Under a Spell

Shaughnessy's chapter on spelling in Errors and Expectations was very helpful to me in some ways (160-86). I was always a very good speller when I was a child. I think I am still pretty strong at spelling today. The chapter on spelling was helpful to me to understand the problems others have that I am often confused how they make those mistakes.
I had never actually thought about there being so many reasons behind spelling errors. Even if I had thought about it I am sure I would not have realized there were so many reasons behind misspelling. For example, the "kinesthetic encounters" possibility for problems is something I would probably have not thought of, but it makes sense (Shaughnessy 161). I have that problem sometimes in a certain way, because I sometimes write (or even type) so fast letters are left off of words. I also leave words out when handwriting quickly. I also thought that all the various charts provided were a good thing to include (Shaughnessy 166-80). I am also very appreciative she gave corresponding solutions for the different kinds of problems (175-85). It is nice to have suggestions to have a place to at least start from when facing misspellings. It can be rather annoying when books tell you everything that is wrong without any mention for remedies. Also I was glad the charts had phonemes and graphemes in them. It was nice to have a little review of that. It has been a while since my Intro to Linguistics course.
It would be interesting to see what a more recent book would have to say about spelling and basic writing students, given the tool of spell check. However, overall I found this chapter and our work on the very b-e-n-e-f-i-c-i-a-l.

Works Cited

Shaughnessy, Mina P. Errors and Expectations. New York: Oxford UP, 1977.