STRATEGIES FOR SPELLING IMPROVEMENTS

Learning disabilities can affect persons’ listening, speaking, reading, writing and mathematical skills. Difficulty in writing correct spellings is a problem that comes under written expression. Mostly spelling problems are due to deficiency in perceiving, recalling and sound symbol integration. Observation and interview were used for data collection. After keen observations in classroom and at home, and interviews of teachers, parents and subjects were conducted. Main problems of subjects included the lacking confidence, facing difficulties to adjust in a new school, problems in reading and writing as well, to spell even simple words correctly along with other social and family related problems. Careful observations depicted that subjects had auditory sequential memory deficit. Children with this deficit have difficulty in sound association, hearing and remembering the sounds in correct order. Different spelling strategies were used for improvement of students’ spellings. For example, phoneme grapheme relationship, letter clues, missing letters, mix up letters, highlighted words, spell the words by pictures, syllables, tactile exercise and continuous counseling and motivation. By using these strategies, significant progress was observed in spellings, to relate sounds with alphabets, to spell bit difficult words. The study suggests that students with learning deficits needed some extra attention, parents and teachers should give them quality time and treat with love, care, affection, value and friendship. Teachers and parents should work together for betterment of such children.