Table Of ContentUnderstanding and Teaching
English Spelling
Concise and engaging, this text provides pre-service and practicing English
language teachers with the knowledge they need to successfully teach the
spelling of English. Offering context and explanation for the English spell-
ing system as well as uniquely addressing specific problems in learning the
spelling of English words, this book empowers readers with strategies for
coping with these problems. Divided into six accessible sections, Brown
covers the history of English spelling, the influence of technology on spell-
ing, the role of punctuation, the features of present-day English spelling,
teaching strategies for coping with difficult spelling, and the future of spell-
ing and literacy. The short, digestible chapters include practical learning
objectives and end-of-chapter exercises to help teachers understand and
explain English spelling concepts.
Adam Brown is Director of Research at Auckland Institute of Studies,
New Zealand.
ESL & Applied Linguistics Professional Series
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Refective Practice in English Language Teaching
Research-Based Principles and Practices
Steve Mann, Steve Walsh
Teacher Training and Professional Development of Chinese
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Changing From Fish to Dragon
Faridah Pawan, Wenfang Fan, Pei Miao
Research on Refective Practice in TESOL
Thomas S.C. Farrell
Teaching English to Second Language Learners in
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Reading, Writing, Listening, Speaking
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Edited by Todd Ruecker, Deborah Crusan
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Edited by Xiaoye You
Understanding and Teaching English Spelling
A Strategic Guide
Adam Brown
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
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Understanding and Teaching
English Spelling
A Strategic Guide
Adam Brown
First published 2019
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2019 Taylor & Francis
The right of Adam Brown to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
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retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-1-138-08266-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-08267-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-11238-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
Contents
Preface viii
SECTION 1
Background 1
1 Introduction 3
2 Types of Spelling System 13
3 Spelling, Writing, and Reading 23
4 History of English 31
5 History of English Spelling 37
SECTION 2
Technology 47
6 A Computer Is Not a Typewriter 49
7 Technology 57
8 Rules of English Spelling 67
SECTION 3
Punctuation 79
9 Punctuation 81
10 Spaces and Hyphens 90
11 Capital Letters 98
vi Contents
SECTION 4
Features of Present-day English Spelling 105
12 Silent Letters 107
13 Doubled Consonant Letters 113
14 Spelling of Unstressed Vowels 122
15 Variation 130
16 Loanwords 139
17 Names of Letters 149
18 Spelling Pronunciation 156
19 Pronunciation Spelling 165
20 Homophones and Homographs 169
21 Other Consequences of English Spelling 177
SECTION 5
Strategies for Teaching and Testing English Spelling 183
22 Morphological Strategy 185
23 Etymological Strategy 196
24 Phonological Strategy 203
25 Analogical Strategy 214
26 Visual Strategy 219
27 Teaching English Spelling 226
28 Testing English Spelling 235
SECTION 6
The Future 241
29 Spelling Reform 243
30 English Spelling and Malay Spelling 256
31 The Future of English Spelling 268
32 Conclusion 273
Contents vii
Appendix 1: Sound-to-spelling Correspondences
for British English 279
Appendix 2: Surnames Exemplifying Spelling Rules 284
Appendix 3: The Main Uses of Punctuation in English 287
Appendix 4: Answers 291
Glossary 311
Index 315
Preface
If you can read this, thank a teacher.
Anonymous teacher
Background
This book is a sister volume to my Pronunciation and Phonetics: A Practical
Guide for English Language Teachers (Routledge, 2014). However, there are
similarities and differences between this book and the previous one.
For both books, the intended readership is trainee English language
teachers, and in-service teachers. As a result, the emphasis is on what teach-
ers need to know in order to teach spelling effectively.
Both books contain about 30 short chapters. This breaks the subject up
into digestible parts, which is desirable for English spelling, which has many
influences and therefore many strategies for teaching. If you read one chap-
ter per day, you will finish the book in about a month.
However, one difference in this book is that it is perhaps less practi-
cal than the previous book. The reason for this is that there exists a huge
number of books, websites, etc. with good materials to teach, practice
and test English spelling, whereas materials for pronunciation teaching are
variable. This book is therefore not entitled Spelling: A Practical Guide for
English Language Teachers. Instead, the thrust is for teachers to understand
the nature of English spelling, why it is a complex system, and why it is dif-
ficult to teach in its present-day form. Nevertheless, every chapter contains
exercises, either in the body or at the end, that may be easily adapted for
classroom use.
Teachers of English may be native speakers or non-native speakers. In
terms of pronunciation, this may create a distinction. Native speakers have
native pronunciation, without any interference features from the pronun-
ciation of other languages. They may be speakers of a nonstandard variety
of English pronunciation that may be questionable in terms of its validity as
a model for foreign learners. Nevertheless, learners will seldom question the
Preface ix
pronunciation proficiency of native speaker teachers. Non-native speaker
teachers, on the other hand, may have an English pronunciation with clear
interference features from their native language. These may be a handicap,
especially if the class is multinational.
In terms of spelling, however, native speakers are at little advantage over
non-native, apart from usually having larger vocabularies. The variation that
exists in pronunciation does not exist in spelling, apart from the difference
between American and British spelling which, as is argued in Chapter 15,
does not amount to a large variation.
Nor are native-speaker teachers at an advantage in terms of spelling profi-
ciency. There are native-speaker teachers who are good and bad at spelling,
just as there are non-native-speaker teachers who are good and bad at spelling.
The focus of this book is therefore on making teachers aware of the
nature of English spelling. Most teachers, for instance, know little about
the history of English; however, this history is still clearly manifested in the
present-day spelling of many words. This knowledge is necessary in order
to teach spelling effectively.
Structure
The book is divided into six sections.
The first section (Chapters 1 – 5) sets the scene by explaining the nature
of spelling systems in languages of the world and describing the history of
English spelling.
Given that most writing nowadays is carried out on a computer, the
internet, or a device (smartphone, tablet, etc.), rather than with pen and
paper, Section 2 (Chapters 6 – 8) looks at the influence of this technology
on spelling, and the attitude of users to correct spelling, much of which is
taken to be whatever the technology states is correct.
Section 3 (Chapters 9 – 11) deals with aspects of punctuation. While
readers may question whether punctuation belongs in a book on spelling,
there are aspects such as hyphens and capital letters that straddle punctuation
and spelling.
The fourth section (Chapters 12 – 21) represents an investigation into
various features of present-day English spelling. Many of these features are
vestiges of the long history of English spelling, do not occur in other lan-
guages, and may represent barriers to easy learning of the system.
Chapters 22 – 26 in Section 5 explain the strategic approach promoted
in this book for coping with teaching the difficulties of English spelling.
The strategies avoid the common practice of giving learners a list of English
words whose spellings are to be learned and tested, without giving any
instruction in how to learn the spellings. Pointers as to how to teach and
how to test spelling are given in Chapters 27 and 28.
