Beyond the Pencil: Why Spelling Begins in the Ear
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Wegener (2018) and Ataman (2026) have shown us how reading begins in the ear. Our brains construct a skeleton of a word when we hear it spoken, which makes it easier to read when we first encounter it (even in adults). Dong et al. (2026) answer the question of whether this pre-knowledge also helps us learn to spell.
The trial examined 3 most common approaches that have been used to teach spelling:
Passive Copying (pupil repeatedly copies a correct spelling)
Pre-testing (learner attempts a spelling, teacher reveals half of the spelling, pupil takes another guess, then teacher provides corrective feedback)
Active Post-testing (teacher instructs on the correct spelling, pupils then repeatedly test themselves on the spelling - similar to the look-cover-write method).
Crucially, the defining factor here is not whether children are using a pen and paper; all three methods involve the physical act of writing. Instead, the magic lies in whether the brain is forced to actively retrieve the spelling from memory or simply transcribe it passively.
They found that one week after the initial instruction, the active methods of pretesting and post-testing were far more effective for learning spellings than repeated copying.
One week after the initial instruction, researchers found that the active methods of pre-testing and post-testing were far more effective for learning spelling than repeated copying. Post-testing yielded the most immediate success, showing the best results just one day after learning, while pre-testing caught up after a seven-day delay.
It is worth noting that the study focused on phonologically decodable words, which means that the spelling words followed regular phonics rules. This is in contrast to sight words such as, ‘said’, ‘the’, ‘was’ which do not follow phonics rules. So the pre-testing would benefit from the orthographic skeleton in a pupil’s mind, which would not work for sight words.
Of unique interest to this study is that they found the exact same benefit of post-testing in both Mandarin (a character-based logographic system) and English (an alphabetic system). This demonstrates that the active retrieval in the brain is remarkably universal across different languages.
Classroom impact
To encourage a strong concept of words, we must expose pupils to hearing and speaking new words before they ever attempt to spell them - a rule that applies from the earliest ages right up to adults. When it comes to learning to spell: first teach the correct spelling, then repeatedly test until the word can be spelt correctly and consistently. Look-cover-write methods, quizzes and low-stakes tests continue to be the strongest way to learn to spell in any language.
References
- Beyersmann, E., Wegener, S., Spencer, J. and Castles, A. (2023) ‘Acquisition of orthographic forms via spoken complex word training’, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 30(2), pp. 739–750. doi: 10.3758/s13423-022-02185-y.
- Wegener, S., Wang, H.-C., de Lissa, P., Robidoux, S., Nation, K. and Castles, A. (2018) ‘Children reading spoken words: interactions between vocabulary and orthographic expectancy’, Developmental Science, 21(3), e12577. doi: 10.1111/desc.12577.
- Ataman, E., Beyersmann, E., Castles, A. and Wegener, S. (2026) ‘Oral vocabulary and learning to read morphologically complex words’, Reading and Writing. Doi: 10.1007/s11145-026-10802-8.
- Dong, R., Indrajaya, A., Yin, L. and Pan, S.C., (2026). Pretesting and posttesting in spelling acquisition: Cross‐linguistic evidence from contrasting writing systems. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 40(3), p. e70200. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.70200 [Accessed 9 June 2026].
AI acknowledgement
This article was entirely written by hand. AI was used to fact-check the article against source material and academic research. AI was also used as a ‘second reader’ to check for readability.
