That Spelling Thing

This last post sounds like it's only for linguists but I'm also interested in evidence from non-linguists for teaching 'nasalized a'. When I saw 'nasalized a' mentioned in a science of reading group I thought it must have been a random and outlying post, but it turns out it's actually a thing that people are teaching children and I can't find any evidence in support of doing it.

🟣Question 3: Could someone please provide a minimal pair where nasalised a and non-nasalised a (/æ̃/ and /æ/) are contrastive? See explanation below.

The following information can be found in any basic linguistics text book. (See attached for one example.)
Ready?
Nasalisation of vowels is something we do naturally before /m/, /n/ and /ng/ and it is stronger in some accents than others. You bring nasalisation to words without needing to be taught and it does not change one phoneme into another.

Variation in place and manner of articulation (where in the mouth and how we make the sound) do create separate phonemes. The test is to find a minimal pair of words where only one sound is different, resulting in a word with a different meaning.

🟣 The minimal pair test.
If nazalization creates a minimal pair then there is reason to mention it in the context of reading and spelling. If it doesn't create a minimal pair, then there is no reason for its inclusion in a literacy program.

/bɪn/ /dɪn/ ✔️yes, a minimal pair
/b/ and /d/ in bin and din differ by place of articulation and that difference creates two words with different meanings. (/b/ is a voiced bilabial plosive and /d/ is an voiced alveolar plosive.)

/bɪn/ /bʌn/ ✔️yes, a minimal pair
/ɪ/ and /ʌ/ in bin and bun differ only in their vowels which are more complex to describe than consonants. Basically, /ɪ/ is a high front vowel and /ʌ/ is a mid central vowel. The difference creates different words.

/bæt/ /bæ̃t/ ✖️not a minimal pair
These words are both 'bat', both pronounced with low front vowels. The first is said naturally without a nasalised vowel because of the following /t/ and the second is said with a nasalised vowel. The second will sound perhaps a bit 'New York' but it is still referring to a flying nocturnal creature.

/bæ̃n/ /bæn/ ✖️not a minimal pair
These words are both 'ban', both pronounced with low front vowels. The first has a naturally nasalised /a/ because it's followed by a nasal consonant. The second has a non-nasalised vowel and you might sound a little more Canadian, but it's still the word 'can'.

To summarise - nasalization is a feature of pronunciation that doesn't change the meaning or spelling of a word so has no place literacy instruction.
Speech to print cuts out so many unnecessary rules!

Summer spelling series on things I’ve seen on social media that I can’t find evidence for in my own language and linguistics books.
Question 2 is a quiz (yay!):
🟢Yes, no or maybe for each of the 4 statements on the photo .
🟢State your answers if you want and check back later for mine.
🟢Include sources to support your answer.

My answers are 1. Yes, 2. Yes, 3. Yes, 4. Maybe.
Explained in a blog post on That Spelling Thing:
https://thatspellingthing.com/pt-and-eo-graphemes-morphemes-etymology/

Summer spelling series
Question 1:
True, false or somewhere in between?
Does the final 'silent' in words like house, moose, because exist to remind people it is not a plural or a 3rd person singular?

Answer and blog post: https://thatspellingthing.com/plural-cancelling-silent-e/

I'm in my summer study mode looking for the sources of some of the spelling information I'm seeing on the web and social media. I'm doing an ad hoc (ie no promises on regularity) series raising questions about language claims that I can't find in my own library (see below).

🟡Question 1: Is there such a thing as 'plural cancelling e'? I answer with practical solutions for students who write 'I ran 10 lapse' or 'I brows in shops'. https://thatspellingthing.com/plural-cancelling-silent-e/

🟢Question 2 : I a grapheme or part of a morpheme? Is a grapheme or an etymological marker? https://thatspellingthing.com/pt-and-eo-graphemes-morphemes-etymology/

🟠Question 3 Why teach 'nasalized a'? In search of a minimal pair.

Following is a list of the books/sites I use most when researching words and spelling.
💻OED online (£$Paywall)* I start here then dig deeper with the others.
📕Origins of the English Language (J.M. Williams, The Free Press,1975.)
📘Dictionary of the British English Spelling System (Greg Brooks, Open Book ,2015.)
📙Word Parts Dictionary (Michael J. Sheehan, McFarland & Co, 2021.)
📖 Currently working my way through the massive/rich, A History of the English Language (Edited by R. Hogg and D. Denison, Cambridge, 2006)
📕(new to me bought used from Abebooks for under £5) Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language (David Crystal, Cambridge University Press, 2005)
📗For general linguistics: An Introduction to Language 10th Ed. (Fromkin, Rodman, Hyams, Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2014.)
I also own the 2nd ed from 1978 - the UBC Linguistics 100 textbook that started me down this path. 💟
*The paid version is great value per use if it’s a tool of your trade, but you can also get a lot of the same information from the free online resources: Etymonline, Wiktionary, Collins online dictionary and the books: Oxford Dictionary of Etymology and The Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins.

New blog post: 7 steps to teaching a struggler how to spell 'entrepreneur'. Challenging but not impossible!
https://thatspellingthing.com/spelling-entrepreneur/

The world really is a small place. Tricia Millar of That Reading Thing presents at the Accelerate Literacy Summit from a country that is not her home town, someone in another country participates, and a photo of a blog post I wrote detailing how I work with spelling finds its way back to me. It offers a lovely moment to reflect.

Every student I see differs in how they understand and approach spelling. Yes, they have neurological differences which interfere with how some of the brain areas associated with reading and spelling operate, BUT they have also been taught via differing approaches (which makes a difference), AND how they interpret what teachers say is personal i.e. approaches are supposed to yield certain results, but no external person can control how each child internally interprets what is said and done. Errors in spelling accuracy have no meaning unless the observer is able to interpret and work with what is going on. A red pen or an out of context comment are not benign.

'Bossy e' for example. If a child is told that a word is incorrect because they 'forgot' the 'bossy e' often what surfaces after that is more errors than corrections. 'Bossy e' has no logic. There is no steadfast rule. The children gifted with neurological strengths that make spelling easy have no trouble - they often don't need teaching so what the teacher says doesn't make a difference. But for the rest, the language that is used to explain how words work makes a big difference. If not used to reflect logic and reality, some children think that if they wave the 'bossy e' wand over multiple words they will have more success.

Children (and parents) rarely understand that spelling is simple - listen for the sounds in a word and represent them as best you can in the order in which they occur in the word. This is how Shakespeare wrote. Children and adults usually do not understand this - even when they have received classroom linguistic phonics. The simple logic of how words work just hasn't sunk in - even though they have worked through a significant amount of the code used to spell sounds.

As a specialist tutor working one on one I get to see the influence of neurology, teaching, and what the child has comprehended about what has been taught and about themselves. It is tough watching little shoulders heaving with tears because they just want to get their work right - and don't understand how to do that.

All spelling in classrooms needs to work with how words work. I would ban spelling tests - but find creative ways for students to monitor their incremental progress with words in their writing. (When young, my daughter wrote 'dorta' in her cards, then 'dorter', the finally 'daughter'. This is how spelling accuracy should develop for everyone. Get the sounds right and then focus on sound spelling accuracy in words you wish to use.) Teachers need to model and integrate how words work in all their teaching. Use the sounds in words to write them. Which sounds are students unsure of? Have the class respond with what they will use to spell the tricky sound. Call for other words with the same spelling of that sound. What are some of the creative ways students keep it in their head? Is it a word they want to add to their personalised spelling work bank?

Thank you Tricia for consistent language in how to work with spelling. Children are imploding with shame they incorrectly associate with themselves and parents are dealing with the emotional fallout at the end of each school day. No wonder school refusal is on the increase. Surely we can do better with the language with which we talk about language - words - the one consistent variable across all subjects, so that the brains of all students pick up the logic that their neurologically endowed peers innately know; so that working with spellings of sounds is fun and collaborative; and so that incremental improvement that acknowledges developmental variation is celebrated.

You can still get a free ticket for this marvellous event! If you can’t watch live, the free ticket lets you watch within 24 hours.
I’m on today at 5pm UK time. See you there! https://2024.sllsummit.com/?sc=jEm54lnw&ac=nvkiS0ie

Accelerate Literacy: A Structured Linguistic Literacy Summit ACCELERATING OUTCOMES WITH STRUCTURED LINGUISTIC LITERACY

Have you got your free ticket? So many speakers!
I'll be talking about laying a brilliant foundation for spelling and what else we might need besides syllables, sounds and graphemes in order to support memory.

Accelerate Literacy: A Structured Linguistic Literacy Summit ACCELERATING OUTCOMES WITH STRUCTURED LINGUISTIC LITERACY

𝗤𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: How would you syllabify 'occasionally' if you were trying to build visual recognition of common affixes? I was going to syllabify it as o cca sion a lly, but then I realised I could syllabify as occ a sion a lly - which then might translate to easier recognition with occurrence, occupy, occult, occupant.

𝗟𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝘀𝘄𝗲𝗿: The first thing I would do is strip it back to ‘occasion’ because it allows you to deal with the tricky bits and then add the affixes which, in this case, are straightforward.

Some might suggest looking at the historic root and affixes, arguing that it's morphologically oc/cas/ion. is the spelling of 'ob' before a c and means (from the Collins Dictionary):
𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑂𝑙𝑑 𝐹𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑐ℎ, 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝐿𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛 𝑜𝑏. 𝐼𝑛 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑑𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝐿𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛 𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑛, 𝑜𝑏- (𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑜𝑐-, 𝑜𝑓-, 𝑜𝑝-) 𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑠:
• 𝑡𝑜, 𝑡𝑜𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑠 (𝑜𝑏𝑗𝑒𝑐𝑡);
• 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑡 (𝑜𝑝𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑒);
• 𝑎𝑤𝑎𝑦 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 (𝑜𝑏𝑠𝑜𝑙𝑒𝑡𝑒);
• 𝑏𝑒𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒 (𝑜𝑏𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑐);
• 𝑑𝑜𝑤𝑛, 𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟 (𝑜𝑏𝑡𝑒𝑐𝑡);
• 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑜𝑓 (𝑜𝑏𝑠𝑒𝑐𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒);
• 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑠 𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑠 𝑎𝑛 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑒𝑟 (𝑜𝑏𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔)

The Oxford Learner’s Dictionary says:
𝑊𝑜𝑟𝑑 𝑂𝑟𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑛
𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑀𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑙𝑒 𝐸𝑛𝑔𝑙𝑖𝑠ℎ: 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝐿𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛 𝑜𝑐𝑐𝑎𝑠𝑖𝑜(𝑛-) ‘𝑗𝑢𝑛𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒, 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑜𝑛’, 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑜𝑐𝑐𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑒 ‘𝑔𝑜 𝑑𝑜𝑤𝑛, 𝑠𝑒𝑡’, 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑜𝑏- ‘𝑡𝑜𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑠’ + 𝑐𝑎𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑒 ‘𝑡𝑜 𝑓𝑎𝑙𝑙’.

When a historic affix (ob-) has multiple meanings, some of which can mean completely opposite things like ‘towards’ and ‘away from’, I'd say it’s better to teach the word as a whole.
Likewise, when the meaning of historic morphemes is hard to connect with the current meaning, like occasion coming from ‘towards’ + ‘to fall’, then it’s better to teach the word as a whole.

If our students understand what it means when we say ‘there’s a special occasion coming up’ or that, ‘on this occasion’, something is allowed, then they know enough about the meaning of the word.

So, we’ll start with spoken syllables and listening for the sounds.
Common words that start are:
occasion
occur
occupy
occupant
occupation
occult
Others?
The only common-ish word I can find with similar pattern but a single c is:
ocular, but do suggest others.

So how to remember occasion? I prefer:
o (short 'o')
cca ('kay)
sion (with the voice zh sound).

Then we have
o-ccur
o-ccult
o-ccu-py
o-ccu-pant
o-ccu-pa-tion

Now we can get to the modern affixes because these are useful and not nearly so ambiguous and hard on memory as the historic morphemes.

So, start with ‘occasion’ and now talk about ‘occasional’. Except when discussing tables (I’m old) this might not be so common. ‘I make the occasional spelling error.’ It’s hard to use ‘occasional’ without turning it into ‘occasionally’!

However, I want to pause here because there’s a trustworthy spelling pattern for you to explore. Here’s the table from That Spelling Thing that sums up my research (of the internet variety) into the spelling of what sounds like ‘le’ after a tion, sion or ssion ending. The answer was that 100% of more than 350 words with this pattern were spelt . (see photo)


0 300 0 0 0
0 32 0 0 0
0 27 0 0 0

And now we’re ready to get to ‘occasionally’. This is where I’m happy to split a grapheme because -ly is meaningful and fairly trustworthy, often added to a word with no changes. If we don’t do this, then we add another double letter to remember instead of just the one in ‘occasion’. As always, we’re deciding which strategy has the lightest burden on memory.
In this case, I think it’s:
• Syllables o/cca/sion
• Tricky bit is probably the cc
• Bundle it with occur, occult, occupy, occupant, occupation
• Then adding -al – always spelt this way after tion/sion/ssion
• Then add -ly – the friendly affix.

Sounds like a long process but it would probably take only a few minutes.
If you want to extend the lesson, go back to the occ words and look at what you can add to them. Search for ‘words containing occup’, ‘words containing occult’ or ‘words containing occur’ and see what thefreedictionary.com comes up with.
This is what it looks like when word study arises from a question about a single word and grows into a spelling and vocabulary lesson.
Enjoy!

That Spelling Thing, 3rd Edition is available from Amazon wherever you are!

Research into the outcomes of teaching historical morphemes.

EDIT: For discussion purposes, I'm only looking for research, either peer reviewed or practioner led, that discusses the outcomes of teaching historic roots. This isn't a polarised 'morphology: yea or nay' conversation and I apologise in advance for not commenting on personal experience. I'm just trying to source research on this very narrow topic. To see what I mean, read the 2016 Crosson paper listed below. Thanks!

*****
I've been on a quest for research about the outcomes of teaching historic morphemes like 're-main-ed' rather than the purely derivational 'remain-ed' and I’ve found a few papers. Dr Amy Crosson and colleagues have been doing a lot of work on this over the past few years. Most of the papers are about teaching Latin roots to English language learners, but there is one (2016) about the same activity with middle schoolers (top of the list below).
Was my question answered? I'll continue to consider all of this, and I hope others are open to conversation, but the research, though thought-provoking, doesn't present enough evidence to make me change my current advice to limit teaching to noticing roots that are as obvious and unambiguous as possible so that we can increase vocabulary a few words at a time. (i.e 'hierarchy' or 'definite' in That Spelling Thing or 'physiology' and 'psychology' in the attached photo.)

1. Crosson, A.C. and McKeown, M.G. (2016) ‘Middle school learners’ use of Latin roots to infer the meaning of unfamiliar words’, Cognition and Instruction, 34(2), pp. 148–171. doi:10.1080/07370008.2016.1145121.https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED577098.pdf
2. Crosson, A.C. and Moore, D. (2017) ‘When to take up roots: The effects of morphology instruction for middle school and high school English learners’, Reading Psychology, 38(3), pp. 262–288. doi:10.1080/02702711.2016.1263699.https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED598548.pdf
3. Crosson, A.C. et al. (2018) ‘Extending the bounds of morphology instruction: Teaching Latin roots facilitates academic word learning for English learner adolescents’, Reading and Writing, 32(3), pp. 689–727. doi:10.1007/s11145-018-9885-y.https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED598589.pdf
4. McKeown MG. Effective Vocabulary Instruction Fosters Knowing Words, Using Words, and Understanding How Words Work. Lang Speech Hear Serv Sch. 2019 Oct 10;50(4):466-476. doi: 10.1044/2019_LSHSS-VOIA-18-0126. Epub 2019 Oct 10. PMID: 31600467; PMCID: PMC8753997.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8753997/
5. Crosson, A.C. et al. (2020) ‘Morphological analysis skill and academic vocabulary knowledge are malleable through intervention and may contribute to reading comprehension for multilingual adolescents’, Journal of Research in Reading, 44(1), pp. 154–174. doi:10.1111/1467-9817.12323.https://ukla.org/wp-content/uploads/Crosson.pdf
Other papers
6. This one is a helpful guide to the levels of morphology teaching. About English language learners but was helpful for organising my thoughts about where I currently want to draw a line.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347274166_The_Role_of_Morphology_in_English_Vocabulary_Teaching
7. And it's good to be reminded about morphology matrices from Ng, Bowers & Bowers.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0262260

Why yes, that is the 3rd edition of That Spelling Thing lounging on my desk. Available now from Amazon!

The book is currently out of stock. It will be available on Amazon print on demand in the not too distance future.

Both knowledge and wisdom from The Reading Coach. Georgina answers a parent's question, "What do I do if my child can't remember how to spell feel or meal?"

My Grade 6 Child Can’t Spell ‘feel’ Or ‘meal’, and instead writes ‘feal’ and ‘meel’. As a parent, what can I do? This is a common scenario with poor spellers. As most sounds in the English language…

❤ Show a little half term love. ❤ (UK only)
https://thatspellingthing.com/that-spelling-thing-shop/

This goes for TST as much as TRT.

It's not an easy time to be a teacher, yet every one who has been in touch recently has been polite, patient, gracious, grateful & often funny - even when emailing a query from their covid sickbed or wondering where their resources have got to. Thank you for making my job a joy!

Why is look/cover/write/check a poor spelling strategy? Because words are much more than strings of letters names. Using syllables, sounds, graphemes and 'everyday morphology' supports memory for everyone and works to expand vocabulary which leads to improved reading comprehension.
Don't accept that spelling is just memorizing letter names in the right order. Instead, learn how to approach spelling in general and the rest will follow.
https://thatspellingthing.com/everyday-spelling-in-ks2-secondary-post-16/

Thrilled that our August book offer raised £360 for DiPPs4James. Thank you all. If you missed the sale but would like to make a donation to this little charity with big heart, please contact them directly. Putting defibrillators in public spaces. https://www.facebook.com/dipps4james

Sometimes 'evidence informed' is as simple as checking the dictionary. A new post on a spelling rule that simply doesn't work.
https://thatspellingthing.com/evidence-informed-spelling/

This is as important for spelling as for reading.

I see that the old 'ghoti spells fish' chestnut is once again being trotted out as proof that 'phonics doesn't work'. My response? Stop creating barriers for our most vulnerable learners. Repeating the misinformation that
'English is not phonetic' is a disservice to our teen and adult literacy learners. Phonics is not an all or nothing proposition. It doesn't require traditionalist teaching and it is liberating for people who have experienced years of feeling like failures for not being able to read and spell like everyone else.
https://thatreadingthing.com/ghoti-fish-no-it-does-not/

I try to dwell on the positive but please stop using the 'words within words' spelling strategy (or 'toxic morphology' as I call it).
It is *so* hard on learner memory. There is no cat in location -
or hen in then or ache in teacher. Let's improve spelling in a way that makes the most of the precious memory students bring to the task.

For those asking for more information on 'shun' endings, look here: https://thatspellingthing.com/tion-sion-ssion-cion-cian/

It's spelling central around here this week with CPD for a large high school in England, a one-to-one support session with an adult in the USA (I don't usually do this but it's fun!) and a small workshop for English teachers in Ireland this Friday. So here's a rerun of my series on using mnemonics for spelling. My take? Ban anything that involves sentences representing letters and use even good mnemonics as a strategy of last resort.
https://thatspellingthing.com/spelling-mnemonics/

quit quite quiet - taming this anxiety producing trio by using ears as well as eyes.