Robert Shaw
A remarkable number of New Zealand students arrive in tertiary education unable to spell with confidence. I do not mean they make spelling mistakes in their submitted work, but rather that they are always uncertain and have to keep checking on particular words. Rightly, they rely greatly on the spell checkers in their word processors. This lack of confidence, however, can pervade all their written work for it becomes related to language generally.
If you are one of these students you will be suprised to learn that the problem is easily fixed. For those interested in education and learning, the nature of the investigation that leads to the solution is phenomenology and hermeneutics, but I will not go into that here. However, I will provide a hint at the sort of thinking that leads to the solution.
You can see the way to the solution by considering how you work with the spelling correction facility in a word processor. For example, in Microsoft Word. When you spell a word incorrectly the program highlights it for you. You then consider a list of alternative spellings and select the right one. You select it on the basis of how the word looks. Notice that you do not select it on the bais of how the word sounds.
When you read you interpret what is there to be interpreted - text on the page. That is the nature of communication by print. It is quite different from communication by speaking and listening. Yet when we learn "language" we assume it is all the same thing. Learning to hear and speak are primordial skills for human beings, whilst learning about text is a new trick for our species. It is a different trick.
If you are a student who has trouble spelling: Stop trying to sound out words and start looking at them. You have to learn to rely on your visual memory of what particular words look like. For generations New Zealand school children have been taught in schools to "sound out" words or listen to words. In fact, when you write you are actually writing. It is a visual business - you look at the page the same as you are looking at these words right now.
You can practice the skill of looking at words when you drive around - look at street signs. Notice the patterns in the written word - how the word can be broken up in to parts. The list of parts is quite long in English, but you will come to remember them if you try to remember how they look. So for words from now on - look at each and every one and visualise it. To practice close your eyes and see the word in the "minds-eye".
Work on this in your spare moments, and you will become a good speller.