-> The major cognitive changes necessary for spelling competency have
-> been accomplished.
-> * An understanding of the English spelling system and its basic
-> rules.
The one thing you do not adress in this post (does Mr. Gentry adress it
in his book?) is HOW does a teacher get a child to understand the
English spelling system and its rules? The teacher must have some ways
of presenting this information to the students.
In a traditional classroom, I believe the child is taught to read well
before "spelling" is expected. The child is probably only asked to spell
words that he has frequently encountered in his reading assignments. It
is therefore more reasonable to expect that the child spell such words
correctly, and the child wouldn't have the need to go through these
"developmental stages" of spelling that you describe previously. Since
the child is not exposed to so many incorrect versions of the word, I
wonder that the child doesn't have an easier time learning the word than
a child who goes through the "developmental stages" of spelling,
spelling the word incorrectly many times, before finally learning the
correct spelling.
I never heard of this spelling process as you describe it, before I
heard of Whole Language. It is the Whole Language philosophy that
necessitates such a spelling development, since the children are
expected to write long before they are fluent readers, and thus it is
very unlikely that such a child would have the necessary skills to spell
correctly at that point.
-> Few of us spell everything correctly. All of us resort at one time or
-> another to a dictionary for the spelling of a troublesome word. Most
-> of the words we write we were never directly taught. Many of them we
-> have occasion to write no more often than once every two or three
-> years, yet we still spell them correctly without hesitation.
All of this seems like another appeal to "reason" to justify why we
should tolerate so much incorrect spelling in students. Simply because I
occassionally make spelling errors doesn't justify to my mind that I
should tolerate years of incorrect spelling in young students as they
progress through some "stages" of spelling any more than your previous
implication that because I occassionally read a word incorrectly when
reading stories aloud to children, that they don't need to learn how to
read every word on the page.
-> Invented spelling is a thinking process. It may begin as early as
-> three or four years of age. First children learn to recognize some of
-> the letters of the alphabet and to name them by their names.
I will buy this. A child who has not been taught yet how to spell a
particular word, and wanting to represent such a word on paper, will
most likely resort to whatever rules he has internalized through his
exposure to written language in an attempt to approximate the spelling.
Even in traditional classrooms of a few decades ago, this occurred.
However, usually with words that were "exceptions" to phonetic spelling
rules. When kids are doing this routinely with words that conform to
phonetic spelling rules, I wonder that it wouldn't be more proficient to
give more direct instruction in spelling and phonetics.
Someone recently entered, as a criticism, a sentence like: "The fat cat
sat on the hat." While this seems like a contrived sentence that would
almost certainly never occur in everyday adult conversation, but rather
an invention of some reading program, I don't think we should be so
quick to criticise this type of sentence. It does do something good for
students that you won't find in "authentic literature": It groups
several words with a similar structure close to each other, so that a
child can more easily make a generalization about words that belong to
the _at class. A student exposed to many similar words of that type
would, I believe, have a lot easier time spelling words of that
structure. But Whole Language teachers all over the country would
probably find that to be some sort of artificial, drill-like situation.
-> Children move through developmental stages of invented spelling as
-> they move through developmental stages of speech.
Only because these kids are expected to write in a Whole Language
program before they have the necessary skills to be able to do so. In
and of itself, spelling is not a developmental process such as speech.
Were it so, then ALL persons who learn how to spell would have to
progress through such stages. But this doesn't necessarily happen. I
know that I and my siblings NEVER went through these type of spelling
stages. We were taught to read through Harcourt Brace's _Open Court_
reading program, which, while quite dull and drill like, gave me the
skills I needed to spell phonetically and correctly from the beginning.
To contrast, all children must go through the developmental stages of
acquiring language and learning to speak. I doubt you will be able to
find any examples of someone who has learned to speak from childhood,
who did not go through first the babbling stage, followed by single
phonemes (such as "da" and "wa-wa"...ok, two phonemes) to represents
words ("daddy" and "water"), followed by correct use of single words,
followed by stringing two words together to represent a sentence. ("Me
down" for "Put me Down" or "I want down"), followed by several words
together in a sentence form, followed by correct use of the syntax
(grammar). ALL persons acquire their native language in infancy/early
childhood through this process, because it is a developmental thing. But
not ALL persons learn to spell as Mr. Gentry describes, because spelling
need not be such a developmental process. I think this is what pokes the
biggest hole in Mr. Gentry's theory.
You did go to a lot of trouble to type up a lot of Mr. Gentry's ideas. I
appreciate that. Without asking too much more, I would be interested if
there is a Bibliography in his book, if you would list that. OTOH, if
there is no bibliography, I rest my case.
Sheila
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