- Actively involve learners in selecting strategies and discuss existing
strategies they may use.
- Encourage learners to access a small pocket dictionary and teach
appropriate dictionary skills.
- Help learners to develop their own personal dictionaries of
commonly misspelled words.51 The words should be from different
types of writing assignments.
- Encourage learners not to try to learn all the words at once. Even if
an adult learns them all in one sitting, practice them a few at a time.
Find out what works best for learners; it may be one or two words or
as many as three or four. Encourage learners to go back and practice
the ones they have learned before, to increase retention.52
Findings indicate that most learners have insufficient spelling strategies.
Learners need to be taught various spelling strategies and when they should
be applied.
"Students with learning disabilities do not use appropriate strategies when
spelling words, so they need curricula which provides an intense, systematic
method for teaching specific spelling strategies." ... students with learning
disabilities who frequently experience problems with spelling, benefit from
programs that incorporate rule-based strategies that are intensive and skill-directed,
and provide specified correction and practice procedures" .53
Questions to help determine learners' existing spelling strategies
- When you spell words, what kind of things do you do to help you
spell correctly?
- If you are having trouble with a word, what do you do to try and
spell it correctly?
- How do you feel if you can't spell words when you are writing?
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