The Reading Coach Blog: 'Spelling and Statistics'

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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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The Reading Coach Blog: 'Spelling and Statistics'

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

This is a great post at 'The Reading Coach Blog', circulating via Twitter:

http://trcliteracy.blogspot.co.uk/2017/ ... stics.html
Spelling and Statistics

The end of another term and various completed pieces of work come home. I scan through the science tests and assignments. Something has changed since I last looked at my Year 8 child's work. I am somewhat confused. It is her spelling that has improved! I encounter the words 'because', 'materials', 'electricity', 'measure' and all forms of double consonant words spelled correctly. But how can this be? I haven't done any explicit spelling work with her for nearly a year!

Professor Diane McGuinness in 'Early Reading Instruction' makes the statement that 'the statistical probabilities of sound-spelling patterns in words is what accounts for why spelling improves with age'. How? According to Mark Seidenberg ('Language at the Speed of Sight') it comes down to the brain's implicit (behind the scenes) tracking of statistical regularities (frequencies) and co-occurrences of the elements from which words are composed - sounds and spellings. The brain is always quietly taking a tally of which sounds and spellings (and other elements) occur in the vicinity of each other and which ones don't. And every time a child or young person reads, these statistical patterns are fine tuned. Amazing.
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