Thirty
years before Noah Webster issued his landmark dictionary, he attempted to
transform people into better spellers with his American Spelling Book
publication. The 1788 book became known
as the Blue-Back Speller. However Americans have always struggled to be strong
at spelling. John Fulford, MA, B. Ed.,
has a solution.
The
experienced English teacher has penned a terrific book, How to Teach English Spelling:
Including the Spelling Rules and 151 Spelling Lists.
“English spelling is complex, confusing, and often seems illogical, states the book’s
back cover. “Teaching English spelling
often seems a thankless task. No matter
what techniques the teacher or parent uses, the results are often
disappointing.”
So
how will this book crack the problems that plague Americans for centuries?
He
believes students need to know why a word is spelled the way it is and to know
the rules that govern how we spell words.
Of course some spelling needs to be memorized, but students need to know
how to break a word into syllables and pronounce it correctly.
Fulford
knows his stuff, having taught English and ESL for over 30 years in America and
abroad.
Kirkus Reviews says his book is “a highly effective guide for
teaching the convoluted spellings of English words.”
English certainly makes spelling challenging. Look at all of the exceptions to the
rules and things that seem weird, including the following:
Words
with a double “c” get pronounced differently.
There’s the heard “c” sound in account but the soft “c” sound in access.
Words
with silent letters, like the silent “e” in safe, use, and home. Many words start with a silent letter — whole, psychic,
knit, heir, gnat, and mnemonic.
Some
words use double consonants – bully, follow, dollar – and some don’t.
Some
words change a y to an i when the tense changes – cry to cried – or when we go
from singular to plural – baby to babies.
There
are five ways to pronounce “ought” – drought, dough, rough, bought, through.
We
have homophones to confuse us – here/hear; past/passed; sun/son; hour/our; and
know/no.
So
many letters make the same sound. For
instance, the “shun” sound comes from tion, sion, tian, sian and other letter
combos (ie: action, explosion, confession, magician).
Fulford
notes that spelling doesn’t get enough attention. He writes: “Despite the fact that English spelling is so
important, the subject gets very little attention. Most of the hard work of teaching spelling
is done in the lowest grades.” But he
notes many students graduate high school or college as bad spellers. Hopefully this book – and his earlier
publication, The Complete Guide to
English Spelling Rules will serve a great purpose.
Excerpt
“English
is now the most widely used language in the world. Somewhere between 500 million and a billion
people on every continent use it every day.
There must be some form of general agreement how words are spelled; otherwise,
there would be linguistic chaos. Over
time, this general agreement has become a series of spelling rules. For historic reasons, the English language
contains an extraordinary variety of words, many with strange letter
combinations that can produce a bewildering range of sounds. Yet almost all of those words are subject to
the spelling rules. There is a logical
pattern to the spelling of most English words.”
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