The student, in other words, has been allowed to learn in his or her own mysterious way, presumably in the same way we all learned the grammar of our own native tongue as tiny infants. How we all achieved this is still an enigma. The idea that we learned complicated, convoluted rules (which none of the adults about us were able to enunciate) is only one hypothesis, and a wobbly one at that. However we managed it we can assume that it was by the most effective and economical method. Intuition tells us that seeking and learning rules is ‘learning about language rather than learning language’. Intuition is, surely, often right?

Our aim is, once again, confident autonomy. There are many other metalinguistic methods we all use in our own lives and which are particularly valuable in ABE. They include roots, relations and history; parts, wholes, morphemes and patterns; and WIDWIO. Making the metacognition of these clear enlightens, and enlightenment enables and empowers.

Roots, relations and history: A difficult spelling can be made easier by stripping it back to its roots and rebuilding it. For example, a student insisted on using the word ‘muddleheadedness’. This is impossible if left in one piece. It took him maybe fifteen minutes to strip it down to its four components but he learned the principle while doing this and was much faster and more confident with subsequent challenges. He also deliberately built the technique into his repertoire (metacognition in action). The technique can work the other way; the same student had problems with ‘design’ (that ‘g’). He came successfully at it by thinking his way to ‘designation’ and stripping that down again. Another student had a desire to write ‘manufacture’. The dictionary told us that manus was Latin for hand, hence manual and manuscript, and that factorium was Latin for oil press. After that the only problem was the ‘-ure’ ending which was learned using the letter pattern spelling card LCWC / SOS system as above with a four star list like ‘manufacture, picture, pleasure, measure & furniture’. Yet another student fell for the word ‘catastrophe’. This comes straight from the Greek katastrophe which at least explains the ‘ph’. A student who worked in the health service was enchanted to find that ‘hospital’ originates from Latin hospitalis which meant hospitable, warmly receiving guests. All this sort of exploration of words takes a little time, some particular expertise (you need to be au fait with the alphabet, for instance) and a good and etymological dictionary but pays off in motivating interest and understanding as well as increased respect and affection for the language.

Parts & wholes, morphemes and patterns: In short – rummaging around inside words. There are always easy bits and hard bits, the bits you already know (or could work out) and the odd or unknown bit(s). Metacognition helps here too. There is overlap with the immediately above, of course. As in ‘hospitalisation’ where you seek roots and also recognise morphemes (‘ise’ and ‘ation’), one of which is modified by application of the well known ‘drop the e’ procedure. Chuntering around in words like this can reduce the load on long term memory and working memory considerably. The more it is possible to lay aside as already understood, and the more it is possible to reduce what cannot be laid aside but must be addressed and learned, the less hectic and stressed the activity, the less dire and more enjoyable, and the more productive. Students learn to pace, select and prioritise if such technique is made overtly clear – made available as a metacognitive technique. For example, all you need to remember, probably, with ‘write’ and ‘writing’ is that ‘w’, while ‘system’ only really contains one problem, with it’s ‘y’ and 'doubt' is easy but for the 'b' which pops out at you in 'dubious'. Many ‘easy bits’ are morphemes which happen again and again – all those ‘-ed’s, ‘-ness’s and ‘-ing’s. Once some letter patterns are learned the number of easy bits to recognise will rise rapidly, especially in the early days of learning.

WIDWIO: or When In Doubt, Write It Out. This is just what many fluent literates do when doubtful about a spelling – we write it down and just look at it. If it looks right we consider that it probably is, if not, we seek and write down alternatives. This takes confidence in your ability to see wrong spellings and the ability to think of candidate and alternative candidate spellings (this ability itself very much affected by confidence). For these two reasons ABE students can take some time to become really confident with WIDWIO. They will be pleasantly surprised by how well they recognise spelling error by sight, but may find thinking up alternative spellings more difficult. This is such a powerful and common technique (and students need to know this) that it is worth persevering. WIDWIO delivers that little bit more confident autonomy.