[eal-bilingual] Teaching spelling

Well, in my experience spelling is partly caught, but mostly taught, 
particularly through the irregularities in English. See my article The 
Language Logic Forgot in the TES, also Slimmed Down Spelling in the same 
source.  We have precious little direct reserach evidence of learning to 
spell among EAL  learners in this country, but there is some in the US, in 
Suzanne Flynn's work, which indicates that the pattern of errors people make 
reflects the structure of their first language. If this is so, then teaching 
them to spell in Enlgish involves learning new structures. Some may pick 
them up, many won't. We need a better basis for decisions and policy. 
Suzanne';s work is easy to track down via MIT website.  John Bald, 
Independent consultant. 