Don’t let your child rely on tech tools to spell

If you know where to look online, you’ll find disturbing rumors about American schoolchildren’s ability to spell.

A teacher-creator on TikTok who holds the handle @oopsdaaliya recently posted about her first graders’ alarming spelling test results. In a 10-item quiz on frequent words (think THE, with, has), most of his students struggled. Sometimes they wrote only one letter or left the blank space completely empty. The video has been viewed 1.3 million times.

“This is my reality,” she said in the video. “I really don’t know what to do.”

Elsewhere, in a subreddit for teachers, a parent recently shared a post titled: “5th grade children can’t spell, why?“. The question sparked dozens of passionate responses from current and retired educators. The spelling crisis in their classrooms, many of them said, could be traced to a theory known as “whole language,” which rejected scientific literacy, including teaching spelling, in favor of reading and comprehension strategies discredited since.

“[N]ow we have a generation of struggling students,” one commenter wrote.

While the anecdotes are disturbing, the data is hard to come by. There is no annual national spelling assessment and states generally do not explicitly test spelling, so it is difficult to know the extent of the problem.

Yet top literacy experts interviewed by Mashable agree that the language approach as a whole marked the beginning of depriving countless students of formal spelling instruction for decades. Other educational policies that have neglected the crucial role spelling plays in reading and writing have also not helped. Although many schools have returned to science-based approaches to literacy, particularly phonics, spelling often remains an afterthought.

These experts also issue a warning to parents and educators who view spelling as an obsolete skill, given the widespread availability of error-correcting technologies and digital products such as spell check, autocorrect, Google Docs, Grammarly, and ChatGPT. Relying on these tools without becoming a good speller can put students at a lifelong disadvantage, they say.

Indeed, learning to spell correctly from the beginning gives students the “underlying language knowledge” they need to read, write and communicate effectively, says Dr. Brennan Chandler, a professor at Georgia State University who studies literacy and dyslexia.

“Spelling has really been quietly eroding,” Chandler adds, “even as evidence mounts that spelling is really a driver of reading development and not an optional add-on.”

“Everyone really wants that.”

Parents who accept the role spelling plays in the literacy crisis shouldn’t blame themselves or teachers, Chandler says.

He teaches dyslexic students and conducts research in the classroom. Parents and teachers tell him they desperately want students to learn to spell correctly.

“That’s where I get frustrated, you know, because everyone really wants this, but we’re still neglecting it,” says Chandler, who is developing a spelling curriculum. (Chandler also serves on the advisory board of the literacy company Amplify.)

Parents feel ill-equipped to teach spelling at home for obvious reasons, like time and patience. There are also relatively few reliable home learning products, compared to those for subjects like maths and English.

Additionally, students and their parents may resist the hard work required to spell correctly, given the availability of error-correction technology. But these tools, Chandler says, “hide students’ struggles and further normalize the decline in explicit spelling instruction.”

Meanwhile, because literacy programs abandoned formal spelling instruction for nearly three decades, teachers stopped learning how to teach the subject. They also do not consistently have the resources they need for explicit spelling teaching.

Educators can do their best with word lists and weekly quizzes, but teaching is often hit or miss if they don’t have access to a formal spelling program, says Dr. J. Richard Gentry, an education researcher and co-author of Brain Words: How the Science of Reading Informs Teaching.

In the classroom, Gentry recommends 20 minutes of daily spelling instruction in the classroom. To be effective, the materials must cover specific spelling rules, phonetic patterns, and basic vocabulary appropriate for each grade level.

“This type of teaching using a curriculum leads to long-term mastery, as opposed to simply memorizing words in short-term memory for a test or relying on digital devices without teacher assistance,” Gentry says.

When to worry about your child’s spelling

Parents should start paying close attention to their child’s spelling in kindergarten. Towards the end of first grade, students are generally expected to develop more sophisticated spelling knowledge. At this stage, students may not be able to spell more complex words correctly, but they should be able to use logical syllable patterns accurately (think egul for eagle).

If they have difficulty with letter and phonic sound recognition in kindergarten, it is important to begin consolidating this foundational knowledge as soon as possible.

Consistently poor spelling may indicate that a child has dyslexia or another related learning problem. If it is masked by technology or limited teaching and testing in school, it may take years to uncover the root cause.

Gentry says parents should continue to monitor their child’s spelling skills — as well as the curriculum in that subject — throughout elementary school.

What children learn when learning to spell

Deanna Fogarty, vice president and head of reading science at Wilson Language Training, a literacy program company, says parents shouldn’t assume spelling isn’t being taught if their child hasn’t mastered the skill.

Instead, educators can focus on memorization without teaching spelling rules. Spelling may also be part of a student’s English curriculum, but not taught according to scientific principles.

Plus, in English, there are more than 1,100 ways to spell 44 sounds, Fogarty says. This is why memorization tactics alone fail students.

They should know, for example, that c represents /s/ when placed before e, i and y, and that c represents /k/ before the vowels a, o and u, among other cases. Knowing these rules helps students understand spelling in a way that memorization does not. (For a crash course in these conventions, Chandler recommends the slim book Discovering the Logic of English: A Common-Sense Approach to Reading, Spelling, and Literacy.)

Fogarty, who previously mentored children with dyslexia, says students often express relief when they realize that standardized rules govern the English language. They often feel that English spelling is too difficult and unpredictable to master.

Chandler says that as children feel more proficient at spelling, their motivation to improve increases. As they become proficient, Chandler says they can use tools like autocorrect and ChatGPT to strategically check or refine their work. But relying on them early on can prevent students from developing critical reading and writing skills.

He notes that the ability to write fluently and fluently, which requires precise spelling, may well influence the direction of their lives.

“When you teach students to write, we’re not just preparing them to pass an exam or maybe an essay,” Chander says. “We teach them to reason, to argue, to clarify their thoughts, to communicate their ideas, to defend themselves.”