Teaching Spelling to English Language Learners

At last a comprehensive, knowledgeable book on spelling. Johanna Stirling has written a must-read book for ALL teachers. (Ignore the fact the subtitle says it's for teaching "English Language Learners." ) This is a well researched, invaluable book on the `Basic Skills', `Key Skills', `Functional Skills' of spelling.The first part of the book goes into detail about the various ways of learning spelling, and the challenges faced by learners. I love her detailed explanations of the five systems/ways of learning spelling - all are important and teachers should understand all of them:1. Etymological System (the history of English spelling). This is one of the most important ways to really learn and understand English spelling. It helps to know why English spelling is the way it is and why we have those `strange' letter patterns like -ough, -igh, wh-, kn- etc. Knowing the history of English spelling will help learners feel less frustrated and annoyed with spelling.2. Phonological System - the letter to sound (phonic) relationship. Johanna discusses how extremely complex relying on phonics is because English is only about 50% phonetically regular, she explains the importance of long and short vowels, and dissects hard c and g, and soft c and g, and silent e. (She rightly has serious doubts about primary teachers using just phonics to help spelling)3. Graphemic System is about seeing letter patterns, understanding word endings and knowing some spelling rules like plurals -f to -ves, -y to i4. Morphological System is about adding prefixes and suffixes to root words to change the meaning - uncomfortable, unhappy, dissatisfied etc.5. Lexical System - Johanna points out that this is a very interesting system. It's about words families with the same letter patterns and related meanings. It's about the visual link between words not the phonetic: two, twice, twelve, between.../ sign, signal, signify, signpost.../know, knowledge, knowledgeable...She uses technical linguistic terms (morpheme, grapheme, orthography etc) but it's a book for teachers and some of the terms should be familiar, if not there's a glossary at the front to help.The second part of the book looks at spelling strategies and memory tricks to help students learn and remember spellings, and then how to test spelling and correct spelling.The final part of the book has activities and resources. There are photocopiable games, quizzes, exercises for learners which I've used with my students and are very good. Each worksheet has an explanation about the aim of the exercise, materials needed and a quick step by step of how to teach the activity.It's not a book full of spelling rules but a brilliant one-stop reference guide on how to teach spelling, the background of spelling and how to celebrate spelling (and not moan about it!).Spelling can be learned and loved. And teachers must learn to understand and love it too so they can help and teach students properly. This book should be on all teaching training book lists.

I am a community development Peace Corps volunteer in Armenia. My training is in business, not as an English teacher. But the first challenge I faced when trying to help businesses and NGOs was a lack of written English skills. Most people could speak very well but writing and especially spelling was difficult. This book provided me with everything I needed to know to lead some English spelling classes. I have used the concepts and ideas provided in this book to teach adults in one-on-one lessons who already have very good spoken English skills. It has provided me with everything I've needed to do the job. I had searched high and low for a book that concentrated specifically on the spelling of the English language and Johanna Stirling delivered very well! Thank you!

Great book

At last a comprehensive, knowledgeable book on spelling. Johanna Stirling has written a must-read book for ALL teachers. (Ignore the fact the subtitle says it's for teaching "English Language Learners." ) This is a well researched, invaluable book on the `Basic Skills', `Key Skills', `Functional Skills' of spelling.The first part of the book goes into detail about the various ways of learning spelling, and the challenges faced by learners. I love her detailed explanations of the five systems/ways of learning spelling - all are important and teachers should understand all of them: 1. Etymological System (the history of English spelling). This is one of the most important ways to really learn and understand English spelling. It helps to know why English spelling is the way it is and why we have those `strange' letter patterns like -ough, -igh, wh-, kn- etc. Knowing the history of English spelling will help learners feel less frustrated and annoyed with spelling.2. Phonological System - the letter to sound (phonic) relationship. Johanna discusses how extremely complex relying on phonics is because English is only about 50% phonetically regular, she explains the importance of long and short vowels, and dissects hard c and g, and soft c and g, and silent e. (She rightly has serious doubts about primary teachers using just phonics to help spelling)3. Graphemic System is about seeing letter patterns, understanding word endings and knowing some spelling rules like plurals -f to -ves, -y to i4. Morphological System is about adding prefixes and suffixes to root words to change the meaning - uncomfortable, unhappy, dissatisfied etc.5. Lexical System - Johanna points out that this is a very interesting system. It's about words families with the same letter patterns and related meanings. It's about the visual link between words not the phonetic: two, twice, twelve, between.../ sign, signal, signify, signpost.../know, knowledge, knowledgeable...She uses technical linguistic terms (morpheme, grapheme, orthography etc) but it's a book for teachers and some of the terms should be familiar, if not there's a glossary at the front to help.The second part of the book looks at spelling strategies and memory tricks to help students learn and remember spellings, and then how to test spelling and correct spelling.The final part of the book has activities and resources. There are photocopiable games, quizzes, exercises for learners which I've used with my students and are very good. Each worksheet has an explanation about the aim of the exercise, materials needed and a quick step by step of how to teach the activity.It's not a book full of spelling rules but a brilliant one-stop reference guide on how to teach spelling, the background of spelling and how to celebrate spelling (and not moan about it!).Spelling can be learned and loved. And teachers must learn to understand and love it too so they can help and teach students properly. This book should be on all teaching training book lists.

This is a fantastic book with some really great ideas for activities to use with your learners. After grammar as the first request from most student if you ask them what they want or need to learn this is the second request as a learning need and can get a little monotonous with the ubiquitous set of common spellings and learning phonetics. The problem is keeping the interest up. This book should help with its breakdown of the spelling system which will put an extra dimension to explaining why we do something in English. The activities that I've used have been challenging for most levels and easily adaptable. I tried the word gym with a group and also one of my learner who is an Arab speaker and really has problem with vowels and the amount of word as we did it his idea and cognitive leaps could easily be seen. Unfortunately I did it as a fun activity on the last day after getting the book but can see with some more work he would improve.I'd recommend this book to most ESOL teachers although most of the activity require some literacy there is a wide range so should be able to find something even for low E1 learners.

Da muchas ideas sobre cómo profundizar en las clases de spelling, uso de mnemonics y la importancia de que los niños sean conscientes de ciertas particularidades en el inglés. Se lee con facilidad si te interesa mejorar en este campo.