Section 9 – Adult literacy; working with prisoners
Part C – Writing, typing and spelling
Spelling
Spelling is the biggest bugbear for the literacy strugglers. It’s comparatively easy to crack the reading problem, if you tackle it in the ways described above, but spelling is a different matter. Many strugglers are ‘word jumblers’ (see Section 6, Dyslexia, and the problem of spelling), and they cannot learn to spell by means of ‘look, cover, write, check' – the recommended method for teaching spelling in our schools. By and large, teachers don’t understand what is going on, and tend to blame the youngsters themselves for their poor spelling – one of the reasons they become so demoralized.
There are in fact two main ways of remembering the spellings of words: you can spell words the way they look, or the way they sound. Most of us use a combination of the two, but people who find it difficult to visualize words accurately have to rely on the ‘sound’ route to spelling to a much greater extent.
Sound Spelling – Step 1
Build up the sounds for words while you are writing them, and most regular words will be correctly spelled. (So students who do this, as they work through my phonic programme, are off to a flying start when it comes to spelling.)
Sound Spelling – Step 2
The question is – what shall we do about the ‘sneaks’ – written words that are not spelled the way they sound. They have silent letters, double letters, or letters that suddenly match unusual sounds (e.g. ‘c’ saying ‘s’ in ‘ceiling’, or ‘o’ making a short ‘i’ sound in ‘women’).
The answer is simple: you ‘re-say’ the words as they are spelt. You say silent letters (‘măd-ē’, ‘lam-b’); you say doubled letters twice (‘trot-ting’); and for letters making a different sound, you say the ordinary sound (‘wō-mĕn’).
I was working with an after school group of ‘strugglers’ and their parents, and became aware that one student was silently weeping, the tears were dripping off the end of his nose as he contemplated the hopeless spelling task in front of him. “Colin, what on earth is the matter?” “I’ll never be able to spell ‘decision’, Miss, never, never, never.” “Do you want to bet, Colin?” I said, writing quickly. “Look, here is the word ‘decision’ in four bits, just happens there are two letters in each bit, and this is how we’re going to re-say the bits: dee-kigh-sigh-on.” Colin looked at me scornfully. “Why won’t I spell it with a ‘k’ if I say it like that?” “Well of course you won’t, Colin, because you’re very sensible, and you know that ‘k’ can never go with an ‘s’ sound. You need to choose between a ‘c’ and an ‘s’. Try it if you don’t believe me. I’ll say each two-letter bit, and you spell it for me without looking, ‘dee’ first.” “D, e.” “That’s right, now ‘kigh’.” “C, i,” (grudgingly). “ ‘Sigh’.” “S, i.” “And ‘on’.” “O, n.” “Brilliant, now think of each bit, and spell the whole word. Keep the gaps between the bits.” “D, e; c, i; s, i; o, n.” “And again, Colin.” “D, e; c, i; s, i; o, n!” excitedly, as a look of triumph spread over his face, banishing the tears. “Miss, I’ve got it!” “Yes, Colin, and not only have you got it now, if I ask you to spell ‘decision’ tomorrow you will get it right – next week, next month, next year – all you have to do is say ‘dee-kigh-sigh-on’ to yourself, and you will be able to spell ‘decision’ whenever you want.”
Colin left the room that day several inches taller. He hadn’t learned how to spell just one word: he knew that he now had the ability to tackle any word, and make it stay put in his head.
Sound Spelling – Step 3
This strategy – breaking up the word into chunks, and repronouncing each chunk – copes with the vast majority of irregular words. But if in some cases it falls short (as in words like ‘through’, ‘night’, ‘daughter’), think of a mnemonic for the awkward bit.
Here are mnemonics for the four really tricky letter patterns:
ough: old uncles get heavy
ould: old uncles like doughnuts
igh: indians get hot
augh: all unicorns grow horns
There are some delicious mnemonics for whole words – e.g. ‘big elephants can’t always use small entrances / understand small elephants’ (because); never eat cheese, eat salmon sandwiches and remain young’ (necessary); ‘queens undress everywhere, so they’re in our news’ (question); or ‘little apes sit and gobble nuts energetically (lasagne). Keep these in reserve as you want students to use Step 2 whenever they can, but there is no reason why they shouldn’t use both strategies for the same word if they wish – e.g. ‘bee-cay-use’ for ‘because’, as well as the sentence about elephants.
The advantage of learning Sound Spelling in this way is that one of the three steps will work with any possible word. Use Step 1 or Step 2 to start off with, but when everything else fails, you can always think of a mnemonic.
I used to practise Step 3 with my secondary level strugglers by asking them to see how many words they could find containing each of the four letter-patterns listed above. One young man brought in a very respectable list for ‘o-u-l-d’, including the word ‘nould’. I always focus on the positive, so I congratulated him for his hard work, but then pointed out that ‘nould’ wasn’t a proper word. “Yes it is, Miss,” declared Nigel, “I found it in a dictionary.” Treading carefully, I asked him to bring in the dictionary and show me. “It’s a very heavy dictionary, Miss,” was his doubtful response, and I decided that was the last I would hear of that. However, the next day Nigel arrived in my lesson lugging his ‘very heavy dictionary’. It was over a hundred years old, Nigel (Nigel, a literacy struggler!) had bought it in a jumble sale with his own money – and there indeed, under ‘n’, was the word ‘nould’. It was an old fashioned negative form of ‘would’, used in expressions like ‘would you, nould you’ (compare our present-day ‘willy nilly’).
That rocked me back on my heels, but I shouldn’t really have been surprised. When we work with strugglers as fellow explorers in the ever fascinating, always amazing world of written language, there is no limit to what they can achieve. (And, more importantly, what they can expect to achieve.)
The Key to Sound Spelling
As explained in Section 6, on Dyslexia, these ‘saying-for-spelling’ versions of words form a series of spelling cues – much easier to learn than the actual spellings.
Here is a summary of the sound spelling approach. You could give a copy to all your students, and encourage them to keep referring to it until the three steps have become second nature, enabling them to decide on spelling cues for any difficult word:
THE KEY TO SOUND SPELLING
LOOK at the word and ask:
1. Does it tally? (Is it spelt the way it sounds?)
If YES - tally it while you write it.
If NO – go to Step 2.
* 2. Can you make it tally? (Chunk it and ‘re-say’
each chunk. E.g. Wed-nes-day.)
If YES – make it tally; tally it while you write it.
If NO – go to Step 3.
3. Think of a mnemonic.
E.g. ough – old uncles get heavy
ould – old uncles like doughnuts
igh – indians get hot
augh – all unicorns grow horns
Say the mnemonic to yourself while you write
the word. E.g. ‘n – indians get hot – t’
*For Step 2 – Identify the ‘sneaky bits’ in the word before you think
of cues. The THREE SNEAKS are:
SNEAK 1 – Silent letters – must be said (e.g. lat-e, lam-b)
SNEAK 2 – Double letters – say sound twice (e.g. trot-ting)
SNEAK 3 – Letters making a different sound – say ordinary sound
(e.g. wō-mĕn)
Writing and typing
It’s a good idea for all children to learn joined, cursive writing from the start (see Section 5, Learning to write) – but adults probably don’t have the time to be bothered with that. Just make sure they can write legibly in whatever form is most comfortable.
Typing skills are a different matter. Learning to type, using the proper fingers, is greatly beneficial for the literacy strugglers. As with cursive handwriting, it is learned by the feel, and therefore the fingers remember the spellings.
Typing is automatically a multi-sensory approach to spelling. The student says the cues while he types (saying and hearing), he sees the correct word on the screen, and he has the feeling of typing the right letters in the right order. So here is a way of training a roomful of typists, without having to resort to lengthy and meaningless drills (and even if you don’t type yourself...). Use computer keyboards, or keyboard diagrams (A4 size). The students can look at the keyboard all they want to, they must just make sure they always use the right fingers. (Later, they can move on to touch typing proper – typing without looking at the keyboard.) The approach described here ensures that they learn to operate the complete keyboard very rapidly.
Agree on the same names for the fingers – little finger, ring finger, middle finger, index (or pointing) finger.
“Look at the keyboard – how many rows of letters (not including the numbers) are there? Three – good. The middle row of letters is called the ‘home keys’, because it is where your fingers live. Place all your fingers on the home keys now, one finger on each key. The G and the H must be left empty – reminding your fingers to Go Home. Your index fingers live on the F and the J, and on a computer you will feel a little raised bar on those keys, letting you know your fingers are in the right places. Your thumbs do not live on any letters, their job is to operate the space bar.
"Beginning with the little finger of your left hand, type the letters a, s, d and f. Now your index (pointing) finger reaches across to type the g (you can move your whole hand), and returns to live on the F. Type the f again. Operate the space bar with one of your thumbs.
“The little finger of your right hand types the ; then type l, k and j. Your index finger reaches across to type the h (again, you should move your whole hand), and returns to the J key. Type j again. Operate the space bar, and press RETURN/ ENTER.
“Take your hands off the keyboard, and look at the whole keyboard again. In addition to the three rows of letters going across, you can also see them as ten columns slanting down from left to right, with three keys in each column. One of your fingers is responsible for typing the letters in each of the columns.
"Look at the QAZ column. Which finger do you think is responsible for that one? Yes, that’s right, the little finger of your left hand. Put your hands on the home keys. Now your whole hand moves up, type the q with your little finger, move your whole hand down and type the a, move your whole hand down and type the z. Move back to the a, and type it again. Press the space bar.
(Repeat for all the other columns, asking your students to begin a new line when they start the columns for the right hand.)
Their typing practice will now look like this:
asdfgf ;lkjhj
qaza wsxs edcd rfvf tgbg
p;/; ol.l ik,k ujmj yhnh
Your apprentices can learn this way of typing after only a few sessions. Then they can look at the keyboard while they type, but they must work out which finger is going to do the job, before typing any letter. Their task is to train their fingers properly, bearing in mind that their fingers will try to get away with murder, given half a chance. If the wrong finger types a letter, they must be firm, delete it, and type it again using the right one.
Practising spelling and typing
The best way forward is for your students to practise these new skills alongside each other. You want them to tackle their own spelling mistakes, think of cues, then type the words while they say the cues, using the proper fingers.
So screen the group using the following diagnostic dictation, taken from Margaret Peters’ Diagnostic and Remedial Spelling Manual, which covers a wide variety of spelling patterns. Reassure everyone, before they write out the passage, that spelling problems often go hand-in-hand with high intelligence and unusual gifts, and not to worry if they make several spelling mistakes:
Late one night my friend woke me, saying, “Would you enjoy a trial-run
in my new helicopter?”
I had scarcely scrambled into my track-suit before we were away. The
lights of the city glowed beneath, the stars above. I was beginning to
wonder about our destination when I caught sight of the spinning knife
edge and the surface of what must have been a type of flying saucer
whistling round us. We dodged skilfully to avoid an accident. To our relief,
the space-craft regained height, and we sank down to earth and the
comfortable bed I had never actually left.
Now you can teach a spelling struggler to use the Key to Sound Spelling, by thinking of and learning cues for words that he himself spelled incorrectly. This means individual tuition, but your students can easily work in pairs, and tutor each other. The idea is that the learner types out each misspelled word, correctly, three times, saying the cues while he types.
Enlarge the passage to A4, and copy onto coloured paper (pale yellow is a good choice), for the benefit of those with Irlen Syndrome (see Section 6, Dyslexia, and the problem of spelling –Coloured overlays). If you can use blue print or something similar, so much the better. The student refers to this original copy to find the correct spellings he needs.
The procedure for the tutor goes something like this: Help your pupil to find his first spelling mistake in his ‘working document’, and compare it with the version in the original. His initial task is to identify the letters he got right – you want to boost his self-confidence from the outset. Then suggest a reason for his own spelling. E.g. Suppose he has written ‘lat’ for ‘late’. You could say, “Well, the letters you’ve written are correct, and they are letters for all the sounds in the word. The only thing that needs adding is the silent ‘e’ at the end – you left that out because you couldn’t see it in your head, and you can’t hear it because it’s silent. But if you say ‘lăt-ē’, you’ll always remember to put the ‘e’ in, won’t you. ‘Go Home’,” [i.e. place your fingers on the home keys] “say ‘lat’ and type ‘lat’. Look at the keyboard all you want to, just make sure you use the right fingers. Now say ‘ē’ and type the ‘e’. Type a comma (to practise using commas), and type the word again. Repeat the cues after me just before you type each bit. Now type the word a third time, saying each cue yourself. Look back at the words already typed if you forget the cues.” (You are trying to make it quite impossible for him to get the word wrong.)
Another example: If he has written ‘nite’ for ‘night’, say, “Well, your spelling is so much more sensible than the original, isn’t it. That’s just the way a lot of people think the word should be spelled. Who would have expected ‘igh’ in the middle?! How about saying ‘indians get hot’ for that bit? Then the cues for ‘night’ will be ‘n-indians get hot-t’ – and you can use ‘indians get hot’ for any word with ‘igh’ in it.” He types the word three times, saying the cues as before.
Before going further, he should look at the word he has just typed, saying the cues (with gaps between the bits); then the word above it, and the one above that, until he has repeated cues for all the words he has typed in that session. Remind him to look at each word while he says the cues. Most people think they should be repeating the cues from memory, and look away; so explain that you want him to link the way the word looks on the screen with the cues he is saying.
The learner repeats the cues in this way every time he adds a new word. Then he has an excellent chance of remembering most of them, with a little further practice.
Spelling notebook
Don’t type the cues themselves, but after each session write each word learned in a spelling notebook, with the cues opposite the word. Review these cues at the beginning of the next session, again beginning at the bottom of the list. The learner looks at the words on the left hand side of the page, while he says the cues, but can glance over at the cues any time he needs to. Then ask him to repeat the cues from memory.
Typing each sentence
As soon as your pupil has learned all the words for a complete sentence, review them as described, and dictate the sentence for him to type. Tell him the punctuation, and show him how to include speech marks, etc. Just before he types each word learned, he repeats the cues, looking at the word on the screen if he needs to. You are not testing his memory, but giving him the experience of spelling the words correctly, and thinking of the cues while typing. The more he does this when working with you, the more likely he is to remember the relevant cues when he is writing independently. Work on the first sentence could look something like this:
late, late, late,
night, night, night,
friend, friend, friend,
woke, woke, woke,
would, would, would,
helicopter, helicopter, helicopter
Late one night my friend woke me, saying, “Would you enjoy a trial-run in my new helicopter?”
Carry on in this way (keeping the sessions fairly short), until the student has mastered all the words he got wrong. Then he types the entire passage from dictation, in the same way that he typed each sentence.
He might like to frame the printout, as he has every reason to feel proud of himself.
Encourage him to use the words learned, in his own writing. The more he practises, the more confident his spelling will become.
Suggested spelling cues for ‘Late one night’ dictation
Here is a list of spelling cues for the ‘Late one night’ dictation. These are suggestions only – a pupil might well think of alterations to make them easier for him to remember. (For example, Gareth rejected the cues ‘n/indians get hot/t’, in favour of ‘n-ignore-Gareth, hit Tony’; while Robbie found ‘s/car/c/ely’ too confusing for ‘scarcely’, and invented instead the brilliant mnemonic ‘small cars and racing cars eat large yoghurts’.)
late - lăt/ē (to underline the ‘e’s function. Steer your students away from ‘lā/tē’ for this reason, but ‘sō/mē’ would be appropriate for ‘some’)
night - n/indians get hot/t
friend - frī/end (Who’s your best friend? Well, don’t tell him, but you’re going to fri [fry] him, sizzle, sizzle, and sadly that will be the end of him.)
woke - wŏk/ē
would - w/old uncles like doughnuts
new - never eat weeds
helicopter - hē/lī/cop/ter
scarcely - s/car/c/ely, or a mnemonic like ‘small cars and racing cars eat large
yoghurts’
scrambled - sc/ram/blĕd
track - sound it out: tŭ, trŭ, tră, trăc, track
suit - sū/ĭt
before - B for E (boyfriend and girlfriend)
were - wer/ē, or just ‘no h’
beneath - Benjamin Edward Ath – (Ben E. Ath for short) – standing beneath a tree
stars - s/tar/s
above - ā/bŏv/ē
beginning - beg/in/ning, or begin/ning. (Don’t chunk a word any more than you have to.)
our - Oh you are (O/U/R) clever (in a whisper)
destination - des/tin/ā/tī/on. (If you don’t have a ‘tie on’, your destination is probably the Head’s
office.)
caught - c/all unicorns grow horns/t
sight - like ‘night’
spinning - spin/ning, like ‘beginning’
knife - k/nĭf/ē
surface - “You are” (to remind about the ‘u’) “Sur Face!” or surf/ace
type - Why type? (to remind about the ‘y’)
saucer - sā/ū/ker, or sound it out: sŭ, sau, sauk, sauce, saucer
skilfully - skil/ful/ly. Join skill and full, drop an ‘l’ from each. Add ‘ly’.
avoid - a/vō/id
accident - ac/kid/ent, or ac/kī/dent
relief - rē/lī/ēf
space - spak/ē
height - hē/indians get hot/t, or h/eight (if the student knows ‘eight’)
earth - ear/th
comfortable - cŏm/for/table
actually - ac/tu/al/ly
And so on. Incidentally, since the procedure is to say a doubled letter twice (spin-ning), you know when you have only one letter, because you say it only once.
Work on dictation – summary of procedure
1. Look at working document.
2. Find first spelling error.
3. Look at original document, find correct spelling.
4. Identify sneaks – THINK OF CUES for word.
5. Type word three times, with commas, say cues while
typing. Press ENTER.
6. Repeat for next spelling error.
7. REVIEW CUES FOR BOTH WORDS. LOOK AT WORDS.
8. Repeat for all errors in first sentence. Review all cues as each word is added.
9. Review all cues. Type sentence from dictation. Review cues for each word before typing.
The ACE Spelling Dictionary
When learning new spellings, the first essential is the word itself, correctly spelled, so your students need rapid access to these correct spellings.
This can pose something of a problem. The pupil might ask his teacher for a spelling, and the teacher might reply, “Look it up in a dictionary.” To which any spelling struggler’s response could well be, “How can I look it up in a dictionary if I don’t know how to spell it?”
He has a point! Look for the word ‘pneumonia’ in a conventional dictionary, and you will probably never find it, because you are looking under ‘N’.
The ACE (Aurally Coded English) Spelling Dictionary, published by LDA, is very differently organized, and you really can track down almost any word, by sounding it out. So you will find the word ‘pneumonia’ under ‘N’ – but beginning with a ‘p’! I now maintain that you always go to the ACE Dictionary when you are looking for a spelling; you use an ordinary dictionary when you already know the spelling, and want to check on the meaning. Piece of cake!
As soon as you have found a word in the ACE Dictionary, think of spelling cues, and write it in your spelling notebook, so you never have to look it up again. E.g. The cues for ‘pneumonia’ could be ‘p-nē-u-monia’ (saying the silent letters).
(Incidentally, it’s a good idea to disable the auto-correct function on your students’ computers, when they are typing their own work. This encourages them to find and learn correct spellings, as they go along...)
Conclusions
Throughout your work with teenagers and adults, you have been focusing on treating them as equals, giving them the ownership of their own learning. The gains of this approach, both to your students, and the society in which they live and work, will be incalculable.