Spelling woes in the UK

January 19, 2004

Question: What word in the English language is most often spelled incorrectly? (Answer at the end of this article)

"Creative and inventive spelling have taken a toll on students," says Education News, who pointed us to this BBC article on the challenges students are having with spelling.

In the United Kingdom, only 75% of 11-year olds passed the spelling, reading, and writing tests, and folks are becoming concerned. One area of interest is the fairly new national literacy strategy instituted recently, which reminds us of any number of top-down reforms here in the U.S. But should teachers toe the line?
From the BBC article:

David Hart, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: "I think that, rather than concentrating on whether schools are actually slavishly following the literacy strategy, we want to make sure that teachers are doing what they were traditionally doing before the literacy strategy was ever invented - namely, making sure their children can spell properly before they leave primary school.

(Emphasis ours.) Here in America, we have the "traditionalists"--who teach explicit phonics and actually correct students' spelling mistakes to ensure they become better spellers--and the Whole Language proponents, who say that phonics and spelling harm children in ways not fully understood (but they're working on it).

Thus was born "invented spelling," an enabling term for not correcting children's attempts at written language. When we say enabling, we mean the negative connotation, as in "Josh's coworkers covered for him at work, enabling him not to have to deal with his drinking problem."

Invented Spelling enables children not to deal with their spelling problems.

The BBC article has a quiz of words 11-year olds got incorrect. (When you take it, scroll down to the bottom of the article to see your results.) Maybe you can do as well as we did:

You got 8 right! Well done. You're now good enough to start secondary school.

We're feeling pretty proud of ourselves right now.

And the English word which is most often spelled incorrectly? That would be the word incorrectly, but only thanks to the people who can spell.