Supporting spelling: strategies for helping weaker spellers

For some students, English spelling can be a nightmare – especially if their own language uses a different writing system! Jo Stirling looks at some engaging and effective ways to make English spelling accessible to all learners. She explores how helping with spelling can be integrated into teaching with a coursebook, using examples from Unlock.

So how can we as teachers help weaker spellers?

Three ways this can be done are:

Understanding the problem
Helping with knowledge and understanding
Helping to build learning strategies

Research has explored the different characteristics between strong and weaker spellers. Strategies that strong spellers implement to help them to improve their spelling include breaking down the words, visually recognising that the spelling looks incorrect, and using sequencing probability to help spell the word. Weaker spellers tend to have weaker visual memory, so forget what the word should look like, and then spell the word as it sounds. They may also find it harder to relate to the sound of the word, not hearing parts of the word distinctly. So, what might learners of English find difficult?

Some of the difficulties that could be faced by learners of English are:

Direction
Lack of exposure
Different and/or fewer sounds
Confidence
Expectations

Not all coursebooks address these issues, so it is important to find exercises to do in class that will help.
Johanna considered various types of tasks that you can use during your lessons to improve your learners’ spelling. Some examples of these are below:

- Looking at lists of words that use the same sound can be a great way to get students familiar with the difference between how words are spelt and how they sound – recognising patterns will help improve their spelling.
- With more difficult words that are frequent in EAP, such as personally, try breaking the word up: person + al +ly.
- Spelling activities can be included in tasks where the focus is not foremost on spelling. You can, for instance, show students groups of words which have their origins in different languages – for instance ‘quiche’, ‘moustache’, and ‘brochure’ from French, or ‘psychologist’, ‘ache’, and ‘technology’ from Greek – and then ask them to match a different set of words to their origins – though students may not remember the precise origins of each word, this exercise will help to make them more aware of consistencies in spellings between different words from the same source.

Johanna also suggested addressing some common errors – such as the spelling of ‘one’ and ‘two’ – by showing how others words in the same family are spelt.