Before you decide to hire a tutor to teach spelling to your child, first consider the benefits of getting a spelling list program instead.
Tutorial fees can cost an arm and a leg these days, and the other downside is that if you have two or more kids who need to polish their spelling skills, you can't stiff a tutor and have him train two for the price of one.
There are parents who have qualms about purchasing a spelling list program for their kids, and understandably so. They've seen how their children's time is wasted playing computer games or surfing through social networks such as Facebook or MySpace.
However, if you can direct this interest in computers to something as constructive as teaching spelling, why should you think twice about investing in a good computer spelling program?
Many people born during the time of the weekly Dolch spelling lists – way before any spelling list program was invented – remember only too well that Friday was usually spelling test day.
But students in those days, even if they had very vague ideas of what the words meant, had to accept them all hook, line, and sinker.
Andrea Ickes-Dunbar, a former teacher and herself a self-confessed good speller, after seeing that her son – though literate and verbally adept – was not an outstanding speller, realized that 'spelling ability, or lack of it, did not necessarily correlate to intelligence' (Dunbar, 2006).
Fast forward to today's high-tech age, where ICT is banked on to assist in the development of writing skills; spelling included.
In a study of students with special needs, it was found that:
- "writing software helped all the students in at least one area of writing...four of the students improved in all four areas – number of words, reduced number of misspellings, accuracy percentage, and total rubric score" (Cullen, et al. 2008).
Even children without learning disabilities stand to benefit from computer software that keep them engaged and are sure to satisfy their many questions about the words on their lists.
With a spelling list program such as the popular Ultimate Spelling software, word lists are still used, but with a twist.
The spelling lists are classified into progressive levels, and a user can create his or her own list of problem words to hasten mastery.
The Ultimate Spelling software can keep track of the words that have already been mastered, and automatically removes these from the tests. That way, time is saved as the user would merely have to focus on words he or she really needs to know.
References:
Cullen, et al. 2008, 'Using software to enhance the writing skills of students with special needs', Journal of Special Education Technology, vol. 23, no. 2, p. 33.
Ickes-Dunbar, A 2006, 'Does Spelling Count?' Phi Kappa Phi Forum, vol. 86, no. 1.