Why Spelling Tests Unfairly Punish Kids with Reading Delays

Sep 21

First things first: I want you to do whatever it takes to remember these three number sequences. There will be a test:

3479023

421867

548923

Now that that’s out of the way…

As a child, I loved spelling tests. Getting back my paper with the coveted 100% in red across the top and being lavished with praise from teachers about my “dedication” and “hard work” filled me with pride.

Only, in reality, it had nothing to do with either dedication or hard work.

My brain naturally saw the patterns in language, and segmenting out the sounds and meaning units in words came easily to me. Like approximately 60% of English-speaking kids, I learned to read and spell with little effort.

Now that I am an adult working with the other 40% of kids who struggle with academic learning, I see the inherent flaws in a system that prioritizes memorizing a list of often random words to make a judgment about a child’s worth.

And for those one in five kids whose brains process the language components of reading differently enough to qualify for a dyslexia diagnosis, spelling tests that get progressively harder even as their skills continue to lag behind can become a bottomless pit of despair from which they can’t climb out.

What do spelling tests actually measure?

It is a common misconception that if you can read a word, spelling it should be straightforward.

However, reading (also called “decoding”, as in breaking apart the code of written language) is a recognition task. Have you ever recognized a person in a crowd but been unable to say exactly how you know them or recall their name? That’s like reading. It is by no means a simple task in its own right, but it nonetheless pales in comparison with the task of spelling.

Spelling (also called “encoding,” as in putting a word into an agreed upon code) requires recognizing all the salient parts of a word. This includes not only recognizing the sounds* contained within that word (called phonemic awareness), but also any components that tweak the meaning.

[*in addition, many words are pronounced differently in different dialects of English (e.g., “pin” to mean both pin and pen in southern dialects) and many words are not routinely clearly articulated in conversational speech regardless of dialect (think “comftable” for com-fort-a-ble).]

For instance, “back” is different from “bake” even though they both contain the letter a in the middle (short a vs. long a).

“Bake” is slightly different in both meaning and spelling to “baking” or “baked” where the addition of a suffix (word ending) changes the form of the base word.

Why isn’t it baek. Or bake-ing or bake-ed? Because hundreds of years ago when France invaded England and the Catholic monks began writing down the English language for the first time, those are the rules (spelling conventions) they decided upon.

Yes, it’s much more than just hearing the sounds within the word as we speak it.

Why are spelling tests so hard for our kids?

Most spelling tests are scored in a binary fashion—the word is either right or wrong.

When I look at the attempts of my reading therapy kids though, what I see is usually more right than wrong. They might have all but one letter correct (e.g., peeple for people), or have the right sound but just the wrong letter choice (e.g., chanse for chance).

These types of errors show that the child does not yet have a solid foundation in spelling conventions. Even though they might be improving in their ability to perceive the individual sound and meaning units with guidance from a skilled teacher, tutor, or reading therapist, they may not yet be able to independently identify what spelling convention is needed for a particular word.

Especially if their word list contains examples from many different forms of spelling conventions, as is more often than not the case.

Much of English spelling is based more on the historical basis of the word than just the actual sounds in it. For instance, do you know why “people” has a silent o in the middle? Do you know why “knight” has a silent k? Or why “igh” is saying “I” in it? Or why psychic has a silent p and “ch” saying “k”? Have you ever consciously realized that we don’t hear the “ed” ending a word like “skipped” (skipt), and can you say why there are two p’s in that word but not in “leaped”?

(If you’re curious: People is derived from the word “populous”, as is “population, popular, populace”; the silent k is common in words added to English during the Viking invasions (know, knot, knead, knock, knuckles, etc.); “igh” and certain other vowel spelling patterns are represented in very old words that used to be pronounced differently when they were first recorded; the silent p and “ch” for “k” psychic comes from the Greek influence on scientific words that hit our language during the Age of Enlightenment; and whether or not we double a consonant depends not only on the type of suffix being added but also the type of vowel in the base word. That’s a lot to know, and these examples only scratch the surface of the complexity of English spelling!)

And the challenge doesn’t stop there.

Add in the fact that there is a large overlap of diagnoses (comorbidity) between dyslexia, attention-deficit disorder, and dysgraphia (difficulty with the physical act of writing), and some of our kids are trying to overcome multiple obstacles to just get words down on paper.

Attentional challenges can result in kids missing part or all of the instruction within a busy classroom environment and also is associated with working memory deficits. So even with the best of intentions, a child may easily lose their train of thought midway through writing a word, only to have the class move on to the next word before they can ask for clarification (which in and of itself is a skill that often needs to be explicitly taught to neurodivergent individuals).

Working memory challenges also make studying using traditional “drill and kill” less effective than more personally meaningful approaches, such as using the word within phrases or sentences about a topic of interest or anchoring the word in the story of its historical context and/or related words. Of course, these explanations need to be delivered in an way that makes them want to pay attention.

And because kids with dysgraphia are still having to consciously think about how to form each letter as they spell, the cognitive resources left available to piece out the word are more limited than for peers who can form letters with subconscious automaticity. It’s a bit like the old patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time trick.

Okay: here’s the test—do you remember those three number sequences from the beginning?

No, ok, try again to the learn them and we’ll check in soon.

Shouldn’t kids (and families) just “work harder”?

The reality is that spelling is not simply a memorization task.

Or at least, it shouldn’t be if there’s any help of carrying over the spelling patterns on a test of 10-20 words a week to the literally tens of thousands of words a child needs to eventually be able to spell as an effective adult writer.

Yes, some words that are very old or borrowed from another language are “unfair” and have components that must be memorized (e.g., colonel-“kernal”, Wednesday-“wensday”, and friend-“frend”).

In actuality, however, the vast majority have recognizable patterns…if you either have a brain that naturally picks up on language patterns (me) or are explicitly taught to see the patterns (my reading therapy kids).

Most teachers are never directly taught how break spelling down into teachable chunks, and many curricula still widely used across the United States fail to meet the standards of the Science of Reading, a research-based collection of ideas to explicitly teach reading and spelling.

It’s not their fault; it wasn’t a part of their teacher education.

Even fewer parents and caregivers have the background knowledge to explain words beyond the kindergarten or first grade level to their child, if child or parent can even consciously identify what part of the spelling makes a word “hard”.

Plus, there can be tremendous opportunity costs for kids who are stuck drilling for excessive periods of each day in hopes of getting a few percentage points higher on the next test. Time spent unfruitfully on a hopeless task is time that could be better spent on more productive childhood pursuits.

Active play lets kids challenge their bodies to learn new motor skills while also shedding excess stress hormones from their bodies and helping with better sleep which in turn promotes more efficient learning the next day.

Cooperative play teaches social skills like compromise, persistence, reading other’s intents, and working as part of a group.

Independent imaginative play allows exploration of creative pursuits and learning how things work through trial and error.

All skills much needed for an independent adulthood.

Alternatively, changing after-school time from drilling spelling words to shared reading with loved ones incites curiosity, teaches new world knowledge and vocabulary, and fosters loving, trusting relationships with both caregivers and learning in general.

But perhaps the biggest cost I often see is the strain on family relationships and individual self-esteem.

Repeatedly drilling a concept a child struggles to succeed at sets them into an acute stress response, resulting in fight/flight/freeze/fawn responses. Caregivers are left struggling to get the child to focus and persist and they become frustrated that their child “just doesn’t get it” or “just won’t do it”. This sets the stage for power struggles and a lack of trust that can have long-term detrimental effects on the mental health of everyone involved.

When a child is left in a position to fail repeatedly, it is perfectly natural to shut down. Anxiety and depression can quickly emerge when a child incorrectly perceives they are “dumb,” incapable of learning what it seems like everyone else does so easily. Increasingly, we are seeing the word “educational trauma” used in mental health literature.

In today’s age, we have technology that can reduce the burden of learning differences. Text-to-speech and speech-to-text computer applications, audiobooks, autocorrect, and predictive spelling can enable participation in academics while a child is still learning foundational reading and spelling skills to close the gap.

At the low tech end of the continuum, helpful adults can transcribe a child’s thoughts and stories to enable them to share their ideas fully. (Instead, we often see kids who struggle with spelling avoid sharing their thoughts in print altogether, or doing so in extremely short sentences with simple vocabulary well below their spoken language and cognitive abilities.)

We do not, however, have technology that can overcome the secondary mental health disabilities that are often more debilitating in the long run than an individual’s primary neurodivergence.

Ok, do you remember those number sequences now? If you did great! But does that make them meaningful to your life in some way? What are the chances you’ll remember them tomorrow. Or a month from now?

What can we do to change the system?

How can change the teaching of spelling to make learning doable and meaningful for those 20-40% of kids whose brains don’t naturally pick up these skills?

The Zone of Proximal Development is a broadly used concept in educational psychology that learning occurs best when the challenge is just incrementally above the individual’s current ability.

(In my personal experience, anxiety resulting from past failures can impact how small that increment needs to be to avoid overwhelm and shut-down, though the challenge may be able to increase over time as a child learns greater confidence in their ability to learn and persist through struggles.)

Being over-faced by too big of a challenge is unlikely to result in any meaningful, long-term gain. Likewise, repeating the exact same level of difficulty after that skill has already become automatic can be a valuable recreational activity, but does not further the learning.

Think of learning to snowboard. If you’re expected to take one lesson and then complete a full X-games style half-pipe routine, you’re going to fail and likely hurt yourself—and your pride—in the process. How likely will you be to want to attempt it again? While if you enjoy snowboarding but just stick to gentle slopes every winter on vacation with your kids, you can have fun but won’t ever be confident to tackle a steeper slope with your friends.

So keeping in mind the Zone of Proximal Development, can a child’s (or classroom’s) spelling test be adapted to:

· include only spelling patterns that have been explicitly taught and the child has shown success with in teaching contexts (e.g., at the more foundational end, does the child know and easily apply all the sound-letter correspondences within the word; at a more advanced level have they shown they can identify the meaning units within a word --prefixes, roots, and suffixes--and know the spelling conventions that dictate how those units are put together)?

· include only “unfair” words that have been contextually explained in a way that is meaningful to the child and therefore able to transfer from short-term working memory to long-term memory (e.g., the story of how/when that word or pattern entered the language or a “family” of related words the child is familiar with)?

· minimize the overall number of words to enable maximum success within a reasonable time frame of study (to avoid the opportunity costs of excessive study time in childhood)

· ask the child to apply an explicitly taught spelling concept to novel words instead of relying on a set list that encourages memorization (and is likely forgotten as soon as the test is done)?

· reward a child for the spelling components they actually do get right instead of focusing only on errors?

· be used as a guide for the child’s teachers and caregivers to know what spelling concepts need more teaching and when the child is ready to move on instead of focusing on a grade?

Given the importance of effective written communication in school and work, we owe it to our children to engender a sense of confidence in spelling. Examining the intended role of a spelling test and whether or not it actually achieves the goals of teaching better writing to students in vital, especially for our kids whose brains do not inherently latch onto the nuances of spoken and written language.

Otherwise, aren’t we essentially asking them to memorize meaningless strings of information they will never be able to meaningfully apply?

Additional resources:

Wired for Reading video: Why Can I Read This?

YouTube: Miss Jane’s Tutoring and Dyslexia Services, Orthographic Mapping Explained

Podcast: Sold a Story (available through major podcast streaming services)