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of the words. There is no apparent reasonwhy citation is spelled with a cinstead ofans, but given that it is spelled with a c, itmakes sense that cite is spelled this wayalso. There are many cases in whichknowledge about words meanings helpsus understand otherwise unusual spellings.

For example, by knowing how to spell theword heal, we are better able to under-stand why health is spelled as health, andnot helth. The fact that spellings ofmeaningful parts of words are oftenconserved in this way means that theEnglish writing system represents moreinformation about a word than just itspronunciation. As mentioned earlier, conser-vatism means that spellings are maintainedeven if pronunciation changes over time. Ifspellings were altered based on pronun-ciation alone, we would lose a great deal ofinformation about the meanings of words.

For example, the word photography ispronounced quite differently from its rootword photograph. Similar patterns areseen in words such as muscle andmuscular, as well as nation and national.

When we take into account theprinciples of conservatism, borrowed loan-word spellings, and representation ofinformation other than pronunciation,written English becomes less chaotic than itotherwise appears. However, these principlesare sometimes of little use to beginningspellers and the teachers who are chargedwith helping them. For a child who is not

familiar withsignature andsignal, theg inthe spelling of sign is a hindrance, not auseful clue to the words meaning.However, even young children can benefitfrom knowing how some words spellingsreflect meaning. For example, in the wordeat, the tcorresponds to a /t/ sound at theend of the word. Yet, when the child hearsthe word eating, the trepresents a soundcloser to a /d/ instead. Must the childmemorize eat and eating as unrelatedseparate entities simply because the tsounds differently in the two words? If thechild knows that eating is related to theword eat, then the spelling is lessambiguous. Research has shown that evenchildren in kindergarten begin to useinformation about word meanings inspellings and that these skills continue todevelop throughout elementary school(Treiman, Cassar, & Zukowski, 1994). Byretaining spellings that are based on theunderlying root word meaning, childrencan gain a good deal of information thatwould otherwise be lost if spellings werechanged to match pronunciation.

Although young children may be ableto take advantage of some clues frommeaning, as in the words eatand eating,beginning spellers need additional strate-gies to help spell words correctly. Indeed,English spellings are more predictablewhen vocabulary level, position within a

word, and surrounding context are takeninto account.

Some spellings of sounds only occur inmore advanced, low-frequency vocabularywords. For example, the sound // as in bedcan be spelled ei as in the word heifer.However, young children are unlikely toencounter this word in their textbooks.Because children have never learned that eiis a possible spelling for the sound //, theydo not have to consider this alternativewhen deciding how to spell words thatcontain this sound. As this example shows,

young children may have to learn fewerpossible spellings for sounds simplybecause their exposure to print mainlycomprises a smaller number of words.

The position of letters within a word isanother clue that helps children limitspelling possibilities. Written English hasmany conventions that govern thearrangement of letters within words. Forexample, certain vowels are very rarelydoubled in words. We know that hiik orbuup are very unlikely to be English words,based on our knowledge that i and uhardly ever double. Also, certain letters andletter groups do not occur at thebeginnings of words, but may occur in themiddles or at the ends of words. Oneexample of this is the letter group ck,which is allowed to represent the sound /k/at the end of words as in pickandpluck,and in the middles of words, as inpackageand cricket. However, /k/ is never repre-sented as ck at the beginnings of words.Spellers of English would never think of

spelling kitas ckitor cap as ckap. In fact,research has shown that young childrenhave some knowledge of this rule evenwhen it has never been explicitly taught tothem in school and even when they havehad only a few years of exposure to printedwords (Treiman, 1993). Even children in the

early years of school do not usually makemistakes such as ckatfor cat. According toresearch by Cassar and Treiman (1997),kindergartners know that doubleconsonants are allowed in the middles andat the ends of words but not at thebeginnings. For example, vassin and lusscould potentially be words of English, but

ssan could not. By knowing where certainletters may and may not occur, children donot have to worry about certain alternativespellings. Even though the sound /s/ can berepresented bys orss, even young childrenknow that the ss option is no longer valid if

the sound occurs at the beginning of aword. They can therefore rule out a spellinglikessip forsip. Thus, children can furtherwhittle down their list of possible spellingsfor a sound simply by knowing the ways inwhich letters are allowed to be arranged inwords.

Finally, spellers may use thesurrounding context to help them limitspelling choices. As mentioned earlier,English vowels are more variable in theirsound-to-spelling correspondences thanconsonants (Kessler & Treiman, 2001)However, if the sounds around the vowe

are taken into consideration, the vowelsspelling often becomes more consistent. Ifbeginning consonant context is taken intoaccount, average vowel consistencyincreases from .53 to .65. An example ofthis is the vowel sound /a/, as in the word

pot. This vowel sound can be spelled o ora, but when it follows w, it is almost alwaysspelled a, as in wash orswap. Therefore, byconsidering the context immediately beforethe vowel, the letter choices for the vowelsspelling are reduced. Vowel spellings areeven more strongly affected by the finaconsonant. If the final consonant is takeninto consideration, then average voweconsistency increases from .53 to .74. Forexample, the vowel sound /e/, as in cake,has many possible spellings, including ay,ai, a followed by final e, ea, ei, or eyHowever, when the following consonant isl, then aiis a more likely spelling, as in frailWhen there is no final consonant, then ayis most likely correct, as inplay. Vowels aretherefore made significantly more consis-tent when the neighboring consonants areconsidered.

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children can whittle down

their list of possible spellings

for a sound simply by

knowing the ways in which

letters are allowed to be

arranged in words.

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Although consonants are generallymore consistent than vowels, as mentionedpreviously, some consonants show im-provements when neighboring vowels areconsidered. For example, in words thatbegin with the sound /k/, the vowel thatfollows plays an important role in the letterused to spell /k/. When /k/ occurs at thebeginnings of words, the sound may bespelled with k or c. However, when thefollowing vowel is e or i, the speller mustchoose k, as in the words kite, keep, andkitchen. Thus, spellers can limit theirspelling choices for some beginningconsonants by taking vowel context intoconsideration. Spellers receive even morebenefit from using vowel context to helpspell final consonants. An example of this isa rule that states when certain letters, suchas f and l, are allowed to double at theends of words. In words such as pill and

stuff, when the vowel is spelled with oneletter, these letters are generally doubled.

When the vowel is spelled with two letters,the consonants are not doubled, as in thewords peeland roof. With both conson-ants and vowels, then, spellers can benefitby paying attention to the environment ofa sound that they wish to spell and not justto the sound itself. Context often lendsadditional regularity to words and providesclues to the correct spellings.

To summarize to this point, English isnot as chaotic as it seems at first glance.Skilled spellers have an arsenal of tools attheir disposal to better understand andreduce the variability in written English.Knowledge about conservatism, loan-

words, and how English spellings representmore than just pronunciation helps spellersunderstand why certain words are spelledin seemingly irregular ways. In addition,spellers can use information about positionand context to help limit the many possiblealternative spellings that English providesfor each sound.

Knowing that written English may bemade more regular by considering all ofthese principles, how can educators andparents help children, especially childrenwith dyslexia, take advantage of theseclues? Research has shown that children atyoung ages are able to recognize some ofthese tricks without explicit instruction(Cassar & Treiman, 1997; Treiman, 1993).However, instead of forgoing instruction inthe hopes that all children will pick up onthe statistical regularities present in thelanguage, teachers can instead make theseclues more explicit by pointing out specificpatterns that can help their students inspelling. Children need to be taught that,although English has some seeminglyunusual spellings for some words, they donot need to guess at correct spellings orsimply memorize them. Instead, childrencan be taught how to be spelling detectives

who look for patterns in unusual spellings.One idea for teaching these patterns is

to emphasize sound-to-spelling relation-ships during phonics lessons. Typically,phonics lessons focus on how lettersrepresent sounds. In order to providefurther practice to the beginning readerand speller, phonics lessons could alsoemphasize how sounds are represented byletters. Then the student sees that thesame sound can be spelled in differentways, allowing the student the opportunityto figure out, with teacher guidance, wheneach spelling is used. Explicit instructionduring spelling lessons can also help youngspellers begin to identify patterns in Englishspelling. In typical spelling lessons, wordsare grouped according to word families, inwhich all of the words share the samespellings for part of the word. For example,a teacher may group the words pill, bell,fill, sell and still together in one lesson,pointing out to children that all of these

words end with a double l spelling. Thisword family method is useful in that itprovides students with many words thatshare a particular spelling pattern.However, this method does not explicitlyteach children the situations in which theyshould use ll at the ends of words asopposed to l. Children may assume thatthey must memorize the seemingly unusualspellings. To counteract such tendencies,instruction could be designed to explicitlyshow children that most sounds have morethan one possible spelling and that thereare ways in which one can choose amongthem. Toward this end, for example, words

with final consonants that double, such aspillandstuff, could be presented togetherin one lesson. Another lesson within thesame spelling unit could show words inwhich the same final consonants do notdouble, as inpeel, tool, and roof. Teacherswould then have an opportunity toexplicitly point out to students how thesame final consonant sound can be spelledwith one letter in some cases and withmore than one letter in other cases.Students could then explore and generateideas on when one uses each spelling. Awrap-up lesson at the end of the unit couldinclude a summary list of words that showall of the spelling patterns for a particularsound. This would provide further practicefor students, in that they could see all ofthe possible spelling patterns side-by-sideand explicitly identify when each is used.Thus, teachers can create opportunitiesduring spelling and phonics lessons forstudents to discover the patterns of writtenEnglish. By explicitly pointing out regu-larities in English spelling, teachers canoffer their beginning spellers additionalstrategies beyond rote memorization.

Will more explicit teaching oflanguage patterns benefit students with

dyslexia? Certainly, all children can benefitfrom a more analytical approach toteaching spelling, but the advantages forchildren with dyslexia may be even greaterBecause these children struggle withsound-to-spelling relationships, they mayreceive even more benefit from explicitinstruction than children who are typicareaders and spellers. When children withdyslexia are made aware of regularities inspelling, they are better equipped withtricks and strategies for decipheringseemingly irregular sound-to-spellingrelationships. Spelling in English is notalways a straightforward process, and alspellers can benefit from clues that helpdemystify some of the chaos.

References

Cassar, M., & Treiman, R. (1997). The beginningsof orthographic knowledge: Childrensknowledge of double letters in words

Journal of Educational Psychology, 89631-644.International Phonetic Association. (1999)

Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of thInternational Phonetic Alphabet. CambridgeEngland: Cambridge University Press.

Kessler, B., & Treiman, R. (2001). Relationshipsbetween sounds and letters in Englishmonosyllables. Journal of Memory anLanguage, 44, 592-617.

Kessler, B., & Treiman, R. (2003). Is English spellingchaotic? Misconceptions concerning its irregu-larity. Reading Psychology, 24, 267-289.

Seymour, P. H. K., Aro, M., & Erskine, J. M(2003). Foundation literacy acquisition inEuropean orthographies. British Journal ofPsychology, 94, 143-174.

Treiman, R. (1993). Beginning to spell. NewYork: Oxford University Press.

Treiman, R., Cassar, M., & Zukowski, A. (1994)What types of linguistic information dochildren use in spelling? The case of flaps.Child Development, 65, 1318-1337.

Heather Hayes is a graduate studentin Psychology at Washington University in St.Louis. She has a Masters in Deaf Education,and is a former teacher of children withhearing loss and learning disabilities.

Brett Kessleris a Research Scientist inPsychology at Washington University in St.Louis who has studied the relations between

spoken and printed language in English andother languages.

Rebecca Treiman is Burke andElizabeth High Baker Professor of ChildDevelopmental Psychology and Director ofthe Reading and Language Laboratory atWashington University in St. Louis.

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