Spelling Case Study

At their third tutorial session, Mike and his tutor, Frank, talked about Mike’s difficulties with spelling. Frank asked him how he went about learning to spell a word. At first, Mike wasn’t quite sure what Frank meant, but with a bit more discussion he said that he looked at the word and sometimes he wrote it. Frank suggested that if Mike had some new ways to learn words it might be easier for him to remember them. Mike was interested, but not convinced. Frank further suggested that they hold off on spelling for a few weeks until he had a chance to see more of Mike’s writing and could pinpoint problem areas. Relieved, Mike agreed.

For the next two weeks Frank kept a record of the types of errors that Mike made in spelling. He thought that Mike made errors in four major categories.

Category 1 – Sight Words

Category 2 – Phonic Words

Category 3 – Special Word Families

Category 4 – Suffixes

At the next session, Frank brought the list and explained to Mike the four categories of misspelled words:

• Sight Words – Words that are commonly used, but which often do not follow regular phonic patterns, e.g. eye, of.
• Phonic Words – Words that follow general rules about letters and sounds.
• Special Word Families – Small groups of words that have a similar, but uncommon pattern, e.g., rough, tough, enough.
• Suffixes – Words that follow rules about adding endings.

Frank and Mike agreed that the errors Mike made suggested that he knew some of the rules, but had difficulty knowing when they applied and when they didn’t. He also had difficulty remembering words that required memorization. For instance, he knew that was wasn’t spelled wuz, which was how it sounded, but he couldn’t recall which vowel was the correct one.