Why Johnny Can’t Spell
Why Johnny Can’t Spell
by Mark Pennington, MA Reading Specialist and author of Teaching Spelling and Vocabulary ©2002 Pennington Publishing
“Johnny could be a great writer, but his terrible spelling just gets in the way. He just can’t get down on paper what he wants to say. Johnny repeats the same spelling mistakes over and over in his writing, now matter how many times I red-mark them. I’ve had him write out a spelling word fifty times and still misspell that same word on his next assignment. It drives me crazy.”
Know a student like Johnny? Everyone does. Is there something neurologically mis-wired or does he have dyslexia? Probably not. Yet, year after year, Johnny lags further and further behind his classmates in his spelling proficiency.
Can we blame the English sound-spelling system? Only about half of our spellings exactly match their sounds. Or how about blaming the “whole language” instructional fad in which teachers threw out their spelling workbooks and the traditional weekly spelling test? Or how about blaming Dad or Mom? With more brain research, we may find a genetic predisposition to poor spelling.
It may be unfair, but society judges poor spellers quite harshly. Misspelling words on a job application won’t land Johnny a job. And “spell check” and dictionaries are not complete fixes. After all, you have to be able to recognize a correct spelling or know how to spell a word to use these resources. Frankly, we do a disservice to Johnny when we excuse his deficiency with a comment such as “Spelling doesn’t matter. Albert Einstein was a poor speller, too.” So what can we do that really works to improve