[saulrh]

> Learning to spell isn't memorizing lists of words

Funny you should say that in defense of classical methods of teaching literacy, which for me consisted of eight years of memorizing lists of words and regurgitating them on weekly spelling quizzes.

Weekly spelling quizzes. Memorized lists of ten to fifteen words at a time.

All the way into high school.

[remarkEon]

I had the same methods. Ironically I’ve learned more about the English language in attempting to learn (or re-learn) other languages (Spanish, German, French, Latin). So idk, I inclined to buy the argument that teaching the parts of all the systems is a better start than teaching one system at a time, and doing it through brute force memorization.

[onion2k]

Those lists aren't picked at random. They're designed to expose learners to words with letter groups, structures, silent letters, etc they might not encounter otherwise. You learned about spelling by seeing them.

[benhurmarcel]

During primary school I switched to a place that did a weekly dictation. So like every Monday, first thing in the morning was a half-hour of the professor reading a page of text and you handed off your copy of it, you lose one point per mistake basically (out of 20 points, the standard in France).

That helped tremendously with my spelling.

[MandieD]

Ours were thematically grouped, usually by phoneme. For example, I remember that one week in elementary was /hw/ ("what","when","whichever").

I never had to study for spelling, probably because reading was my favorite thing to do. Well, until I had one teacher who tested that we'd memorized the list of words...

Explicitly studying spelling ended after 5th grade (rural elementary school in Texas, late 80s/early 90s)

Spellcheck is a wonderful tool, but relying on it can lead to embarrassing results. I would not want the kids in my life using it until they have their own grasp of spelling.