[eal-bilingual] Teaching spelling

I'd absolutely agree with John about the dangers of trusting to 'caught
not taught', especially for EAL learners who require a distinctive
pedagogy that reflects the fact that English is an additional language
and their stronger language systems are likely to be already embedded
and influential.

As I said in my earlier posting, it really depends on the nature of the
individual student's spelling 'problem' and this will be influenced by
such factors as literacy in their first language, length of time in the
UK/education system, and whether the problems are essentially similar to
first language English speakers or (e.g. problems with homophones such
as their/there) or distinctly EAL (e.g. influenced by their first
language, not that it's always that categorical a distinction. 

This is why I suggested starting with their exercise books rather than
some outside 'expert'. You can't beat formative assessment!

Frank

-----Original Message-----
From: eal-bilingual-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk
[mailto:eal-bilingual-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk] On Behalf Of John Bald
Sent: 10 September 2007 10:37
To: For practitioners involved in teaching pupils from ethnic
andlinguisticminorities
Subject: Re: [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. 