Historical Aspects

Accurate English spelling occurred when Gutenburg invented the printing press (Gutenburg 1439), as spelling was standardized because the printing press demanded that word spellings were consistent. Derivations of foreign words retained their spelling and did not exhibit different phonemes as pronunciation changed. Conspire and conspiracy retained the spelling of the root though pronunciation changed. English has many words with this phenomenon, which gives meaning constancy to the derivatives.

Spelling has an unusual place in the school curriculum. In the early days of the United States, spelling and orthography were subjects taught just as reading. Accurate spelling was considered a mark of an educated person. Spelling was taught with a linguistic approach for decades. As reading instruction became more phonetic, spelling maintained the linguistic approach. This was a wise decision, as language components of spelling are more linguistic than phonetic. Classes for spelling are vanishing from curriculums in the United States. Some school systems across the states do not teach formal spelling because of technological advances in computers and spell-checking algorithms. Adequate instruction is not available for students who need it. This led to many teachers who are poor spellers. Today, there appears to be a general professional bias that spelling is not that important, which is a detriment to the students of this country. The absence of spelling instruction causes a conundrum for students in special education as the DSM-V manual (Tobin & House 2016) requires Individual Educational Plans to provide for it. The federal mandate demands that special education teachers must devise goals for it. Poor spelling ability affects the quality of academic schoolwork across the upper grades. According to Moats et al. (2006), poor spellers use fewer words and have lower-quality compositions. Older methods of teaching spelling considered rote memorization to be the most expedient.

Research demonstrates that spelling is a complex linguistic ability. From the latter half of the twentieth century to the present, spelling has been recognized as a language ability connected to reading ability. Diagnosing a student with spelling deficiency is a finer diagnosis of reading problems than diagnosing reading errors. Spelling tells one exactly what the student knows about language constructions. Most remedial reading techniques consider a word mastered when it is reproduced accurately in writing.