Poor Reading Related to Bad English Spelling, Study Says

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By SLJ Staff -- School Library Journal, 6/9/2008 2:05:00 PM

Don’t blame kids for having a hard time reading. Blame the English spelling system, says a new study.

Words like foreign, rhinoceros, vomit, tourist, heaven, spinach, ghastly, and tongue are among a long list of words that confuse children because they contain letter combinations that are more commonly pronounced in different ways, says “The Most Costly English Spellings,” which was presented last week at a conference of the Spelling Society, held at Coventry University in the U.K.

Masha Bell, the literacy researcher who carried out the work, says there are 200 words on the list that could be improved by simply dropping 'surplus letters' such as the 'i' in friend or the 'u' in shoulder, reports the Observer.  

“English has an absolutely, unspeakably awful spelling system,” says Bell, a former English teacher and author of the book Understanding English Spelling (Pegasus, 2004). “It is the worst of all the alphabetical languages. It is unique in that there are not just spelling problems but reading problems. They do not exist anywhere else.”

Bell’s research highlights words that have the same pronunciation but different letter combinations such as to and two; clean and gene; same and aim; day and grey; kite and light; and stole and coal, the Observer says. 

Then there are those that look alike but sound different with the combinations of 'ea', 'ee' and the letter 'o' causing most trouble. Among the words falling into that category are eight and height, and move and post. The letters 'ough' can also be pronounced in a number of different ways. Simplifying the system would transform literacy results, but change is hard to come by, says Bell.