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English 311,"Introduction to Linguistics"

Let’s Morph: A Spelling Program

For

Grades 3-6

Submitted by

Why teach students how to spell? Who needs spelling instruction? How is spelling most effectively taught? Various individuals in the field of education have posed these questions. With trends in teaching language arts constantly swinging between extremes (such as the debate between whole language approaches and skills mastery techniques), what is happening to the idea of explicitly teaching spelling skills to elementary students? Is it enough that students approximate the written language when tools such as "Spell Check" on Microsoft Word are becoming increasingly refined, or do students need to know the exact spelling of every word they wish to write?

Marlow Ediger, in his article "The Spelling Curriculum" (1979) claims that there are at least five reasons students need to know how to spell. The latter two focus on spelling as a "social courtesy in the communication process" and as a tool for children to "attack words intelligently." Spelling words correctly allows the reader to follow the text without second-guessing the writer: ideas are more freely communicated. Learning how to spell also aids the student in understanding the meaning of different words. There are even legal reasons for spelling words correctly. For instance, if a product label misspells the word "chocolate" legally the product does not need to contain any chocolate whatsoever. So we might add consumer awareness to our list of reasons why proper spelling is important.

Determining who needs to learn spelling and in what manner they should be taught is also debated. Phonemic awareness is used to help children learn to decode reading material. Currently it is one method being employed to teach young children how to spell, but is this the most effective method? Robert Dixon addresses three options for teaching spelling content (whole word, phonemic and morphemic) in his article "The Application of Sameness Analysis to Spelling" (1991). The whole word approach requires that the student memorize the correct spelling of every word the child will use in writing. However, this rote memorization is impractical according to Dixon because it relies on visually memorizing a vast number of words and the student is making no generalizations. Dixon also claims that there are serious problems using a phonological approach to spelling instruction: most misspellings are phonemically correct or plausible. Why, then, do instructors seem to insist on using phonemics to teach spelling? Dixon states that there is probably some confusion about decoding phonemics (reading) and encoding phonemics (spelling). There is simply not a two-way street. Finally, Dixon discusses using morphemes to teach spelling as being the most effective method.

Lilly Wong-Fillmore and Catherine Snow (2000) refer to the complexity of written English in their article "What Teachers Need to Know About Language." They note that while English generally retains the spelling of the morphological units, pronunciation changes. For instance, the word sign contains a silent "g" which seems unnecessary, but when the morpheme "sig" appears in other words, such as signature and significant, the "g" is pronounced. Morphological rules seem to play an important role in deciding how a word is spelled.

Dixon states that when spelling programs restrict their lessons to simple phonemic analysis that contain only encoding rules, the generalizations and rules that are produce are only useful in about half of the most frequently used 17,000 words students employ. A study conducted by Hanna, Hodges and Hanna (1971) used about 200 encoding rules to program a computer to spell, but the results showed that the computer spelled just fewer than half of the trial words correctly. In other words, if students rely on spelling rules that are generated from phonemic principles, a vast number of the words would be misspelled because the student is likely to over-generalize rules. Hanna’s study concluded by stating that the computer was not taught morphological or contextual rules, and had that been included there would probably have been a greater accuracy rate in the computer’s spelling rate.

Studies made by Biemiller and Slonim (2001) estimate that a child’s root word vocabulary will grow from about 3,100 words in Grade 1 to about 7,500 words by grade five. At about grade two, a child’s cognitive structures change dramatically so that the acquisition of vocabulary is notably accelerated. The average rate of word acquisition in this period is anywhere from two-to-four root words a day to seven or eight per day. Biemiller notes that the rest of a child’s vocabulary is coming from morphological extensions. If these morphological extensions were systematically taught, it would be conceivable that a child’s vocabulary could be extended considerably.

So what does "Let’s Morph Spelling Program" have to offer the classroom instructor? First, the curriculum is geared to teach children of all readiness levels. Classrooms have always contained students operating at various levels of ability. How does a spelling program bridge the gap? "Let’s Morph" allows the classroom teacher to teach to all academic levels simultaneously by providing a basic word list along with several extensions for each word on the list. Students are taught root words (on the basic word list), as well as morphologically complex words (on the extension list). Tomlinson (2000) states that differentiation in the classroom consists of the teacher’s efforts to respond to variance among the learners in the classroom. Using one spelling tool to meet the needs of all the students would help the teacher fulfill this mandate. The teacher provides "tiered" activities as a response to the various needs in the classroom. Likewise, "Let’s Morph Spelling Program" provides opportunities for children to receive instruction that is geared to individual ability levels. Morphemes are taught in a regular scope and sequence and become more complex as the students mature. Students who struggle with basic spelling skills are exposed to words that share the same basic root or morpheme. Although the student may only be responsible for the basic spelling word (as determined by a pre-test), all students are exposed to the morphemic rules of encoding words.

In conclusion, studies support the idea that not only is spelling a useful and viable curricular component in the classroom, the most useful method of teaching spelling is to expose children to morphemes using root words and extensions. The purpose of creating the "Let’s Morph Spelling Program" is to integrate the ideas of several language arts experts into a cohesive program.

Comprehensive Spelling Program

User’s Manual

Elementary Grades: 3 – 6

This spelling program is designed as a tool for the classroom teacher. The program is based on R. Dixon’s Corrective Spelling Through Morphographs (1979) and the Poway Union School District Spelling Program. All of the spelling lists, as well as the lists of affixes, are my original work. I also created the scope and sequence of instruction.

This spelling program can be used to teach all levels of learners in the classroom. It is multi-dimensional in structure so that the teacher can use the list in order to teach the beginning speller as easily as the advanced student. The target age group for this program of teaching spelling through morphemes starts in third grade and continues through sixth-grade. However, using morphemes to teach spelling can be used at all higher levels of instruction.

Teachers use the word lists that have both base words and word extensions. The base word list is used as a spelling pre-test. Words on this list have been chosen that are purposely simple. Students who struggle with the pre-test are assigned the base list as their personal spelling words for the week. Those students who score high on the pre-test are then assigned words from the extended list. Some students who do reasonably well on the pre-test might be assigned the words they missed, as well as word extensions for the words they already know how to spell. In effect, the teacher uses one teaching tool in order to teach a diverse student population.

Over given intervals students will be given explicit lessons about morphemes. Students will begin in the third grade by learning about compound words (where two free morphemes are combined) and continue with simple inflectional morphemes (s-third person singular, ’s-possession, s-plural, ed-past tense, ed-past participle, er-comparative, est-superlative, ing-progressive) as well as -the suffixes ness, -less, and -ful and the prefixes re-, un-,and non- . Once these affixes are mastered, students will begin to use more complex morphemes in the following grades (both as affixes and base words) until they have at their command a toolbox of information that not only will help improve their ability to spell but help in decoding new, morphologically complex words.

There is room at the bottom of each list for students to explore words of their own that use the same morphemes being studied that week. Students might choose these words from various reading material used in the classroom.

There are further advantages of this program than simply learning to spell and decode words. For instance, students who do not go beyond the basic word lists for spelling purposes are at least exposed to the concept of how modern English is comprised of small parts of speech. Spelling words with seemingly unnecessary letters (such as the "g" in sign) become easier to remember when that word is associated with words like signature and significant where the "g" is pronounced. Students find that there are reasons for including the "g" even if it is a silent letter in one word.

un - not s - (plurality: i.e. books)

re - again s - (third person singular)

non- not ‘s - (possession)

ing - (progressive)

ed - (past participle)

er - (comparative)

est - (superlative)

ful - full of

less - without

ness - (the realization of…)