Phonetic Errors In Spelling

Spelling should not be seen as a separate subject but instead, as an integrated form of the language system to be learnt through use. It is important that an educator creates a literate environment which provides opportunities for learning, supports the learner, influences beliefs and attitudes and include ongoing assessment.

This report is conducted through the evidence obtained from workbooks / writing books of learners that form part of grade 1 2 and 3. For this report, I was given the opportunity to do research on phonetically inaccurate, phonetically accurate as well as phonologically driven “errors” in spelling.

Early spellings are grouped by a strong tendency to literal phonetic transcriptions. Here are some of Charles Read’s (1986)

Also, direct teaching from an early stage is quite important in order to assist learners to master spelling principles (Meeks, 2003). It is argued that an individual’s literacy level is often judged by others in terms of the ability to spell words accurately. Parker (1991) has remarked:

‘In our society, being a proficient speller is important. Good spelling is regarded as the mark of a “well-educated” person, and because of this it can affect a child’s future opportunities and choices in life (p.64)”.

The most common phonological driven errors often take place at the end of words. Children often spell phonetically and pay no attention to grammatical distinctions for example “kist” for “kissed”. I have also noticed that some children initially learn that past verb endings are spelt with a “ed”, they apply this liberally to irregular past verbs as well as the regular ones such as “sleped” for “slept”.

Children that have learned to use letter-sound correspondence realise that these are violated and the one such action is that some words which end in the /d/ or /t/ sound, end with an ‘ed’ spelling in their written form. It is evident that the children notice this but, at first they do not understand the grammatical significance of the ‘ed’ spelling. Therefore they attach it to non verbs as well as to past

This is because many of the children failed to show the endings of the words, for example, “my mum kist me goodnit”.

In the second grade, I have noticed that the children were using “ed” endings. This demonstrates that they use more than just for phonetic correspondence but failing to see grammatical basis. For example they write ‘soft’ as ‘sofed’ and ‘slept as ‘sleped’. “ I sleped in the tend yesterday”.

Lastly, most of the Grade 3’s showed accurate spelling, besides the weaker children. These weaker children were more or less on the same level as the Grade 2 class. For example, “ I made a pickture in art with chalk and paper.”

The evidence that i have gathered from the different grades supports the idea of phonetically accurate and inaccurate spelling. Firstly, it is important that children learn about letter-sound correspondence, where the learning depends greatly on their phonological awareness.

We also acknowledge that it takes children time to learn orthographies about grammatical basis of spelling patterns.

“My spelling is wobbly. It’s good spelling but it wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places” – A A Milne