Phonological factors in spelling development

What children see affects how they spell

The authors predicted that children who have experienced frequent visual confusion of text during their development because of unstable binocular control may be prevented from discovering the rules and patterns of English orthography. The authors compared the spelling errors made by children who had unstable binocular vision with those of children who had stable binocular vision and the same spelling ability. The subjects were drawn from a clinical population of children referred because of suspected reading difficulties; though they were of mixed abilities, they were generally poor spellers and readers. Children with unstable binocular control made spelling errors which were more phonologically plausible than those made by the control group with normal binocular vision.

The missing foundation in teacher education: Knowledge of the structure of spoken and written language

Reading research supports the necessity for directly teaching concepts about linguistic structure to beginning readers and to students with reading and spelling difficulties. In this study, experienced teachers of reading, language arts, and special education were tested to determine if they have the requisite awareness of language elements (e.g., phonemes, morphemes) and of how these elements are represented in writing (e.g., knowledge of sound-symbol correspondences). The results were surprisingly poor, indicating that even motivated and experienced teachers typically understand too little about spoken and written language structure to be able to provide sufficient instruction in these areas. The utility of language structure knowledge for instructional planning, for assessment of student progress, and for remediation of literacy problems is discussed.The teachers participating in the study subsequently took a course focusing on phonemic awareness training, spoken-written language relationships, and careful analysis of spelling and reading behavior in children. At the end of the course, the teachers judged this information to be essential for teaching and advised that it become a prerequisite for certification. Recommendations for requirements and content of teacher education programs are presented.