Difficulties
with writing and spelling
·
Writing
can be extremely demanding for students because it calls upon many
experimential, cognitive, linguistic, affective and psycho-motor memories and
abilities.
·
Writing
involves lower-order transcription skills and higher-order composing skills.
·
The
problems experienced by weaker writers are compounded by their feelings of
incompetence and lack of success.
·
These
skills need to be taught explicitly. Students must achieve a level of
automaticity in both.
Most
of the progressive schools understand that developing clear and accurate
expression through writing presents major problems for most students with
learning difficulties. Writing language is perhaps the most difficult of all
skills to acquire because its development involves the effective coordination
of many different cognitive, linguistic and psycho-motor processes. Composing
for writing involves complex thinking that must integrate multiple components
including the topic or theme, choice of words, organisation, purpose, audience,
clarity, sequence, cohesion and transcription. Competence in writing in
different genres and for different purposes relies heavily on possession of
adequate vocabulary, knowledge of syntactical structures, and appropriate
strategies for planning, composing, reviewing and revising written language.
The ability to generate ideas and organize appropriate content for writing also
needs some measure of creativity and imagination. Writers also need to be able
to spell the necessary words with some accuracy; and finally, writing requires
fine-motor coordination and automaticity in handwriting or keyboarding.
It is
because writing is a complex skill involving multiple processes and abilities
that problems can arise for some students. There is reason to suppose that the
number of students with writing difficulties is even greater than the number
experiencing difficulties in reading with understanding wisely remark that,
‘Good writing is not only hard work, it is an extremely complex and challenging
mental task’.
Noida
schools with the mixed background of students realize that developing fluency
in writing has been a fundamental aim of education, even if the promise has
never been fully realized. In today’s complex, high technology world, the
importance of writing as a fundamental organizing objective of education is no
less valid or practical. Writing, properly understood, is thought on
paper.Increasingly, in the information age, it is also thought on screen, a
richly elaborated, logically connected amalgam of ideas, words, themes, images
and multimedia designs.
Specific
difficulties with spelling
Specific
difficulties in spelling appear to stem from weaknesses in three main
areas-phonology and phonic skill, visual memory, and the use of spelling
strategies.
Ø Phonological and phonic skills: Spelling the majority of unfamiliar
words requires the application of phonic knowledge. While it is true that not
all words in English language follow a simple sound-to-letter relationship,
there is sufficient phonological information contained within almost all words
to give some clue to their possible spellings. Attending to sounds within a
word is certainly the starting point for spelling. It is often found that
students with spelling difficulties lack phonological awareness and are weak at
segmenting words into component sounds and syllables. There is evidence to
indicate that specific training in phonemic awareness, coupled with explicit
teaching of phonics, has a positive impact on spelling. This is not to suggest
that key to excellent spelling is phonic alone, because other strategies such
as visual imagery are also essential for dealing with irregular words according
to language expert of Best nursery school in
noida.
Ø Visual memory: Even when students do manage to
reach a phonetic stage in spelling they appear unable to move beyond it because
they do not use effective visual strategies to help store image of words and
syllables in their visual memory, or to judge whether a word looks correct or
incorrect after they have written it. The well –known
‘Look-Say-Cover-Write-Check’ method for learning to spell irregular words in
one example of activating visual imagery to help store important words in
memory.
Spelling strategies: There is a wide agreement that instruction in
spelling for students with learning difficulties, while linked closely with
writing for authentic purposes, need to be intense, direct, systematic and
regular. It must also be instruction that promotes better knowledge of the
spelling system and how it operates. Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that
teachers in general are not very effective in exposing students to arrange of
spelling strategies(possibly because they are not aware of them),encouraging
instead mainly rote memorization methods. In major part this must be due to
lack of professional training in the teaching of spelling sums up head of
department of the Schools Near Sector 137 Noida .