Although there has been a good deal of research over the past few decades on how children learn to read, the study of how they learn to spell has been somewhat neglected. The proposed research attempts to redress this neglect and to increase our understanding of spelling and spelling development. The underlying hypothesis is that children bring their existing knowledge and skills to the task of spelling. These include knowledge of the phonological or sound system of the spoken language, familiarity with the names of letters, knowledge of the spelling of the child's own name, knowledge of meaning relations among words, and knowledge of the kinds of letter sequences that do and do not occur in the printed language. Experiments are proposed to examine the effects of each of these kinds of knowledge on beginning spelling. In the experiments, normally-developing children are asked to spell selected words or nonwords and to perform other tasks involving sounds and letters. The experiments involve American children in the preschool and elementary grades, as well as adults in some cases. In some of the studies, the results from American children will be compared to those of British children to examine the effects of dialect and different cultural practices on spelling. The results of this project are expected to shed light on the knowledge that children bring with them to the spelling task. In addition, the results will show what kinds of errors are typical among children of various ages and why these errors occur. These results should help in providing guidelines for those who teach spelling and other literacy-related skills to children in preschool, kindergarten, and the early elementary grades. In addition, by providing important information about normal children's spelling behavior, the results should prove useful in the diagnosis and treatment of children and adults with spelling difficulties.
