Spelling and learning to spell

Speaker: Rebecca Treiman

Washington University in St. Louis, USA

October 25, 2023
11:15 AM - 1 PM U.S. Eastern Time | Register Now

Abstract
There has been a good deal of research on the cognitive processes that underlie skilled reading and on how children learn to read. Spelling is another important component of literacy, but there has been less work on spelling than on reading. In the first part of this talk, I discuss the principles that underlie writing systems and how these principles play out in the case of English. Although the English spelling system is often criticized as illogical and inconsistent, some of its characteristics arise because it has other goals than representing the phonemes in words. For example, a word’s spelling may reflect its morphological structure or the language from which it originated. In the next section of the talk, I review some of our research on spelling in populations ranging from young children to adults. The focus here is how people learn and use aspects of English spelling that go beyond simple links between phonemes and letters. I evaluate theories of spelling and spelling development in light of the research evidence, and I discuss how spelling relates to reading.

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