some means or another a set of words comes into existence that
each individual can spell without, it seems, any further learning. Successful spellers have the
feeling that they just know how to spell such words. They do it without seeming to have to tax
their memories much or to work out what the spelling might be.
It is convenient to think in terms of such a list but only with some qualifications. For instance it
might be better to regard it as a number of lists rather than as a single list. In any event the list, or
lists, has no physical existence: it is in this sense imaginary.

There are spellings, perhaps ones we have just learned, where the spelling seems secure or
known for a time and then seems to lapse into uncertainty. We are all familiar with children
who know how to spell a word on one occasion but have forgotten it on another. The lists that I
propose, then, are lists where the learning can be at different levels of security. Some of these
lists are of words that will never puzzle us as long as we retain our faculties. Other lists are of
words that are indeed known but not finally so. This ties in with much that is known about
learning and memory. Learning takes time and memory is, as we noted, dynamic and shifting,
not a simple matter of store and recall.

In terms of a prudential approach, then, it would seem sensible to revisit words that may not be
finally secure. Being prudential, teachers need to be wary about what seems to be secure.
Secure may not mean automatic. It is likely that what can happen with many words that are
successfully spelt is that the speller works out very quickly indeed what the spelling is. This is
what mature spellers sometimes do with multi-syllabled words. Consequently, even such
successful spelling may be the result, at least in part, of the employment at the moment of
spelling of strategies that the speller has learned to use, either fully consciously or less so.

The Wordcards take this into account and give the opportunity to children to confront and pay
attention to many features of English spelling and to take part in a process which runs from
introduction, to firmer acquaintance, then to familiarity, to partially-secure and finally on to
fully-secure learning. They also provide raw material for the child from which he will be able to
generate analogies and develop other spelling skills and thus in time to spell words that he may
never have seen or heard before.

Generalising and over-generalising

As well as this movement from insecure to more secure learning, there is a second basic
characteristic of childrens learning that we have noted. It is that of over-generalisation.

We need to be cautious. Children tend to make up their own rules in relation to what they learn.
Often, from the adults point of view, these are temporary. They may become out-dated. They
may conflict with other rules also discerned by the child, for it is not impossible to hold
contradictory notions at the same time. At some points in these early years children frequently
attribute regularity to the correspondence between letter and sound. They have found that the
rule that one word spoken corresponds to one word written and vice-versa is a rule that works
well. They also find evidence that the one-sound, one-letter rule works. Unfortunately, this latter
evidence is not conclusive and in fact complications abound. Being able to discern and deal with
these complications is very close to the heart of future spelling progress.

When a person learns, there is often a tendency to generalise. Such generalisation is a valuable
and economical way to proceed. It is often linked with the attempted recognition of analogies.
Spelling ability (as opposed to the mere knowledge of the spelling of specific lists of words)
depends largely on it. But the possibility of over-generalising, when the ploy becomes
illegitimate, is one that must be faced. We shall meet many instances of it, including this rule
that there is one sound for every letter and its converse that every letter has one sound.

Because of this many words are fraught with possible difficulties. Among those that present the
greatest problems are English proper names. They are among the first that a child copes with,
especially his own names. However, such proper names, particularly of places and of people, are
often throwbacks to earlier historical ways of spelling (and sounding) that have been largely
superseded or have fallen partly into disuse or have been forgotten altogether. The point is that
they are not necessarily valid as bases for generalisations because they may be exceptional.
Conversely, they are not always suitable objects to which generalisations (from other data) can
be properly applied. Accordingly, they are probably best learned, when the time is ripe,
separately as whole words and the teacher should encourage caution in generalising the
correspondence between their sounds and spellings to other words. The same applies to many
other kinds of words that exhibit similar historical layers: children have no easy or certain means
of knowing when the rules they have discerned for themselves are not applicable and this goes
for rules divined in regard to any words and not just to proper nouns. Perhaps the teacher
should remind the children from time to time that a particular example under scrutiny is a special
word needing caution. Indeed some of these words are so special that even when they do not
come at the beginning of a sentence their special nature is marked by giving them a capital letter.

Coping with unknown words

The ability to compose written texts is very important, comparable to the ability to read. Spelling
is part of writing, but only part and is lesser in scope and significance than the composing of
texts. Typically, though, composer-writers are faced with the problem of how to spell what they
wish to write. As time goes on and spelling ability develops, this may become less of a problem
but it never goes away. Even good adult spellers may run into the difficulty, especially if they
write a lot or if they venture into relatively unfamiliar areas- such as branches of medicine or
technology.

It is a problem that the teacher must ease for all, and particularly for the younger, less competent
speller. The question for the teacher is what can I do to help with spelling so that there is as
little adverse effect on creativity and fluency as possible?

In the course of his career as a writer every child will need to write words that he cannot spell or
which he is not certain about. It is important that the school should make sure that every
opportunity is taken to help him with this kind of problem. The immediate solution is not that the
child should actually learn to spell a word in doubt. That would mean that the spelling was given
priority over all other aspects of written language. Instead, the child should be offered a different
kind of help to cope with that particular word. This help might come from several directions. The
principle to be followed is that the child should have recourse to and should know that he has
recourse to the spelling of any word he is not sure about. This can be arranged in different ways.

a) words around the room and in repositories

There is a strong case for putting lists or banks of key words around the room and keeping
them for occasional reference. These lists might be of the names of children, the names of staff,
the months of the year, the seasons and the days of the week, or they might be words of
particular importance in writing about a subject (or subject-matter). Children wanting to write
any of these but who are not sure of the spelling need to be encouraged as a matter of course to
check with the list. This means that a teacher will have to make frequent reference to the lists and
perhaps to go over them with children, outlining what words they contain. Perhaps as a matter of
convenience there could be a transfer or maybe a two-way traffic to a larger class book of
spellings in which versions of the lists are also kept.

Similarly, there can be books of pictures (some are produced commercially with, for example, a
kitchen shown with labels for the most prominent features and for some of the utensils that are
commonly found there). Again the teacher will need to maintain familiarity and to encourage the
children to have recourse to the collection. This is sometimes more of a trouble than actually
assembling, making or posting lists of words. Sometimes the teacher will need to put up a more
temporary list dealing with a new topic or subject area that the class is exploring. The principle
applies equally in secondary schools when teachers might be well advised to keep such lists,
suitable for the needs of particular groups of children, whether they are advanced or backward
spellers.

b) The Childs own Wordbook

Possibly towards the end of the pre-phonemic stage each child will be given his own Wordbook,
divided into at least two sections and its use will become steadily more important as the child
becomes able to handwrite and organise his own work more independently. The sections might
include one for words that he needs for immediate purposes, having asked the teacher for help
that he feels he needs. The word can be written for him or by him from a scrap paper version
done by the teacher. Another section might be words that the teacher feels he needs to learn to
spell. A further section might be words of special interest. Later on in the childs career we may
broaden out from spelling into the exploration of interesting matters in the word stock of the
language perhaps of words of foreign extraction, words that have a common strand of meaning
potential (like a thesaurus), archaisms, jargon and so on. What is important is that, early on, there
are the two main sections one for words whose spelling is to be learned and one for words that
have been requested for use in composition. These can be added to, particularly during the
sophisticated stage of spelling. Most children will accumulate several such Wordbooks on the
journey through the primary and secondary years.

c) The childs access to spellings tactics

Spelling is always something that even the youngest writer of English must deal with. Alphabetic
languages demand to be spelled. Even very young children come to realise this and, once they
have got the idea of alphabetic spelling and the notion of correctness has dawned upon them,
they will want to know the right spelling for the words they wish to use. As we implied, a danger
in writing is that of getting priorities wrong. Whether a child is asked to write factually or
fictionally he or she needs to concentrate on the process of composition without paying undue
regard to handwriting or to spelling. (By undue is meant paying attention that has the effect of
seriously inhibiting composition.) A child who is struggling to make the correct or acceptable
letter shapes may not be able to give requisite attention to the business of creating continuous
writing. The same is true of spelling.

Accordingly, various possibilities occur. If a child does not know the spelling of a word and yet
wants to write it correctly there are several strategies potentially open to him. He can have a shot
at spelling it, using whatever general knowledge about spelling, including the spelling of
analogous words, that he may possess. He may be asked to do this in the margin or in pencil as a
temporary measure waiting until he has finished the composition before returning to deal with it.

His second tactic may be to look it up in a dictionary. In this case he will need to know about
dictionaries and he will have to have learned the alphabet in its traditional order.

A third tactic would be to look to some other repository kept in the classroom as we noted above.
These might also include various lists connected with topics that the class is investigating. Such
use of word banks is very common in infants classes. It is less common where there are older
children. But when they are insecure or are entering a new subject area or a fresh topic in an
established area, they, too, may need the same sort of help.

A fourth tactic would be to use any entry that was relevant in his own personal Wordbook.

A fifth possibility would be to ask someone, preferably the teacher.

It is important that the child should be familiar with these sources. He should be aware of what is
entered in class lists and in his own Wordbook. He should also know what is expected of him
when he writes a word that he is uncertain about (for example, to write in the margin or in pencil
or whatever, or to search, or to ask the teacher).

Learning alphabetic order

Using many of these sources of spelling requires knowledge of the alphabet and of alphabetic
order. The sooner a child begins to learn these the better, with the proviso that it must be done
without undue strain. Two sorts of learning are involved learning the letter names and learning
the order in which they are traditionally placed. Letter names have been the subject of some
controversy whether the letter should be known by its alphabetic or its phonemic or phonic
name. Much depends on the school and how it has formulated its own literacy policy, especially
the part that deals with reading. The present writer favours the alphabetic name.

The many reasons for learning the order are well-known: so much information comes in lists that
are organised alphabetically telephone directories, indexes, books on shelves, class registers,
dictionaries and encyclopaedias. The need to use dictionaries effectively would alone give
sufficient reason but the principle involved gives access to what is probably the most important
method of storing and retrieving information ever devised.
At some point the child will also need to learn to find his way about an alphabetically ordered list
with some agility. He will need to know just where a particular letter comes in the whole order
so that his searches may be facilitated.

He will also have to learn, later, that alphabetic ordering does not need to confine itself to the
initial letter of a word but that when two words begin with the same letter the determining factor
in deciding their order is the second letter or, if that is the same, the third, and so on.

It is a mistake to believe that this sort of facility is gained either easily or automatically. It should
be part of the teachers agenda and it will need much patience and practice before there is
proficiency. The guiding principle should be that the earlier the start the better as long as the
learning is accompanied by a feeling of success. Sometimes it is possible to add enjoyment by
making the learning into a game. Thus a teacher might arrange to ask question like what is the
second letter of the alphabet? and what comes two letters before letter g? and so on.

Helping Children to spell: Word cards

Bearing in mind the two dangers of over-generalising and of assuming that all learning is secure,
we turn to the methods by which gradual learning can be achieved. Again, we must urge that
whilst this process is continuing there will be a need to find words that are correct so as to use
them in writing, but unless there is strong reason the child need not be expected to learn to spell
these words. It is far better to make him well versed in the ways of finding them. No doubt some
rote learning will take place but it will be mainly incidental in the early stages.

The Wordcards have been devised to give children experience of most of the prominent
regularities of English spelling. On most of them are printed lists of words and they are there so
that the attention of the child can be focused upon them. They are intended to be revisited as
often as is necessary. The primary aim is to allow children to make acquaintance, in a way that is
reinforced by the list, with a particular sound/letter correspondence. Revisits should make the
particular feature more familiar.

At first these lists operate on the one-letter one-sound principle or at least do not contradict it.
In the meantime, there is no doubt that, elsewhere, other words that do not comply will be
frequently met. The teachers task is to advertise this possibility whilst claiming that the
correspondence being dealt with is an important (though not exclusive) one. There is
concentration at first on the initial consonant sounds and then on the terminal consonant sounds.
Consonant clusters and digraphs are dealt with, again with attention given first to initial and then
to terminal positions. Vowels are then considered, concentrating on lax and then tense sounds
and, later on, on digraphs.

Later still, other complications are dealt with. Most of these actually belong to the phase of
sophisticated spelling. The teacher has to decide when their use is appropriate with any particular
child.

The cards can also be used for practice in segmenting the words, that is in splitting them into
their parts, often into syllables.
If the teacher considers that some of the words on the cards should be learned by the child in
other words that he should not be merely familiar with them but should be able to reproduce
them from memory, the appropriate words can be copied into the childs Wordbook which, we
suggested, should be arranged in parts one with words that are useful to him and which have
been put there to use in writing, and one part that is for learning for periodic revisiting, bearing
in mind what we have established about secure and insecure learning.

Later, other complications are dealt with through examples on the Wordcards, including affixes,
morpheme preservations, aberrant spellings and so on.

The words on the cards have been ordered in a fashion that makes it easier for the teacher to ask
the child to copy them into his own Wordbook, whenever the teacher thinks that this is advisable.
Thus a child can be referred to word number x on Wordcard Y and asked to copy that word.

To assist the teacher each Wordcard carries a brief note stating the aims and the nature of the
tasks in which the Wordcards may be used. It also states whether a partners or the teachers
presence is necessary if the Card is to be used properly. Occasionally there is reference to the
explanations given in this book; sometimes the warning note about over-generalisation is
sounded again.

Although up to this point the emphasis has been on sound/letter correspondences, this does not
mean that the visual element has been neglected. Undoubtedly some children rely on them more
than others do. All use them, though possibly differently, at different stages in their careers and
differently also according to the word in question. What is important is to give each child the
chance not merely to see but to scrutinise words in their graphic form. Wordcards provide one
set of opportunities for this. But they may only be a small part of the total. Teachers can make
further opportunities by dealing with words as they come up in the normal course of classroom
work, pointing, perhaps, to analogies in the visual appearance of pairs or sets of words.

Throughout, good models are important for the child to copy. In time the models become
internalised and the child forms letters and syllables as adults do, on the basis of this internal
model. Handwriting words take the child beyond the visual and into the kinaesthetic. Respected
writers about severely disabled children have stressed that this is an important source of
knowledge and understanding for such children and it probably has considerable value with most
early learners.

What is certain is that no one who can tell what is likely to be best for a particular child without
having an intimate knowledge of that child. Only someone who has worked with a child will
have any idea whether he or she is ready to leave a particular strategy or understanding behind.
Further, each child must realise that there is not only a single set of difficulties to be overcome in
spelling. There are many. He must come to understand that there is much to learn and that the
process never really ends. This can be a daunting business and the best approach is from a basis
of success. Without success, the learner is likely to feel overawed and intimidated. It is up to the
teacher to guarantee success, not necessarily in every detail, but globally and overwhelmingly.
Examples from the Wordcards

The next pages give examples to illustrate the sort of things that Wordcards deal with. There is a
more complete account of Wordcards later.

In the following two lists of three letter words CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant letters) it is
intended that attention should be paid in the first list to initial consonant sounds and in the
second list to terminal consonant sounds.

The teacher should also be aware that in these lists we are moving in the reverse direction
compared to the childs usual practice. When he is making up spellings, he moves from sound to
corresponding letter(s). In contrast, the printed lists begin with the letter and invite the speller to
move to a corresponding sound, though this is not so when the words on the Wordcard have to
be read to the learner by his partner or by the teacher. In this respect there is a possibility that the
lists and the cards on which the lists are presented to children will be wrongly used as an aid to
reading rather spelling It is important, therefore, to encourage children to leave a word with
attention to some feature or features of its spelling, so that each encounter ends with letters stated
(or written) rather than the whole word read.

Examples of word characteristics that are dealt with in the Wordcards include:

(a) Initial consonant, three letter words ending with consonant

bat, bet, bit, bob, but, bad, bag, bar, bed, beg, bib, big, bin, bog, bow

man, men, mop, mud, mad, mam, map, mat, met, mob, mow , mug, mum

nab, net, nit, not, nut, nag, nap, nip, nod, nor, now

pan, pen, pin pop, put, pad, pal, pan, pat, peg, pet, pig. pip, pit, pod, pop, pot

ran, rip, rot, run, rag, ram, rap, rat, rib, rid, rim, rob, rod, row, rub, rug, rum

sat, set, sit, sob, sun, sad, sap, sin, sip, sod, son, sud, sum

tab, ten, tin, tot, tub, tap, tar, tax, tip, ton, top

van, vim, vat

wad , web, win, won

yet, yes

(b) Two and three letter words ending with consonant:

All the words in list (a) ended with a consonant. The difference in the following list is that they
are selected so that groups of words end with the same consonant. The teacher should read these
words with a stress on the terminal consonant.

tab, cab, dab, nab, tab

tad, cad, dad, had, lad, mad, pad, sad, wad, bed, fed, led, red, wed, bid, did, hid, lid, rod, cod,
nod, pod, bud, dud, mud

bag, gag, hag, lag, rag, tag, wag, beg, keg, leg, big, dig, fig, jig, pig, tig, wig, bog, dog, fog, hog,
bug, dug, hug, mug, rug, tug

dam, ham, jam, mam, ram, gem, hem, dim, him, bum, gum, hum, mum, rum, sum

ban, can, fan, man, pan, ran, tan, van, fen, den, hen, men, pen, ten, bin, din, fin, gin, pin, sin, tin,
win, ton, bun, fun, gun, nun, run, sun, wun

gap, lap, map, nap, rap, sap, tap, dip, hip, lip, nip. rip, sip, tip, cop, hop, lop, mop, top, cup, pup,
sup

bar, car, far, tar, war, her, fir, sir

gas, has, was (Very difficult voiced/unvoiced. Unusual sound for a)

bat, cat, fat. hat, mat, pat, rat, sat, vat

The teacher will know that the sounds and correspondences in lists a) and b) are by no means the
whole of the story. Although attention at this point is on consonants and not on vowels, choices
have had to be made among alternative pronunciations, for example the g sound might be
treated only as hard at this stage.

The sound that corresponds to a letter in its initial position is actually often different from the
corresponding sound in terminal position. As practised spellers, adults ignore these differences or
take them in their stride. What the child has to learn is that two sounds that are actually not
identical are nevertheless treated as though they are.

Departures from the one-to-one principle

Frequently found correspondences between sounds and letters are the staple of the Wordcards,
especially the earlier ones. The child may by the use of intelligence entertain the notion that
spelling works on the principle of one letter, one sound and its reciprocal, one sound, one
letter. He is right, but only to a degree. In other words, whilst his theory was perhaps more valid
for the historical beginnings of written English (allowing for the fact that spelling was not then
standardised and that different people could entertain rather different lettter-sound relationships),
it will not prove sound with todays complicated spellings. Indeed, too slavish adherence to the
rule will result in many spellings being plausible but wrong. The teacher needs to build gradual
stepping stones away from this principle, even though she may have exploited it for a time.
For the child, being able to act in the knowledge that it is a principle that needs considerable
amendment is a major step in spelling development. Departures from one-to-one correspondence
are so many and so varied that it is not easy to tackle them certainly not at all at once.

Vowels and their correspondences to letters are much more varied than those of consonants. This
is a reason why we decided to begin with consonants. However, decisions such as this are really
matters for the teacher who may decide to deal with such correspondences in a different order.
An admitted difficulty in all this is that in the childs reading he will certainly be coming across
instances of consonants and many more of vowels where the one-to-one principle is not working.
The underlying general principle, though, is that it is best to treat spelling in relation to writing,
taking the childs felt needs into account, and not in relation to reading.

The usual procedure in this book is to move from letter to sound, mainly for the sake of ordering
examples. Work on the sounds and how they are represented by letters is implied but it is this
relationship that is the really important one. Advanced work, dealing for instance with all the
different ways we have of representing the vowel sound corresponding to ee, is a matter for
the sophisticated stage.

The modification of the one-to-one principle with consonants happens in a number of different
ways- elision and the substitution of one sound for another are two that we shall deal with later
because they also belong at a more sophisticated level. Two that concern us now are simple
alternatives, for example the so-called hard and soft g or c and consonantal digraphs where
two letters are used to correspond to one sound. Clusters, when two or three consonants follow in
succession, are also best treated as modifications, though perhaps more strictly they are not.
Also, certain consonants may be voiced or unvoiced. In these cases the same letter may
correspond to both versions, but in addition one of them may correspond to a different letter
altogether. S and z are instances of this, whereas the sounds corresponding to the same letter,
d, may be voiced or unvoiced. We shall encounter a further problem when consonant letters
are doubled. We shall also meet the problem of so-called silent letters like the k in knife
and the g in gnat and gnu.

In all of this we should remember that we are dealing with phonemes and that these are the
constituent sounds as determined by adult linguists. They are regarded as minimal significant
units of sound and so they are. But this significance is seen from above, so to speak. The
linguist has a birds eye view and can see better than the tyro what the patterns of usefulness are.
At the childs end of the transaction he has to deal with what his elders have decreed and this
according to canons of usefulness and significance of which he is very likely unaware.

We noted earlier that if we take as an example a word such as fizz we can hear a sound that
comes after the sibilant and sounds a little like a much modified er. Perhaps that does overstate
it, but there is something at the end that does not seem to belong to the pure sound that might
be associated with the letter z. The problem for the child is how to account for this sound.
Somehow he has to learn that the sound he is trying to account for actually corresponds in this
instance to the doubled letter z. The same sort of thing applies to many consonants when they
are in terminal position at the end of a word. Some children must find this bewildering. For them
it constitutes a serious inroad on the one sound, one letter principle.

On the other hand many children do not encounter this as a difficulty. They accept that complex
sound as being, if effect, more simple than it is and go on to find a correspondence, a written
cosonant, for the whole.

In all of this work the teacher may find that these difficulties come because the written language
does not map exactly and simply on to the spoken language. Short of reforming our spelling
system there is nothing that can be done to alter this. We all have to cope with it.

(c) Hard and soft consonants

We need to remember that the terminology used by adults hard and soft may be unknown
to children and they may find it confusing. In fact adults themselves often lack clarity. They
ought to begin by understanding that the term consonant applies first to certain sounds and then
to the vast majority of the letters of the alphabet. Which of these is hard or soft? Clearly
these descriptions apply to the sounds of consonants. Their correspondence to letters is another
matter. The business may be further confused if we ask children What does this letter say?

If we think about the sound usually corresponding to the letter j as in jam, we find that there
is in fact more than one correspondence to it. The letter j is one, but the letter g in certain
cases is another. Thus we spell gem and yet we know that the more frequent sound
corresponding to the letter g is hard as in get.

The letter c presents us with another instance of the so-called hard or soft distinction. In
words such as can, car, court and many others it is pronounced in the same way as the
sound corresponding to letter k. But in other words it may correspond to a sound similar to the
one that corresponds to s in sit. Thus we have ice, and nice, century and so on.

At the present we shall be dealing with some examples of the first kind. One of the features of
such rules in English spelling is that they are not always fully correct and comprehensive. Very
often we find that there are conflicts between different kinds of regularities which make the
statement of cast-iron rules difficult. There are often, that is, exceptions which may in fact be
obeying a different rule.

(d) Consonantal digraphs

The digraphs in question are ch (which itself corresponds to three different sounds those in
church and chassis and that in chiropodist, gh which corresponds to different sounds and
may correspond to part of a cluster of letters as in laugh, kn which demonstrates a Germanic
origin and corresponds to a straight initial n sound as in no,mn which is found in some
words of Greek origin and again corresponds to n as in no, ph which corresponds to a
sound similar to that to which f corresponds in foot, qu which is pronounced much as we
might expect q on its own to be pronounced, sh as in shall, th which corresponds to two
sounds as in the and in thin, wh which corresponds to two sounds in some English
regional variants- similar to the w in will but also with a less widespread fashion of putting
an aspirate before the w sound itself.

(e) Consonantal clusters

Clusters are two or more consonants pronounced in quick succession. Sometimes one finds
accounts that take a cluster to have a minimum of three letters when written. For our purposes it
makes little difference. Until fluency in spelling is reached the strategy will be to give ample
opportunity for visual learning but also to use spelling pronunciation to isolate and identify the
sounds of the word. Clusters can be found at the beginning or at the end of words and sometimes
in the middle. By their nature they tend to be found in longer syllables and thus are not often
found in three-letter words.

Again, it is best to concentrate on a strategy that deals with initial correspondences first. There
are good reasons for this, the principal one being that there is evidence that when a child pays
attention to a word he usually begins with its initial sound.

Initial Consonant clusters: two letters beginning what we might call short clusters:

bl black, blue, blast;

br brat, brim, brand;

cl clad, clang, class, clasp, clay clear, click, clip, clock, cloth, clue;

dr drag, drake, draw, dream, dress, drill, drink, drop, drum;

fl flag, flake, flap, flash, flee, flesh, flew, flex, fling, flint. flip,
flock, flop, flume flush;

fr frame, freak, free, fresh, fried, friend, frill, frock, frog, front, frost,
fry;

gl glass, gleam, glen, glide, glint, globe, glow, glum;

gr grab, grain, grand, grass, green, grip, grill, grim, grin, grit, groan,
ground, grow, grub;

kn knave, knee, knit, knickers, knife, knock,knob;

kr krill, krypton;

mn mnemonic;

pl place, plan, plane, plank, plant, plate, play, plenty, plod, pluck,
plug;
pr pram, prance, press, present, pretty, prim, prince, problem, prod,
proof, prowl;

sc scamp, scatter;

sk skate, ski, skid, skim skip;

sl slow, slab, slam, slant, slap, sled, sleeve, slip, slog, slot,slum;

sm smack, smart, smash, smell,smith, smoke, smooth;

sn snap, snail, sneeze, sniff, snob, snooze, snow, snug;

sp spade, spell, spice, spill, spin, spire, spit, spot, sprat;

st stab, stable, stack, stage, stand, stare, star, steep, stem;

step, stick, still, stilt, sting, stock, stone, stop, stork, stud, stuff, stump,
stun, stunt, sty;

sw swag, swam, swan, sweet, swell, swift, swim, swing, swung;

tr track, trail, train, tram, tramp, trap, tread, tree, trick, trim, trip,
troll, troop, truck, true, trust try;

tw twelve, twang, twig, twist;

wr wr has much in common with kn in its functions. There is what is often called a
silent letter, though this is a mistaken view of what letters are and do. As with kn, the
combination is best treated as a digraph in effect as a single letter.

Initial consonant clusters three letters

It is worth noting that there are very few of these particularly if we exclude those with silent
letters and digraphs:

scr scrap, scrape, scratch, scrawl. scream, screw, scrub, scrum;

str strain, strap, strange, straw, street, stretch, string.

Some others will be dealt with as prefixes.

Non-initial consonant clusters two letters

Note that as clues to spelling these are probably less important than initial sounds and their
correspondences. Some of the most common will be dealt with as suffixes.
The list that follows is by no means exhaustive:

. . . mp lamp, tramp camp, damp, hemp, limp, lump. Also dimple, simple;

. . . nk drink, link, sink, think, wink. Also winkle;

. . . st cyst, list, fist, quest, best, chest, nest, pest, post, must.

It is a major feature of English that the written word may not map onto the spoken word. We
have seen some of the difficulties associated with consonant sounds and corresponding letters.
The problems associated with vowel sounds and letters are much greater. Among other matters,
they raise the possibility that some of the problems may be connected with the ways in which the
sounds are articulated.

Childrens strategies

Three spelling strategies

We must now imagine a child who wishes to write a word whose spelling he does not know but
which he has decided to work out for himself. Let us assume that he is at the one-letter, one-
sound level of understanding and that he has established this on the basis of the examples he has
met. He then has to decide what each sound is and find a corresponding letter. Let us further
assume that he is able to segment words with reasonable skill in other words that years of
experience, playing and training have paid off in this respect. What is the child to do if he wants
a word that he has never spelled before? Here we have to admire the intellectual ingenuity of
children in such a position. They do the sensible thing and use what knowledge they do have and
they remember what has worked before. Their past experience is grist to this mill. It is therefore
just a little sad that their endeavours are deemed a failure if they do not render the approved and
correct adult spelling. If there is a mistake here, it is not a spelling mistake. It is a mistake on the
part of the teacher if she should regard this simply as no more than an error. The childs efforts
need to be received with sympathy in much the same way as his drawings and paintings would
be. At this stage strict criteria of right and wrong are out of place in most contexts.

It is possible to discern three strategies that are commonly used by children. One that he is likely
to try and which he may use for years is the letter name strategy. Some of the time it works
and results in spellings that are correct by adult standards. Often it wont. Thus with a word such
as hate it works for the first vowel letter but not for the second. When the child is ready we
shall want him to be aware of different sets of possible correspondences. Throughout, it is
important that the teacher is alert to what is going on in the childs mind and understands what is
behind many errors.

(1) Not all children use the letter name strategy, though probably most do to some degree and for
some time.

(2) The strategy is used for puzzling out what the spelling might be. It is not used when the
spelling is automatic.
(3) The letter naming might be done in one or both of two ways, each influenced by previous
learning. Thus it might be either the alphabetic name or the phonic name that the child uses. If
the child has been taught the phonic name he is very likely also to have been told This is what
this letter says which actually leaves two kinds of shortfall. First, if he tries to incorporate the
phonic name he will find that it does not always work. Second, the letter never says anything at
all, though it may correspond to something. Sometimes the strategy may work successfully in
only a minority of examples.

There is a further difficulty with the phonic name, one that we have already mentioned. If it is
the name of a consonant, it will be difficult to give this phonic name without the addition of a
vocalic element usually the so-called neutral vowel, schwa. If we say something like buh or
ber for the letter b we shall find that we are offering a sound to which the letter b never
corresponds in a real word. This can be a source of great difficulty for the child. (It affects
reading also when done through these phonic names.)

A second strategy is the near-neighbour strategy. Sounds that are articulated closely together,
particularly in terms of the openness of the mouth and the positions of the tongue and lips are
often confused. This applies to vowels as well as consonants. When we understand that this
strategy is being used we find that the apparently inexplicable appearance of letters in a version
of spelling that cannot possibly have been seen before becomes rational and understandable. The
articulation of spoken language involves the lips, the tongue and the openness or closedness of
the mouth. Mistakes are often the result of an articulation that uses these organs, particularly the
openness of the mouth in the case of vowel sounds, in a way that employs neighbouring
positions, rather than the approrppiate one. Vowel sounds are often strikingly similar to each
other. It is possible with a little exaggeration, and for demonstration purposes, to run through the
major ones in a continuum which shows the closeness of some to others. The point is that for a
child relying on articulation and finding a corresponding spelling for what he articulates, there is
plenty of room for error. By adult standards errors there may be, but they are not the result
of simple carelessness. (It is worth while to remember also that even more accomplished spellers
may revert to this strategy when under pressure and may make mistakes that are otherwise
inexplicable.)

Finally, a child may use what we can call a salient feature procedure. An example is the word
teacher which is sometimes rendered as teher. This is not a simple case of missing a letter
out. More is going on than that. The alphabetic name of the letter in question is aitch. It
contains the sound corresponding to ch in church, and to ch in teacher. So the child puts
down the letter h and thinks that he has accounted for the ch sound in teacher. Of course,
the child has taken what he considers to be the salient feature in a word.

These strategies show children actively grappling with the problems of spelling. The least we can
do for them is to offer understanding and sympathy and use our professional judgement to help
them to more mature ways. There is no short or easy way to correct them. The strategies are
not without merit. Sometimes they work. Typically, they are the products of an active mind
addressing spelling problems. Probably the best method is to outflank them by dealing with
sound-letter correspondences systematically, as we do with the Wordcards. At the same time we
should remember that a phonologically based approach is not the only one and that children
often learn through visual means and through analogies of different kinds. The lists of words we
have called Familiarisation Lists that are incorporated into the Wordcards provide a nucleus
for this gradual learning.

Vowels

The difficulties in the fit between the spoken consonantal sounds and the consonantal letters of
the alphabet are formidable enough, and may be disabling to any child who has not established a
sound conceptual basis on which to build further understandings. If there is confusion about
words or letters or about the alphabetic nature of our writing system, or even if there is the after-
effect of such confusion, the budding speller will lack confidence. Further difficulties may not
then be tackled but may be felt to be insuperable and their effects to be disabling. Compared with
consonants, vowels are much more difficult. It is even more important, then, that the difficulties
associated with them are tackled from a well-established base.

We have already introduced some discussion of the differences between consonant and vowel
sounds. Now we need to explore them further. They are more complex than might be thought.
Given this, does this complexity have any possible repercussions for the speller?

We noted that the basic difference between the sounds of vowels and consonants is in the ways
those sounds are produced by a speaker. What is crucial in the articulation of such sounds is the
flow of breath and whether it is free or stopped or otherwise partly obstructed. Differences are
also produced by the use or positioning of various parts within the mouth and throat, in particular
the larynx and the tongue.

If two sounds are near neighbours, both in the motor and oral sense and acoustically (that is they
sound more alike than do many other sounds), this is a possible cause of confusion and error in
spelling. One can easily be mistaken for another. Further, correspondences that are well-known
to the child may dominate other neighbours, resulting in the better-known being offered instead
of the lesser-known

For the moment we return to our vowels. And say again that it is an important theme of this book
that the written system does not can not map exactly on to the spoken system and that
progress in spelling amounts in large part to dealing with this fact. This is true of consonants and
even truer of vowels. We must remind ourselves that there are about 20 vowel sounds, depending
on accent, and five or six vowel letters, depending on whether we count letter y. One letter,
one sound is therefore impossibility. Not only can a sound correspond to more than one single
letter, one letter may correspond to more than one sound.

A further complication, rather more subtle, is the lack of purity in some sounds, by which we
mean that sometimes we are not dealing with a single sound, even though we may think we are.
This applies both to vowels and to consonants, especially when they are in terminal position. We
noted earlier that there is sometimes then a vowel element in the articulation of certain
consonants. Now, this may not matter. If a child considers that a letter corresponds to what is a
total sound and identifies that sound it may actually be a quick succession of sounds there
may be no further problem. But if a child is too analytical or does not have a clear notion of the
phonemes into which he tries to segmentise a word, it may cause him difficulties. He may then
feel that there is a sound in the word that he has not accounted for and for which he must find
another letter.

More vowels than consonants are complex in this way. They often begin as one sound and glide
towards another. Usually the latter sound is also a vowel but in some accents it may be a
consonant.

We noted that in English there are five (or six) vowel letters, depending on how we classify letter
y. his letter has two functions. First it replaces letter i in certain words. English convention
abhors both words ending in i and also those in ii. As a result we have my rather than mi
and fry rather that fri but also mystifying. It is worth noting that English wordsmufti
and semi that do end with letter i are words that have been taken over from a foreign or dead
language, The other function of letter y is to act as a semi-vowel (or semi-consonant) in initial
syllable places, as in yes and yet. This function as a semi-vowel actually illustrates a
characteristic of the language. It is that as far as articulation is concerned the distinction between
consonants and vowels is not absolute. Some consonants are pronounced like vowels but
function in syllables like consonants. Examples are the sounds corresponding to letters w as in
win and the liquid l and r and nasals m and n. Words such as little (the terminal
sounds) and chasm illustrate this. We can note that in the case of little and chasm there
might for some spellers be a problem of linearity. For the most part in English sounds are
articulated in the same order in which the letters (including digraphs) are written. The vowel
element does not destroy the linearity rule but it may complicate ones understanding of it.

The spelling of vowel sounds

In this work it is important to remind ourselves again of the direction in which spelling moves.
As usual, it is from sound to corresponding letter. In all, we shall have about twenty sounds to
account for. An alternative would be to move from a letter to the sounds it is said, to make.
Either way there is a difficulty of presentation. Showing the vowel letters is easy there are five
or six and they are well recognised. Indicating the vowel sounds is a much more difficult
business. There is a special alphabet, the International Phonetic Alphabet, which would cover all
these sounds and it resorts to newly made-up letter shapes as well as diacritical and other marks.
It works well but it has the disadvantage that one must take time to learn it before one can use it.
This is true whether we wish to transcribe speech into letters or letters into sounds. For this
reason I have not used this system. Instead, the reader will already have noted, I have tried a
method which is possibly more cumbersome but which does not need an initial outlay of time. It
is to appeal to the mature readers existing knowledge of the pronunciation of words. For
example, in referring to a certain vowel I draw attention to its existence as a sound in the word
sad and to another vowel sound as that in bed and so on.

It is traditional to begin consideration of vowels with the short vowels that are then said to be
a, e, i, o and u. Unfortunately, this obscures the difference between vowel letter and
vowel sound. It also betrays a misconception concerning the length of vowel sounds
sometimes called vowel quantity. In fact the measurable duration of vowel sounds depends on
various factors. First there is the position of the tongue. It is the case that in normal speech the
vowel sounds like those in the words tan (and calm, too) are longer than close vowels such
as those in tin (and also team). A key factor is the amount of breath expressed when
articulating a sound.

Another important inroad on the notion of rigid length comes when we consider the linguistic
environment in terms of the sounds that precede and follow a particular vowel sound. Sounds are
lengthened after some consonants and shortened after others. For example, the duration of the
vowel sound of move is longer than the vowel sound of boot. Another important element in
the articulation of sounds is stress. Here we are dealing with two kinds, the sort that comes
within single words in-word stress and the sort that comes as part of an intonation pattern
or tune, one involving several words, one or more of which is stressed in order to reveal an
attitude on the speakers part or to make a point of some kind. English spelling ignores stress as
such, by which I mean that there is no way of showing it in ordinary writing as is done in writing
music, for example.

In some varieties of English pronunciation the so-called short vowels may actually have a longer
duration than some long vowels. The vowel in bat may actually be longer than the so-called
long vowel sound in peep. Even when regional and other patterns of sounding are taken into
account, some of the differences in vowel sounds are to be explained mainly by the comparative
ease or difficulty of certain articulatory processes.

If a vowel sound has sufficient length as in balm and calm there is sufficient time for the
various speech organs to move into appropriate positions and to remain there for a sufficient time
before moving on to their next target. When this happens the vowel is described as tense. If the
speech organs have to move on as soon as they have reached a target vowel sound then that
sound is called lax. (To some extent in certain research, such as that of Charles Read, the terms
tense and lax are used to the exclusion of long and short.) As Gerald Knowles points
out, in extreme cases (for example in six) the articulatory organs may not reach the target at
all. Lax vowels have a tendency to move closer to the neutral vowel called schwa. Schwa sound
never occurs in a stressed position. In fact it is the opposite of a stressed vowel it is so
unstressed that it becomes neutral. The same sound, or a very similar range of sounds, occurs in
many words that have several different corresponding vowel letters.

The change in vowel sound because of environment means that a speller is not only dealing with
complicated sounds, he is dealing with a shifting pattern of sounds which, if he is to be
successful must eventually be accounted for in stable, not to say rigid, letter sequences. The
sounds may change but letters dont when there is standardised spelling.

This is one reason why the teacher should consider, particularly in the case of rote learning,
whether a child should be encouraged to use a special spelling pronunciation one which both
isolates the word in question and exaggerates and partially isolates the constituent sounds in
word or syllable, making the task of accounting for these easier than it would otherwise be.

I mention these matters principally to enlist sympathy for the learning child. There are immense
opportunities for defeat and discouragement unless they are handled sympathetically. Further,
these difficulties may not be readily apparent to parents or even to teachers. Competent spellers
have passed them by long ago and tend no longer to notice them, even though they may be
disabling to the budding speller.

With all these difficulties in mind we can proceed on a steady programme of familiarisation. The
first part will probably come through recourse to the lists in this book and the Wordcards and
through the many incidental opportunities the teacher grasps in order to bring certain spelling
phenomena to the attention of the child. We noted, after the individual status of consonants has
become reasonably familiar, that it is traditional to begin with the so-called short vowels
corresponding to the sounds in sad, bed, tin, top and bun.

Very soon the importance of a special spelling pronunciation shows itself. As long as we deal
with three-letter words, there are few special problems. In longer words with a stress pattern that
becomes more complicated the simple sound associated with these letters becomes more
difficult. There is the possibility of a descent into schwa. And it is a fact that all five vowel
letters may correspond to this sound.

Soon, dealing with schwa necessitates the direct possibility that more than one letter or
combination of letters may correspond to a sound. We also meet one apparently clear departure
from the linear principle, which is that in general sounds proceed in time in the same way and
order as letters along a line. We have already met some complications in digraphs but spelling
seems to become hierarchical rather than simply linear when we deal with the so-called magic
e. Combinations of vowel letters may correspond to individual sounds. Generally those
combinations are of adjacent letters. With the magic e the letters are separated by a consonant.
Thus we may have tap. The corresponding vowel sound seems to change when we add e at
the end of the word. (In reality the magic e is part of a split vowel digraph.) Later, there will be
further complications when we try to add suffixes such ing to words already ending with letter
e. We shall deal with them when we deal with affixes in general.

Words with the magic e

It is probably best to show pairs of words that differ from each other only because there is a final
e. Thus mat and mate. hat and hate, cot and cote, din and dine , run and
rune, and many others. Of course, we should remember that the magic e does not cause the
preceding letter to say something different, though the matter is often explained to children in
this way. On the whole it is better to stick to the idea of correspondence between letter and
sound. The magic e is best thought of as part of a combination of vowel letters which differs
from most other vowel letter combinations because its elements are separated in other words as
a separated digraph.

Some ea combinations

The combination ea actually corresponds to a number of vowel sounds.

Probably it is best to deal with words in which the combination corresponds to a similar sound to
that corresponding to ee. Thus we have sea, tea, beat, team. mean, lean, clean,
seam, bean and so on. Children can be asked to look out for more from their encounters with
print. They will have to be warned that the correspondence is not certain and that ea can
correspond to other vowel sounds as well. In fact such correspondences are plentiful. It may be
necessary also to show as a caution that other letters can correspond to the sound in question.

Grammar and spelling

Words and the background in grammar

What we attempt now is a brief overview of grammar in the sense that we hope to arrive at an
understanding of what grammar is rather than to give a full account of its many parts.

We can not put this too strongly: grammar is an inescapable component of all language at all
times. There is no language, not even a single word, that is grammar-free. Sometimes confusion
arises because, in talking about this component, we have to use terms that are technical and
specialised. Such terms are used in the description of that grammatical component. The trouble is
that this description is also called grammar. Thus we have the one term that relates to two
different, though connected things. The effects of the confusion that often ensues go beyond the
bounds of spelling. For instance, they permeate much of the debate on the advisability or
otherwise of teaching grammar, a debate spoiled by a regrettable lack of clarity.

Before we can go further it will be helpful to offer a conceptualisation of grammar that should
prove useful and not only in connection with spelling. If we agree that grammar let us call it
Grammar A is a necessary component of all language, and is there even if it is not
recognised as such by users of that language, we can call descriptions of that grammar
Grammar B.

It is clear that any two writers may describe that grammar differently. Sometimes it is this that
makes it hard for the beginner. He may come across differences in Grammar B. It is possible also
that these are not simply alternative descriptions of the same things but that the different authors
of Grammar B actually see different things in grammar or attribute different degrees of
significance to what is seen in common. Accordingly it is reasonable to think of Grammar B as
being potentially plural. There may be Grammars B. To cope with all this requires a level of
understanding more likely to be found in the advanced secondary years than in the primary
school.

The branches of grammar

To increase our own understanding of grammar we can first draw a distinction between syntax
and morphology, which traditionally are its two main branches. Syntax is described as the
relationships between words in a sentence. This is good enough for present purposes, though I
should prefer to say that it is between words in any text whether spoken or written, whether that
text includes a sentence or not. Also it is, in any case, a defect to cut off grammar at the level of
the sentence. Grammatical relations exist and can be described above the level of sentence, at
paragraph or story or even discourse level. These latter extensions do not, though, seem to have
consequences for spelling.
The other branch of grammar is morphology, which is grammar within words. Inflectional
changes are morphological, for instance. They are used to show plurality, tense and other
grammatical features. This really defines what has to be spelt.

There is another profitable way to regard grammar. This is as sets of systems and structures.
These structures are morphemes, words, phrases and clauses, sentences and structures above the
sentence. Systems include the ways in which grammar shows plurals, gender, tense, mood,
aspect, whether a word is subject or object and so on, including what may be in some languages
the most important grammatical system of all, word order regularities. Some of these systems are
more comprehensive than others. Others, like the inflectional means of showing grammatical
relationships through morphemes (often through alterations, that is, in word endings), changed
when English made its great decisive switch into syntactical systems, where it is the position of a
word in a text that is instrumental in showing its function. Whether we look from the point of
view of syntax and morphology or from that of structures and systems we are looking at the
same phenomena, just making a different kind of cut in order to elucidate.

A words role in these structures and systems may determine its morphological structure and
hence its spelling. Thus at a simple level, in the sentence He hit him the morphology of the
pronoun changes according to the words function. He is appropriate for one function and
him for another. In the same way She walks differs functionally from He walks or she
walked or she was walking. The grammatical function is intimately shown by its morphology
and this affects the spelling.

Morpheme preservation and the role of the visual in spelling

Writing is essentially a visual medium in the sense that it can never make or incorporate sounds.
But to say that it is visual does not dispose of the matter, for though vision is the primary sensory
modality that is employed that does not mean that it is uncomplicated, or that its links with
memory are not intricate or that memory itself is no more than a static store of visual
impressions.

Perception itself, including visual perception, is selective and interpretative, as we noted in a

previous chapter. Typically, it is treated as being towards the bottom end of a gradation of
cognitive skills. So it may be, but we are not dealing in the case of visual perception with a
simple lens or mirror that transmits or reflects mechanically and nothing more. It may not be too
far-fetched to think of visual perception as a process akin to movie making when, somewhere,
there is a director, selecting shots, tying what is seen to other phenomena, dealing with shapes
and significances from his previous experiences and putting all this into practice. Similar work is
done by all of us, usually below the level of consciousness, when we perceive. Still higher
cognitive processes such as forming concepts and relating them to other concepts may follow
and be based on this. Understandings such as those employed by the director have their analogy
in the previous basic learning that we have already described and which, we insist, is essential to
successful spelling development. We see patterns and regularities and we ascribe importances
very much according to what we have already learned. Some of this learning is deeply cognitive;
some is about language and about spelling; some of it is about the increasingly complex matter
of the correspondence of sounds to letters; some of it is about contingencies and what are called
transitional probabilities the likelihood that spelling is going to take one sequence of letters
rather than another; and some of it is directed to the learning of possible analogies (a process
itself depending on generalisation and always subject to the danger of over-generalisation).

Accordingly, when we say that writing is visual we are making a significant statement but one
that itself draws no attention to the mass of learning, visual and other, that is involved. The visual
is never merely visual; it involves a complexity. The implication is that spelling can never be
thought of as a simple visual process.

We said earlier that all letters are silent. The question of their making a sound never arises. This
repeated, we now want to consider a special case of the visual, one where the spelling does not
abandon entirely its conventional correspondences to sounds but takes the opportunity, so to
speak, of conveying information by exploiting the visual further than usual and in a particular
way.

What we are coming to is a matter of grammar and of the ways in which writing indicates a
particular grammatical component. Grammar has many uses. It is best seen by the teacher as a
resource intrinsic to language which vastly increases the scope of language and greatly
empowers those who have learned to use it. We have noted that the study of grammar is perhaps
best dealt with on the basis of two distinct classifications, the first into morphology and syntax
and the second the division of all grammar both morphology and syntax into structures and
systems. Morphology (sometimes called morphemics), it will be remembered, is grammar within
words whilst syntax is grammar between words.

Historically there are a number of ways of increasing the lexicon of a language. Among the most
obvious is borrowing from another language. English affords many examples, some of them so
completely naturalised that they no longer seem like borrowings. Another way is by the
invention of new words. Very often these have been based on Latin or Ancient Greek.
Television is based on both these languages. Science and technology abound with similarly-
made words. Another way and one that is very economical is by adding bits to existing words
from which the new words are then said to be derived. What is added to the existing word is one
or more morphemes. This is a grammatical addition the affixing of a grammatical particle
that also has repercussions for reference and meaning. Further, if the word is spoken, these
morphemes have to be realised as phonemes. If the word is written there is, of course, no
question of a phoneme being uttered.

Up to now we have taken as our guide the principle of one sound, one letter, and have followed
its complications. In doing so we have insisted that the visual may also play an important part in
the process of learning to spell. In the classes of instances that we now have in mind, the visual
asserts itself and in effect demands that we recognise the root morphemes to which other
morphemes have been added. Even though they may now correspond to different phonemes, the
original spelling is kept, so that the sound-letter correspondence is changed, but the visual system
recognises that there is a constancy about important parts of one word that are carried on to the
new but related word.
Let us go back to our example, the word nation. When the word is spoken letter a
corresponds to a sound like that of the vowel digraph in hate. When we add a morpheme to
make a new but related word national the original or root morpheme stays the same even
though the vowel letter now corresponds to the vowel sound in hat. There are thousands of
similar examples. There is morphemic constancy but phonemic change. The visual similarity of
the root must be a great help to the reader because it provides him with important information,
especially if he already knows the word and can pronounce it acceptably. However to the
speller it presents a potential difficulty.

English abounds in examples like this, so much so that during the sophisticated phase of spelling
the matter needs to be confronted directly and morpheme preservation firmly established in the
childs mind as an important principle of English spelling.

The important thing to remember and which children will have to understand eventually is that
English spelling tries sometimes to account for, or to correspond to, sounds and sometimes to
morphemes. English has this duality morphemes and phonemes existing together, sometimes
spelling is the servant of one, sometimes of the other. It can serve both within the same word and
often does so with words that are multi-syllabled.

More about affixes

One large class of morphemes deserves recurrent attention. Its members are affixes.

There are three kinds of affixes in English prefixes, infixes and suffixes. All are morphemes
that add to the meaning-potential of the word of which they are part. That is to say that the
morphemes are best thought of as bits of grammar which must be pronounced in spoken English
and spelled in written English. We shall return to this tropic in the chapter on Sophisticated
Spelling

Parts of speech or word classes

When we consider word classes, we must begin by rejecting the idea that the number of such
word classes is definite and fixed and always has been. In fact it has varied considerably from
time to time and still does. At the present time there is no universal agreement either about how
many word classes there are in English or, indeed, what they should be called.

The story began, I suppose, with Ancient Greece or perhaps earlier in India where there was a
thriving tradition of linguistic study for centuries before Christ, one which is still being
uncovered, usually with deep admiration, by present-day western scholars. The foundations of
modern word classes lie in the work of the Stoics and the Alexandrian linguists, all of whom
were Greek in culture. By Platos time there was a well-known division into two the noma and
the rhma, roughly the subject and the predicate. This was a division of the sentence as much as
it was a classification of the constituent words. This division has remained primary in
grammatical description and underlies analysis of the sentence and the classification of words in
all western analysis.
Within this constant framework there has been much change. What we must keep in the front of
our minds is that, essentially, though we use the word analysis, we are really dealing with
description. We can readily accept that the description of a scene, put into words may be very
different from the description reached by another observer. So it is with grammar.

This is why it is important to be clear what we mean by grammar and to bear in mind the two
major potential meanings of the word. We have said that there is Grammar A, a component of
language, consisting of systems like tense, number, mood and so on, and structures such as
morphemes, groups of words or phrases and sentences, and Grammar B, which is the descriptive
terms for these components. Thus when one learns a language one must learn the first but not
necessarily the second.

Inaccurate understandings are prevalent about parts of speech and are widespread among
English-speaking communities everywhere. First it is as well to note that the term parts of
speech is in process of being dropped in favour of word classes. This removes any suggestion
that these categories are exclusively concerned with the spoken language. What is wrong with
current teaching is that much of it leaves the student with the impression that membership of a
word class is fixed and that, indeed, it is an intrinsic property of the word to belong to such a
class. It is this impression that needs to be corrected.

In coming to an understanding of the role of grammar it is important to hold to certain truisms.

One is that wherever there is language there is also grammar. It is commensurate with language
because it is an indispensable part of it. That grammar exists irrespective of what anyone says
about it. But it is possible to say different things about it and to categorise its parts in different
ways so that more than one description of that grammar is possible. Now descriptions may vary
with the point of view of the observer, with his preconceptions, with the concepts that he brings
to bear on the matter and with his fashioning of his description for one practical purpose rather
than another. What suits one purpose may not be the best for another purpose.

Accordingly, we must expect to find not one description of grammar but many. They are to be
judged by such criteria as comprehensiveness, conciseness and suitability for the task in hand.
This is why there are so many rival descriptions of grammar on offer today. One snag that has
caused massive confusion is that both the components or aspects of language are called
grammar. Unfortunately, the same term is given to the description of those parts. So the word
grammar points in two directions towards a reality and towards the description of that reality.
Grammar in the first sense is quite stable, changing only over long periods of time. Grammar in
the second sense is represented contemporaneously by several different versions. Accordingly, it
should come as no surprise to find that an important part of grammatical description dealing with
the classification of words and their functions is not monolithic. It has changed throughout
history and there are several versions, all respectable from the scholarly point of view, on offer
today.

We noted that the Ancient Greeks came to a fundamental division of the sentence into noma
and rhma roughly our subject and predicate. Aristotle maintained this distinction but added a
third class of syntactic component the sndesmoi which was a class covering what later became
known as conjunctions (and possibly prepositions), the article and pronouns. He also defined the
rhma as having a time element.

Perhaps the most enduringly influential grammarian of all time in the west was Dionysius Thrax
whose work appeared about 100 years before Christ. His Tchne grammatik was regarded as
definitive of Greek and was translated into several languages early in the new millennium. Thrax
dealt with grammar in general and made the sentence and the word the two basic categories of
description. He then distinguished eight word classes. His description was later applied to Latin
with only one change because Latin has no article word (i.e. one which in English correspond s
to a or the. His description also had a very marked effect on other European languages
which distinguished eight or nine word classes simply by inheritance and not necessarily by
starting from observation. Thraxs classes were noun, participle, verb, conjunction, preposition,
article, pronoun, and adverb. The principal difference between his classification and that of the
earlier Stoics was that his had finer distinctions. With certain alterations some of them
temporary, this classification has been applied to English and has been preserved for so long that
it has become traditional. However, other classifications are possible and some have been made.
For example it would be feasible to make a major two-part division into noun and verb and to
treat everything else as either subclasses of these or as the fairly numerous sets that amplify,
extend or add to these two.

In order to understand this we must look at the criteria particularly at the status and value of the
criteria that have been traditionally used to allocate a word to its appropriate place in the word
classes.

When we look at the traditional identification of word classes we often find that there have been
conceptual or notional criteria. These have to do with what we might call the content of the word
in question. Thus on this reckoning a noun has been said to be the name of some person or thing
or place. But there are many words that are regarded also as nouns but which are not the names
of persons, things or places. So-called abstract nouns are examples. Happiness is hardly a thing.
Neither are actions such as a blow. In a similar vague way adjectives are said to qualify a noun.
Apart from the difficulty of deciding what qualify actually means it allows a range of words such
as the, and all.

A pronoun is said to be a word used instead of a noun. This seems adequate but we must
remember any difficulty that there might be in deciding whether a word is a noun in the first
place. In fact what are held to be pronouns can stand for more than single words they can stand
in place of whole phrases and longer stretches of language.

Verbs are sometimes said to be doing or telling words which is supremely vague for which
word could not in some way be thought to be a doing or telling word. As with so many
definitions, if you dont already know what it is, the definitions wont tell you.

Adverbs in the traditional view are said to modify or qualify verbs. In fact what are taken to be
adverbs do this job for more than verbs.
A preposition is a word placed before a noun to show the relationship in which that person place
or thing stands to another. Unfortunately they can also be used in other parts of the sentence.

Conjunctions are said to be joining words but in some ways so are other words in and on
among prepositions, for example. So the definition does not clearly delineate the class.

An interjection is a word thrown out to express a feeling. Oh!, Ow!, Good! and so on are
examples. On the whole, traditional definitions are good enough. It is also worth stressing that
interjections have a peripheral relationship to sentences. They do not always seem to be essential
t o its structure.

With a few exceptions, traditional definitions will not suffice. One cannot tell to what class a
word belongs simply by looking at it.

The apparent structure of a word, though it may give important clues, is not an infallible guide.
Neither is apparent meaning. The use to which a word is put in a sentence or other stretch of
language is a better guide. Both this, which is syntactic, and the inner structure of the word,
which is morphological, are grammatical functions.

The status of a dictionary that purports to list meanings needs to be questioned at some point and
closely examined when a pupil gets towards the end of compulsory schooling. Who says that the
words mean what the dictionary says. How do they know? Do words have meaning of that kind,
that is fixed and invariant or not? Where does meaning actually reside? In the word? In the
sentence or longer passage? In the author? In the reader or listener? And if the latter, does the
meaning differ from individual to individual?

The notion of regularity and contingency: educating the perceptions

Some approaches to spelling isolate words that are irregular. They desire that the speller
should somehow (i) know or recognise when a words spelling is not regular and (ii) then learn
its spelling as an exception. Sometimes they suggest that whilst regular words can be managed
from the spellers general phonological awareness and prowess, the irregular may need a
lexical, whole-word and probably visual approach.

There are problems here, though, principally those connected with the idea of regularity itself.
What regularity is as far as spelling is concerned has never been closely defined and because a
careful, discriminating definition seems to be required for practical purposes, the notion is
somewhat odd. Also, it is quite possible that in any case there may be more than one plausible
pattern of regularity. There may be two or more acting as potential alternatives to each other.
Other problems are connected with this such as the spelling of archaisms, which are especially
significant in the spelling of proper nouns, particularly those which name people and places.
Many of these, which may nowadays seem to be irregular or even bizarre, may well have been
regular at an earlier date.

Psychologists and psycholinguists investigating spelling ability often refer to

contingency,which in regard to spelling is the likelihood of a particular version of the
correspondence between sound and letter. Contingency has to do with frequency of occurrences
and with its recognition by budding spellers. Whilst this apparently serves the researchers needs,
for us it begs the question which is: how does a speller know whether a word, even if he sees it,
has a highly probable spelling? He must use his previously gained knowledge. What this
knowledge is and how it may be obtained are very interesting questions.

At this point I should like to put forward a picture which is fanciful but which, I hope, captures
something important. It is a picture of how learning takes place. I do not pretend that all learning
is like this but much of the most important, including learning language, seems to be.

It is as though a child, through encounters with what we can call data, in effect says to himself
Is that what its like? and Thats how it works. It is not that such statements pass his lips or
even that they are created and entertained in so many words in his mind. But the gist, the
substance, is true. In effect the child passes from an early state of awareness to more
sophisticated ways and levels of knowing. To change the metaphor, it is as though there is s
filtering mechanism which eventually allows various impressions through, whilst rejecting
others, to be worked on by the mind. Or, to change tack yet again, it is as though a child had a
sixth (or should it be a seventh?) sense, itself capable of development which allows him to assess
for significance, and eventually to generalise and perhaps to make exceptions to the
generalisation, without necessarily knowing consciously that these processes are taking place.
Whichever metaphor we use the notion fits with the lack of interest in certain matters exhibited
by all children. Very young infants are not much interested in grammatical niceties, for instance,
and certain mathematical concepts lie at an early stage outside their interests and thus are not
fully within their learning horizon. What is of interest and concern will change in character as the
child develops.

As far as the teacher is concerned, there are two main characteristics of this process to be borne
in mind. One is that there is a danger of premature closure: that the child will draw a final line
under what he has learned, including his estimate of its importance, together with its emotional
and attitudinal impact. The other is that the processes work differently, entertaining different
data, or treating kinds of data differently at different stages of development. These characteristics
mean that the teacher has a vital role to play, but it is one that is not always apparent. If we
accept these accounts of the learning process and try to tease out the consequences, these are:

(i) individual treatment and monitoring are vital; statistical investigations of groups and cohorts
have their place, but not here;

(ii) acceptance of the idea of stages of development and degrees of learning;

(iii) matching work to this often a matter of trial and error and of informed guessing, but one
that is driven by detailed knowledge of language and spelling and by intimate knowledge of the
child concerned;

(iv) safeguarding children and teachers against inappropriate measures, especially as regards
testing. Monitoring of progress must come through intimate knowledge of a particular child
which, strangers, for example, the writers of the National Curriculum, cannot take into account.
In spelling there are various sources that a child can draw on to help in his task: whole memories
of shapes, memory of salient letters, memory of syllables, the results of segmenting, into
syllables or phonemes or both. The proficient speller seems to be able to move from one source
to another, matching his mobilisation of this knowledge to the task in hand as he perceives it.

This process, though everyday, is truly remarkable because it often works below the level of
consciousness. Sometimes it results in not calling upon some sources, whilst utilising others.
Presumably, it involves the use of fallback strategies when, according to his monitoring, he
realises that something has gone wrong with a procedure or that it has resulted in a recognised
error.

Among the sources that the speller can draw upon is his knowledge of the likely spelling of a
word in the sense of what the plausible alternatives are, and which letters in which order are the
most likely to be correct. This amounts to recognition of what have been called high
contingency and low contingency spellings. Knowledge of these is gained only through
experience. The teacher can help crucially by feeding relevant experiences and by helping the
child to crystallise his experience. Hence the help suggested in the familiarisation lists on
Wordcards and elsewhere in the present approach. However such knowledge may be
accumulated, its use may again be either at or below the level of consciousness. Often, it seems
that we just know something, rather as we just know that there is air in the room we inhabit.
We use it, it is essential, but we do not necessarily reflect upon it and for much of the time we
are not even conscious of it.

This accounts fits well with, and takes a little further, what has been already said about three
important psychological processes about the ability to generalise, the phenomena of secure and
less secure learning, and about self-monitoring. They are part of the processes of educating
perceptions.