Who invented spelling

Invented Spellings can be UGLY if, you use invented spelling in place of teaching phonics and sight words. For example, if you have studied the — an family can , pan , ran , etc. FEN needs to be corrected to fan. I will say that on the other hand, if he has not studied the silent e on the end of words and spells PLAT for plate , he needs to be given praise for writing down all the sounds he heard in the word. More Spelling Resources: Read more about invented spelling as well as making your spelling instruction meaningful, hands-on, and developmentally appropriate in my ebook, Teaching Kids to Spell.

In fact, it's a natural part of developing spelling skills. Take a look at how to incorporate this simple fact of life into your next spelling lesson. Invented spelling, sometimes referred to as inventive spelling, is the practice of spelling unfamiliar words with an educated guess based on phonetic knowledge.

Examples of invented spelling include:. In , linguist Charles Read conducted a study of preschoolers who were beginning to relate letter names to the sounds of the alphabet. He discovered that students commonly "invented" spellings for words in their daily vocabulary by rearranging letters to fit their perception of the rules of the English language.

Read concluded , "One sees clearly that different children chose the same phonetically motivated spellings to a degree that can hardly be explained as resulting from random choice or the influence of adults. It's a developmental process that goes far beyond just exploring the relationships between the symbols used to illustrate speech sounds. Thus, the process of invented spelling can play an important role in leading young learners to develop a deep, phonetically-based understanding of how to spell many words.

Proponents argue that invented spelling does not interfere with a child's ability to spell correctly in later years. Invented spelling can be compared with the efforts a child makes when first learning to speak. To change or withdraw your consent choices for VerywellFamily.

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We and our partners process data to: Actively scan device characteristics for identification. I Accept Show Purposes. Rest assured that inventive spelling will not make a child a bad speller. Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! Sign Up. What are your concerns? Verywell Family uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles.

Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy. Related Articles. Invented spelling also helps children progress toward standard spelling. As they edit their writing and make a final draft, students get additional practice with the correct forms of words. In an article on the Natural Child Project , reading consultant Margaret Phinney compared the process of learning to spell and write to learning to speak.

She noted that parents would never forbid a child from speaking until he could pronounce each word perfectly. Instead parents encourage early speaking attempts and reinforce correct pronunciations. Phinney suggested that parents do the same with early writing — encourage children to write often and be accepting of their attempts.

Research studies show that children progress through five stages on their journey to correct English spelling. Remember that each child develops at her own rate and has had different experiences with reading and writing. The grade-level correspondences here are only meant to be a general guide, and your child might reach a particular stage sooner or later than indicated. The stages as described by researcher Dr. Richard Gentry are:. What it means: In this stage, children use letters and are beginning to understand that letters are the building blocks of words, but they show no understanding that letters stand for particular sounds.

Pre-communicative spellers may not know all of the letters and may not write top to bottom and left to right. What you might see in the classroom: Teachers will be helping students learn the alphabet, learn the connection between sounds and letters, understand that in English we read from top to bottom and left to right, and understand what a word is.

As the class reads, the teacher might pause to talk about particular words and the letters in them, and he might point to each word as they read it to reinforce that the words go from left to right and top to bottom. What it means: Children begin to understand that letters stand for particular sounds. What you might see in the classroom: Teachers will continue to emphasize the connections between letters and sounds, and will help children listen for all of the sounds they hear in a word.

They continue to expose children to the conventions of writing, including using capital letters, writing from left to right, and the differences between words and sentences. Many teachers use a daily shared writing activity to work on these concepts. For example, the class might write a morning message as a group, with the teacher modeling and talking about when to use capitals or periods, and how to listen for and write all the sounds in a word.

What it means: In the phonetic stage, students use a letter or group of letters to represent each sound they hear in the word. What you might see in the classroom: At the phonetic stage, students are ready to be introduced to word families, spelling patterns, phonics and word structures.

They might talk about a common spelling pattern and then look for examples of it in their reading. Then they might watch for other examples of that pattern in their reading: wish, dish, swish.