The Project Gutenberg eBook of Learning to Spell, by Catherine T. Bryce This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title:Learning to Spell A Manual for Teachers Using the Aldine Speller Author: Catherine T. Bryce, Frank J. Sherman and Arthur W. Kallom Release Date: May 25, 2021 [eBook #65441] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 Produced by: Richard Tonsing, hekula03, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LEARNING TO SPELL *** LEARNING TO SPELL A Manual for Teachers Using the ALDINE SPELLER BY CATHERINE T. BRYCE ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ELEMENTARY EDUCATION YALE UNIVERSITY FRANK J. SHERMAN FORMERLY SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS DANVERS, MASSACHUSETTS AND ARTHUR W. KALLOM ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION AND MEASUREMENTS, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS NEW YORK NEWSON & COMPANY Copyright, 1921, by NEWSON & COMPANY All rights reserved. LEARNING TO SPELL Are we spelling as well in our schools today as our forefathers did in the little red schoolhouse? This is the question that has been asked many times but no one has been able to answer it in any convincing way. There have been advocates of both sides of the question. The fact remains that no one knows. We do not know how well children could spell fifty, or even twenty-five, years ago. As time goes by there is a glamour thrown over the past and we see only the high lights. We remember that in spelling a match there was a certain boy, or girl, who spelled down the entire school time after time, or possibly had a reputation for being the best speller in the entire county. When a spelling match was announced it was a foregone conclusion that the victory lay between two or three pupils. How many children of the eighth grade could spell the following list of words? phthisicky ichthyology abstemious demoniacal magisterial convalesce calligraphy saccharin We remember the pupils who were able to spell these difficult words, and we forget those who were unable to spell them. We remember the good spellers and forget how many poor ones there were. The question is not whether one or two could spell, or learn to spell such words, but could nearly every pupil in the school spell such words? If they could, what use did they make of their knowledge? The corollary to the proposition is, how many were unable to spell “which,” “there,” “writing,” “guess,” and a thousand other common words? The question then is fairly before us; viz., What is the object of teaching spelling? 3 4 Object of Teaching Spelling Ever since the school of early days spelling has accompanied “reading, ’riting, and ’rithmetic” as a part of the curriculum. The day when reading was taught by the “spelling method,” so called, is not far back in the past. “How can one learn to read if one does not know his letters, that he may be able to spell out the words that he meets in his reading?” Not until recently has the question been asked, “Why do we study spelling at all?” Do we need it in our reading? Modern methods have shown us that we do not. We need to know how to spell only when we wish to write. How often does the average person write “phthisicky,” “magisterial,” “ichthyology,” “convalesce,” and other equally uncommon words? Not often, perhaps never. Then why spend the time of our overcrowded school day in having children try to learn these words, when numerous recent investigations show positively that children are constantly misspelling “which,” “there,” “their,” and many other common, everyday words? 5 1. 2. Teaching versus Testing For many years the spelling lesson has been, with many teachers, a means of obtaining a breathing space in the day’s work. It was comparatively easy to say to the children “Take the next twenty words.” The study of these words took some time, and it was easy work to dictate the lesson at the end of fifteen or twenty minutes, have the pupils exchange papers, and correct the words. What was the net result at the end of the year? No one knew. Had they tested the right words for the given grade? No one knew. They had tested the words that were given in the spelling book adopted by the city, town, or state. Most of the books contained from 10,000 to 12,000 words. That the children did not use many of these words in their written work made little or no difference. In some cases at least, the author of a spelling book took the dictionary and started with the a’s and proceeded through the alphabet, deciding that the children ought to know how to spell this word, and that word, and so on through the dictionary, No attempt was made to find out whether the pupil used the words or not, and no attempt was made to place the words according to their use in the proper grade. Was it possible for a teacher using such a book to test the right words? Probably not. She tested all she could. She assigned ten words a day for about 150 days during the year, or if she dared, or the course of study called for it, twenty, or twenty-five words were given in the upper grades. The teacher was compelled to do so in order to finish the speller. Did she teach the words? How could she teach even the ten words in the short time allowed? In order that spelling words might be taught some teachers suggested that five new words a day would be sufficient to meet the needs of the pupil. The answer of many teachers, following ancient traditions, shows that they think that this would be unwise. Not to teach “which,” “there,” “their,” and such words until the upper grades certainly would be even more unwise. Teachers have had the mistaken idea that children learn to spell many words because of constant use, and that there is no need of teaching them. Recent studies have shown that this is not true except with respect to occasional children who have already developed what has been called a spelling consciousness. In the vast majority of cases this spelling consciousness needs to be developed. To accomplish this words have to be selected, and carefully and systematically taught, to most children. The selection of words, therefore, is an important work of the author of a spelling book. Thanks to recent investigations the day has come when two important questions are being asked: What words ought we to teach? How shall these selected words be taught? 6 Selection of a Vocabulary In the past teachers have had little or nothing to do with the selection of the widely differing vocabularies which they have had to teach. The best of our teachers have attempted to select a reasonable list from the spelling book which has been provided. That selection, however, has been limited by the spelling book in use, the vocabulary of which has already been selected, and may or may not be a reasonable one. The question may even be raised, “To what extent can teachers intelligently select the vocabulary which should be taught?” In 1914 teachers of the city of Boston chosen from all the elementary grades, were asked to make a selection of words fitted for their respective grades. The significant thing in their report was that the second grade teachers chose not only words which should be taught in the second grade, but also words which eventually should be taught in each later grade; and many teachers of the eighth grade selected words which should have been taught in a previous grade. “Always,” for example, was in the list of one or more teachers of every grade, I to VIII inclusive. Many other words were in the lists of teachers of several grades. In 1916 Jones’s “Hundred Demons” (see page 22, Part III) were given to forty-five second grade teachers for them to select the words which should be retained in the second grade. Seventy-nine of these words are among Ayres’s “Thousand Commonest Words in the English Language.” Every word was voted to be retained by one, or more than one, second grade teacher as suitable to be taught to second grade pupils. A group of twenty-eight prospective Boston teachers, who had had some experience in the grades as practice teachers, and much experience in observation, was asked to arrange the following list of words in the order of their difficulty: ache enough direction company business hoped ocean muscle sentence whether The directions given were to place the easiest word, in so far as its spelling difficulty was concerned, first, and the most difficult word last, the others to be arranged according to the difficulty of each. After the several lists were collected it was found that each of the ten words had been classed as most difficult by some one, and each of the ten words had been classed as least difficult by some one. Thus all the investigations tend to show that teachers are not able to select words according to their difficulty. The difficulty can only be found by experimenting with thousands of children and by laboriously correcting and tabulating the results. Fortunately we have a number of such investigations, so that the assignment of words to a certain grade need not be wholly dependent upon the judgment of an individual teacher, but upon the results obtained from testing thousands of children by a number of different skilled investigators. 7 8 Selection of a Vocabulary through Investigation A most important investigation of the vocabularies of children has been made by Dr. W. Franklin Jones of the University of South Dakota. Dr. Jones studied 75,000 themes written by children of all grades from the second to the eighth inclusive, gathered from three different states, and averaging a little less than 190 words each. The number of themes per student ranged from 56 to 105. The total number of words amounted to nearly 15,000,000. Among the important results of this investigation the following stand out significantly: 1. Out of the 15,000,000 words used there were only 4,532 different words used by more than 2% of the pupils. (5,000 carefully selected words are, therefore, probably sufficient for pupils to learn in the first eight years of school.) 2. The number of words listed per pupil ranged from 431, the smallest vocabulary in the second grade, to 2,812 for the largest vocabulary of an eighth grade pupil. This does not necessarily mean that 3,000 words are sufficient for the spelling vocabulary of children in our schools. The fact that the various investigators disagree to some extent in the vocabularies which they find, is enough to prove this point. There are many factors, such as home conditions, nationality, and locality, which may affect the number of words that will be used. However, when the number is increased to approximately twice the largest single vocabulary found, all of the common words of the best investigations will have been included. 3. The average number of words in the written vocabulary of each grade is as follows: Grade 2 521 Grade 3 908 Grade 4 1,235 Grade 5 1,489 Grade 6 1,710 Grade 7 1,926 Grade 8 2,135 Jones shows that the writing vocabulary of children is comparatively small. This narrows our spelling problem within correspondingly small limits. 4. Of the 4,532 different words the number used by at least 2% of the pupils in the respective grades was as follows: Grade 2 1,927 Grade 3, new words added 469 Grade 4, new words added 442 Grade 5, new words added 432 Grade 6, new words added 425 Grade 7, new words added 419 Grade 8, new words added 418 4,532 9 10 When Should Spelling Be Taught The scientific teaching of spelling requires that words shall be taught in the grade in which they are first used. When the child first enters school his speaking vocabulary is comparatively large. His reading vocabulary varies from nothing to one fairly large, depending, in part, on the home from which the child comes. His writing vocabulary is very limited, even under the best of conditions. This latter increases very rapidly during the first three years. The teaching of nearly 2,000 words in the second grade becomes, of course, a gigantic, even an impossible, task. The Aldine Speller obviates this in two ways: (a) By postponing the teaching of the words least likely to be used in the second grade until a later grade. (b) Many of the words which should be taught in the early grades have basic parts which have been called phonograms. By use of these phonogram groups, or “families,” the number of words taught in the first and second grades can be very greatly increased, and the best possible foundation given for the development of a spelling sense. The Aldine Speller makes full use of this principle, and a very complete list of phonic “families” will be found at the close of the work of the second year. (See page 65, Part I.) Attention is also called to suggestions for teaching such words on page 28 of this manual. 11 Other Investigations In 1911 Mr. R. C. Eldridge published the results of a study of 250 different newspaper articles occurring in four issues of a Buffalo Sunday paper. Of the 43,098 words tabulated there were only 6,002 different words. This again shows that the writing vocabulary even of adults is comparatively small. Cook and O’Shea studied the correspondence of thirteen adults, tabulating 200,000 words, and found only 5,200 different words. There is one underlying characteristic of each of these three studies; viz., the writing, and therefore the spelling, vocabulary of individuals is much smaller than we formerly considered it, and consists of approximately 5,000 words. (The Aldine vocabulary contains approximately 5,000 carefully selected words which should form the basis of the writing vocabulary of an eighth grade pupil.) 12 The Construction of a Spelling Scale In 1915 Dr. Leonard P. Ayres of the Russell Sage Foundation tabulated some of the lists of words then available and made a selection of the 1,000 commonest words. This list of 1,000 words was then divided into 50 lists of 20 words each and given in the middle of the year to the children of two consecutive grades in a number of cities. As a check, words were taken from each of the fifty lists and recombined into new sets of twenty words each, then sent out as tests in each of four consecutive grades in different cities. The whole number of children thus tested was 70,000 in 84 cities in grades II to VIII inclusive. On the basis of this testing the Ayres Spelling Scale was organized. The significant features of the scale are: (1) It contains only the commonest words. (2) It gives approximately what one ought to expect from any given grade when spelling words that are listed as equal in spelling difficulty. (3) The determination of the difficulty of any word was not dependent on the judgment of any one person, or group of persons, but on the ability of a large group of children to spell those words by writing them. In giving the tests for the purpose of this scale it was not previously known whether the words had been studied or not. It has been found that testing these words after they have been carefully taught yields from 5% to 20% higher accuracy. Because they are the most common words in our language (Ayres found that these words comprise approximately 90% of our writing vocabulary) they are the words which ought to be taught carefully and thoroughly. All of these words occur in the Aldine Vocabulary. 13 The Boston List The Boston Minimum List consists of words selected from lists that had been sent in by the teachers of the different grades as the words which, in their opinion, should be taught in their respective classes. Two hundred and thirty-seven teachers sent in lists of approximately thirty-five words each. These words were then arranged in alphabetical order together with the number of teachers reporting each word. All words were then arranged in two lists, a minimum list composed of words which it was considered desirable for every child to know, and a supplementary list, including all the other words which had been reported. The words were at the same time assigned to the grades in which they were to be taught on the following basis: 1. Only those words that were reported by at least five teachers were placed in the minimum list. 2. Any given word was placed in the grade in which it was reported by the largest number of teachers. 3. If the spelling of any word depended on a particular rule or suggestion the word was placed in the grade in which such a rule or suggestion was given in the course of study then in force. After a year’s work on the words they were assigned a value determined by the percentage of children who were able to spell the word correctly in a carefully controlled test. This provided a definite problem for the teacher because it pointed out the easy and the difficult words. A word with a high percentage of accuracy was considered an easy word. A word with a low percentage of accuracy was considered a difficult word. 14 Other Lists From time to time during the last few years other lists of words have been organized, all with the view of conserving the time given to spelling by requiring the pupil to learn to spell only those words for which he has an immediate or a probable future use. There has also been an attempt on the part of a few of the organizers to determine the difficulty of the lists as was done in Boston. Such lists have been organized in St. Louis and Kansas City, Missouri, and in other places, notably in the state of Iowa. The Construction of the Aldine Speller The vocabulary of the Aldine Speller has been selected with great care. All the important lists were tabulated in such a way as to show the recurrence of the words and the grade distribution. Careful testing and study were given where there were significant variations in order to determine the correct selection and gradation. In addition to this the vocabularies of several of the best known textbooks were tabulated to ascertain the basis, if any, of their selection of words. These vocabularies varied so largely as to be of little value except to show the defects of unscientific selection. Approximately 5,000 words were finally chosen. These include the words in common use and such words in the upper grades as are necessary to teach the varying vocabulary of life by the development of desirable forms. Without this attention to derivatives, difficult endings, the error producing problems of ie or ei, and the doubling of the final consonant, no course in learning to spell is complete or fully effective. After the selection of the words a series of illustrative sentences was gathered from many sources. Many of these sentences are quotations from our best authors, are within the grasp of the children, and will be found invaluable for memorizing, as dictation exercises, or used simply to illustrate the use of the words taught in the previous lessons. Finally, at the end of the work for each grade, will be found an alphabetically arranged list of all the words taught in that grade, with the exception of the phonic words taught in the first and second grades which are not alphabetically arranged. The latter will be found, with others of the same “family,” or series, at the end of Part I. 15 Types of Learning In the past the method of giving the spelling lesson was to assign a list of words for pupils to study. After a period of time the lesson was “recited.” The “recitation” consisted largely of testing the pupils, either orally or through written work, to see if they had learned what had been assigned to them. This method of learning spelling appealed to only one type of pupil, i.e., the pupil who learned by seeing. However, we know now that, although most children depend largely upon vision for what they learn, there are those who learn best by hearing the word spoken, while there are others who learn best by going through the motions of making the letters, either with the throat or the hand, and a large majority learn best by using all four processes. To obtain the best results teachers are urged to give the pupils a chance to use all four processes, not for the purpose of testing their ability to spell, but as a method of learning. In this way appeal is made successively to the eye, the ear, the vocal organs, and the hand. All these taken together form associations which will be of great help in enabling the pupil to retain the correct spelling of the word. It gives the pupil a mental picture of the word through the sense that is best suited to him, besides giving all pupils the help of all the senses in fixing the word. If the sense of hearing holds an important place in learning to spell then oral spelling becomes an important factor in the teaching and learning to spell. Oral spelling should always precede written spelling. 16