Marcel Marchon’s Blog

Jay LaBonte, on February 28, 2007 @ 9:47 am

The thing you are over looking here is that you can spell in the first place. Todays children are becomming less knowledgable in reading and spelling.

If you compare the percentage rate to the number of people that are lousy at spelling, you will see that 45% of people are poor spellers and there for do not have the basis for deciphering the correct spellings.

The reason people are able to read the above statement is simple. They have a basis of the correct spelling as well as a correct understanding of grammer, which allows them to decipher the meaning of the words using context as the determining factor.

For example, try pronouncing these words, “eihhbbppeooa” or “Cilgnnhlaeg”. Since they are not used in a sentence you have no context as to what the words could be even though the first and last letters are intact. If you are confused imagine someone that can not spell to begin with.

Correct spelling is essential when learning to read. By breaking a word down to its base sounds we are able to learn new words. We use rules for pronunciation of a word. If the word does not follow the rules you can not pronounce it.

Even a word processor uses a set of rules to identify words that do not follow the rules, and then present possible spelling based on the rules of spelling and the context.

And finally, if you are wondering the two words are “Ephebophobia” which is the fear of youth or adolescents and the word “Challenging” which is what reading is to those that can not read.

Marcel Marchon, on February 28, 2007 @ 10:37 am

Jay - that was mostly meant as a joke … But thanks for your comment!

Openjuru George, on March 29, 2007 @ 3:31 am

Even if that was meant as a joke, Its quite true that spelling is still very important and it must be learnt correctely first before a person can make sense of its confused or mispelt form.

Steve Bett, on February 22, 2008 @ 11:39 am

For more background see www.spellingsociety.org
The story isn’t exactly correct in its details. There is no Cambridge study but such a study was conducted at a UK university. The fact that those adept in reading can make sense of these simple anagrams (retain 1st and last letter-scramble the remainder) does say something about the way the mind processes words on the page.
Speed readers are said to memorize word-signs so any spelling change will slow them down. However, scrambled text can be read. Phonetic text can also be read quite easily yet there is strong resistance against using such spellings.
Writing systems that are 85% phonemic or written very close to the way the word is spoken can be learned in 3 months. If we learned the 41 symbols of a dictionary key, English could also be learned by illiterates in 3 months - 2 hrs/day. Once code literate, the complex code used by traditional English is less daunting. In one study, children who learned the dictionary key first were reading traditional text at a 3rd grade level by the end of the year. www.unifon.org.