As linguists and educators have pointed out, in contrast to languages such as Spanish whose words display far more "regular" sound-symbol relationships, English is highly variable. Look at what happens, for example, to the "ough" cluster as it appears in words such as rough, through, and thorough. This variability is certainly a significant complication.

But there is another major factor--and it is one that receives almost no attention. It has to do with visual processing issues in reading. For many years, visual processing dominated the discussion in reading. Indeed, problems in this realm were seen as the basis for dyslexia. Then that view was challenged, resulting in visual processing issues dropping off the radar screen. That's why, if you ask teachers today what their views are in this area, they will generally be stumped. The topic is simply not covered in their training.

As the fourth graders errors above indicated, It's clear that phonics, or sounding out, doesn't work in spelling. The vagaries of English mean that even a simple word like "come" could have several spellings (including com, cum, kum, kom, kome). To deal with this difficulty, rules--hundreds of rules-- are created. There are lots of rules for reading.(ironically the word "come" itself violates one of the most common reading rules--namely the "silent e" rule). The rules for spelling are even more numerous and more cumbersome--because they often involve the context, or placement, of the letters in the word in question. For example, children will be taught that at the start of a word, a "gh" has the "g" sound (as in "ghost") but at the end of a word, it has an "f" sound as in "enough." Except, of course, for the "exceptions" shown in the through and thorough examples above.

Aside from a rare group of children, memorization of hundreds of complex rules are not a path to spelling accuracy. Basically a person can spell (write) accurately only if he or she has the visual patterns of words solidly (and unconsciously) in their memory banks. Because no attention is paid to the visual processes involved and because all the attention goes to rule learning, the instruction typically does nothing to create this bank. It's long been known that spelling tests fail to handle the problem since they do little to achieve accurate spelling--even when the words are accurately written in the tests themselves. Nevertheless, they are a well-established, easy-to-implement technique and so they continue to dominate the scene.

Further, with the introduction of "invented spelling" (where children are encouraged to spell words in any way that seems "right" to them), guarantees were essentially put into place that for many, if not most, children, accurate spelling will not take place. Essentially, invented spelling means that during the first critical formative years of writing, no solid visual patterns are laid down. In their place is a set of "variable, inconsistent" patterns with no solid foundation. Once created, these "patterns" are difficult to dislodge.

That does not mean that the situation is hopeless. Because this issue comes up so frequently, in previous blogs such as http://blog.phonicsplusfive.com/2007/02/duz_ackurit_spelling_matir.html#more I offer exercises to establish accurate spelling. Of course, it is easier and more effective to put these practices in place when a child first starts to read. But, with a bit more diligence, they can also be used with children who are further along in the process.