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Why do you think students will better learn to spell without spellcheck? As far as I can tell spending class time on spelling per se and/or grading students on

Why do you think students will better learn to spell without spellcheck? As far as I can tell spending class time on spelling per se and/or grading students on spelling mistakes is a complete waste of time and focus. The ideal way to teach spelling is (1) get kids to read a whole lot, (2) show students their mistakes in context when they make them on as short a feedback loop as possible, without judgment. It’s plausible that showing that a mistake was made but then forcing the student to retype or rewrite the word correctly (without letting them just click once on the word to fix the mistake) would be more effective. But I have seen no evidence that spellcheck reduces people’s ability to learn spelling. I’d like to see some kind of formal study. Disclaimer: I think giving every 1st grade student a chromebook is a terrible mistake.

OnlineGladiator 7y ago
I don't have studies, but the idea is they never have to learn it because the computer just does it for them. So why bother? It's anecdotal, but growing up the students who relied on their calculators never really learned to do mental math the same. The difference was palpable. But I'm not a formal teacher or expert when it comes to the psychology of learning, so I also welcome studies on this subject.
- jacobolus 7y ago
  Spellcheck is not like a handheld electronic calculator. It doesn’t write for you. It’s more like a system that would let you practice doing arithmetic with pen and paper but then immediately show errors. Look at how people practice board games nowadays: they try making their own moves but get a precise computer analysis to reveal when they have made a blunder on the spot, for real-time feedback. This is not the same as just watching the computer play against itself.
  - OnlineGladiator 7y ago
    You're thinking of it as a pedagological tool. I'm thinking of it as a crutch. The truth is in-between and will vary from person to person, but I'd bet money most people lean on it more than they learn from it.
    - ses1984 7y ago
      But does developing your spelling actually matter? Maybe being able to spell perfectly is about as useful a skill as putting shoes on a horse or chipping a piece of stone into an arrowhead. What if 100% of the time that s devoted to spelling was devoted to something else, like just reading?
      - OnlineGladiator 7y ago
        > But does developing your spelling actually matter? I don't think it does. I think it's similar to how people used to lament the loss of the bard who'd memorize songs/stories as reading became increasingly popular. I was just responding on how it changes how we think. I do think mental math matters, but most people disagree so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
        Mirioron 7y ago
        I also think mental math matters, but I think that people who end up using simple math a lot will simply pick up the ability to do mental math as necessary.
  - imron 7y ago
    > It doesn’t write for you. Modern ones kind of do - for example, gmail's spell checker now comes with predictive input.
grawprog 7y ago
>The ideal way to teach spelling is (1) get kids to read a whole lot, (2) show students their mistakes in context when they make them on as short a feedback loop as possible, without judgment. I'm not sure I agree with this. This doesn't teach the fundamentals and rules of how words are put together. Learning to spell isn't memorizing lists of words, it's learning the rules of English and how words are actually put together so, even if you don't know how a word's spelled, you should be able to at least be able to make a good guess based on your knowledge of English. The spell checker doesn't teach you any of this.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- jacobolus 7y ago
  People don’t learn the “rules of English” through explicit instruction. They learn them through years (decades) of exposure. Anecdotally, the main predictor of how good someone’s spelling will be is how much reading they have done.
  - filoleg 7y ago
    >Anecdotally, the main predictor of how good someone’s spelling will be is how much reading they have done. Agreed, but it doesn't just have to be books. My personal example: in my native language, I read tons of books as a child, which was what gave me a strong edge when it comes to spelling/grammar. I got into learning english in my late teens, and, by that time, I wasn't as much into reading long-form books as I was into reading random things on the internet. I would say my grammar/spelling is on about the same level in english as it is in my native language, at the moment. In both cases, however, I can easily attribute it to consuming a lot of reading material that gave me some kind of intuition for the correct spelling/grammar. I don't remember explicit grammar rules for either language. In case of my native one, I never really learned the rules in the first place, as I had trouble memorizing those, and the rules felt forced and arbitrary with tons of exceptions to each of them. I just know that something feels "right" or "wrong", simply because of tons of reading that settled down in my head.
catalogia 7y ago
I generally think that the sort of knowledge best learned with flash cards is probably knowledge not memorizing in the first place, with the truth of this being proportional to the size of the dataset being learned. For sets in the neighborhood of 200 or less, I don't think it's a big problem. Chemistry classes asking you to memorize the mapping of element names ⟷ element symbols seems okay. But memorizing the spelling of several hundred to thousands of words? That seems like a job for a machine.
johnchristopher 7y ago
https://www.bbc.com/news/education-18158665 https://www.bbc.com/news/education-18158665 N=1: I feel like - and I am 99% certain - that my grammatical and spelling skills have decreased since I started using the internet heavily.
- filoleg 7y ago
  I think it heavily depends on the kind of content you are consuming. I know it is anecdata, but my personal grammar and spelling skills went all the way up since I started using internet heavily (which was very noticeable to me, since english isn't my native language). And while I use a lot of incorrect grammar and spelling when talking to friends, I usually do it out of convenience (to shorten words, etc.), not because I don't know the proper grammar/spelling.
  - isodude 7y ago
    I would like to make the argument that reading/writing HN have made my English a bit better in recent years.
  - johnchristopher 7y ago
    English isn't my first language. Yet, I believe my english grammar is getting worse even if I read a lot of English everyday. I blame this on globish though and the fact that it's relatively rare to get corrected on grammar mistakes around here.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  On the other hand, the internet pretty much taught me English. Sure, we had English classes in school, but the internet gave me an immense amount of practical experience. Most of my peers, particularly those who didn't use the internet, finished school with significantly worse English than I did. Spell-checking has been pretty useful, but probably not vital.
mattnewton 7y ago
To play devils advocate here, I have always been a terrible speller and it doesn't affect me because all surfaces I use have spell check. Occassionally I will butcher something so bad I confuse the spell checker and Google it, but those are so few and far between I don't feel like I missed out memorizing list after list of arbitrary word roots and remembering if this is loaned from greek, a romance language like french, or old german.
WalterBright 7y ago
> I have seen no evidence that spellcheck reduces people’s ability to learn spelling. Spellcheck has shown me that I've been misspelling certain words forever :-)
gvjddbnvdrbv 7y ago
> The ideal way to teach spelling is (1) get kids to read a whole lot, (2) show students their mistakes in context when they make them on as short a feedback loop as possible, without judgment. Speaking as a dyslexic person this is garbage. Learning to spell required weekly word lists, spelling tests and hours of study. The memory skills this built have seriously helped me in my life.
- thayne 7y ago
  This hints at the biggest problem with our education system. Different children learn in different ways. Word lists and spelling tests may have been effective for you, but they weren't for me (reading hundreds of books otoh did improve my spelling). Unfortunately, I don't really have a practical solution.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
    ISTR there is no scientific basis for “children learn in different ways”. If a child has dyslexia or something like that, sure, that can affect things, but good teaching strategies should work for the vast majority of children.
    - thayne 7y ago
      I'm not referencing the different learning styles ("auditory", "visual", "kinesthetic", etc.). I'm saying different people have different strengths and weaknesses and that effects how you learn. > good teaching strategies should work for the vast majority of children In my experience, good teaching strategies usually includes teaching the same thing in a variety of different ways, so that hopefully at least one of the ways is effective for each student.
  - BlueTemplar 7y ago
    It's kind of obvious: teach different children differently? Classes with large numbers of children should probably be rare.

OnlineGladiator 7y ago

I don't have studies, but the idea is they never have to learn it because the computer just does it for them. So why bother? It's anecdotal, but growing up the students who relied on their calculators never really learned to do mental math the same. The difference was palpable. But I'm not a formal teacher or expert when it comes to the psychology of learning, so I also welcome studies on this subject.

jacobolus 7y ago
Spellcheck is not like a handheld electronic calculator. It doesn’t write for you. It’s more like a system that would let you practice doing arithmetic with pen and paper but then immediately show errors. Look at how people practice board games nowadays: they try making their own moves but get a precise computer analysis to reveal when they have made a blunder on the spot, for real-time feedback. This is not the same as just watching the computer play against itself.
- OnlineGladiator 7y ago
  You're thinking of it as a pedagological tool. I'm thinking of it as a crutch. The truth is in-between and will vary from person to person, but I'd bet money most people lean on it more than they learn from it.
  - ses1984 7y ago
    But does developing your spelling actually matter? Maybe being able to spell perfectly is about as useful a skill as putting shoes on a horse or chipping a piece of stone into an arrowhead. What if 100% of the time that s devoted to spelling was devoted to something else, like just reading?
    - OnlineGladiator 7y ago
      > But does developing your spelling actually matter? I don't think it does. I think it's similar to how people used to lament the loss of the bard who'd memorize songs/stories as reading became increasingly popular. I was just responding on how it changes how we think. I do think mental math matters, but most people disagree so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
      - Mirioron 7y ago
        I also think mental math matters, but I think that people who end up using simple math a lot will simply pick up the ability to do mental math as necessary.
- imron 7y ago
  > It doesn’t write for you. Modern ones kind of do - for example, gmail's spell checker now comes with predictive input.

grawprog 7y ago

>The ideal way to teach spelling is (1) get kids to read a whole lot, (2) show students their mistakes in context when they make them on as short a feedback loop as possible, without judgment. I'm not sure I agree with this. This doesn't teach the fundamentals and rules of how words are put together. Learning to spell isn't memorizing lists of words, it's learning the rules of English and how words are actually put together so, even if you don't know how a word's spelled, you should be able to at least be able to make a good guess based on your knowledge of English. The spell checker doesn't teach you any of this.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jacobolus 7y ago
People don’t learn the “rules of English” through explicit instruction. They learn them through years (decades) of exposure. Anecdotally, the main predictor of how good someone’s spelling will be is how much reading they have done.
- filoleg 7y ago
  >Anecdotally, the main predictor of how good someone’s spelling will be is how much reading they have done. Agreed, but it doesn't just have to be books. My personal example: in my native language, I read tons of books as a child, which was what gave me a strong edge when it comes to spelling/grammar. I got into learning english in my late teens, and, by that time, I wasn't as much into reading long-form books as I was into reading random things on the internet. I would say my grammar/spelling is on about the same level in english as it is in my native language, at the moment. In both cases, however, I can easily attribute it to consuming a lot of reading material that gave me some kind of intuition for the correct spelling/grammar. I don't remember explicit grammar rules for either language. In case of my native one, I never really learned the rules in the first place, as I had trouble memorizing those, and the rules felt forced and arbitrary with tons of exceptions to each of them. I just know that something feels "right" or "wrong", simply because of tons of reading that settled down in my head.

catalogia 7y ago

I generally think that the sort of knowledge best learned with flash cards is probably knowledge not memorizing in the first place, with the truth of this being proportional to the size of the dataset being learned. For sets in the neighborhood of 200 or less, I don't think it's a big problem. Chemistry classes asking you to memorize the mapping of element names ⟷ element symbols seems okay. But memorizing the spelling of several hundred to thousands of words? That seems like a job for a machine.

johnchristopher 7y ago

https://www.bbc.com/news/education-18158665 https://www.bbc.com/news/education-18158665 N=1: I feel like - and I am 99% certain - that my grammatical and spelling skills have decreased since I started using the internet heavily.

filoleg 7y ago
I think it heavily depends on the kind of content you are consuming. I know it is anecdata, but my personal grammar and spelling skills went all the way up since I started using internet heavily (which was very noticeable to me, since english isn't my native language). And while I use a lot of incorrect grammar and spelling when talking to friends, I usually do it out of convenience (to shorten words, etc.), not because I don't know the proper grammar/spelling.
- isodude 7y ago
  I would like to make the argument that reading/writing HN have made my English a bit better in recent years.
- johnchristopher 7y ago
  English isn't my first language. Yet, I believe my english grammar is getting worse even if I read a lot of English everyday. I blame this on globish though and the fact that it's relatively rare to get corrected on grammar mistakes around here.
Mirioron 7y ago
On the other hand, the internet pretty much taught me English. Sure, we had English classes in school, but the internet gave me an immense amount of practical experience. Most of my peers, particularly those who didn't use the internet, finished school with significantly worse English than I did. Spell-checking has been pretty useful, but probably not vital.

mattnewton 7y ago

To play devils advocate here, I have always been a terrible speller and it doesn't affect me because all surfaces I use have spell check. Occassionally I will butcher something so bad I confuse the spell checker and Google it, but those are so few and far between I don't feel like I missed out memorizing list after list of arbitrary word roots and remembering if this is loaned from greek, a romance language like french, or old german.

WalterBright 7y ago

> I have seen no evidence that spellcheck reduces people’s ability to learn spelling. Spellcheck has shown me that I've been misspelling certain words forever :-)

gvjddbnvdrbv 7y ago

> The ideal way to teach spelling is (1) get kids to read a whole lot, (2) show students their mistakes in context when they make them on as short a feedback loop as possible, without judgment. Speaking as a dyslexic person this is garbage. Learning to spell required weekly word lists, spelling tests and hours of study. The memory skills this built have seriously helped me in my life.

thayne 7y ago
This hints at the biggest problem with our education system. Different children learn in different ways. Word lists and spelling tests may have been effective for you, but they weren't for me (reading hundreds of books otoh did improve my spelling). Unfortunately, I don't really have a practical solution.
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
  ISTR there is no scientific basis for “children learn in different ways”. If a child has dyslexia or something like that, sure, that can affect things, but good teaching strategies should work for the vast majority of children.
  - thayne 7y ago
    I'm not referencing the different learning styles ("auditory", "visual", "kinesthetic", etc.). I'm saying different people have different strengths and weaknesses and that effects how you learn. > good teaching strategies should work for the vast majority of children In my experience, good teaching strategies usually includes teaching the same thing in a variety of different ways, so that hopefully at least one of the ways is effective for each student.
- BlueTemplar 7y ago
  It's kind of obvious: teach different children differently? Classes with large numbers of children should probably be rare.