ext_34293 ([identity profile] velvetpage.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] velvetpage 2010-09-21 10:49 pm (UTC)

Hmm. What's her primary learning style? Does she need to do things out loud to get them? Is she better with a purely visual method? Does moving items around spatially help her to remember? If you don't know, ask her to think about how she prefers to learn. I'll bet she'll be able to give you some clues. Once I know that, I can give you more specific suggestions that will cater to her learning style.

One, however, is global: spelling lists don't work. The vast majority of students will still get those words wrong when they use them in context, if the spelling list was the first place they came across those words. Students learn to spell correctly by using words in context and remembering them in context. So the key is almost always contextual; the learning style will help pin down which type of contextual learning will work best for her. For example, I'm a strong oral learner and I like to syllabify, so for me to spell something correctly, I will break it down into syllables or sometimes individual letter sounds and pronounce it out loud as I write it; for years I couldn't spell "beautiful" without saying to myself, "Bee-ah-oo-tiful" every time I wrote it. (That ended after I acquired French well enough to have the sound "O" associated in my brain with the letters "eau." When that happened, I switched to mentally pronouncing it "bO-tiful.") That technique might not work for her, though, if her learning style is very visual or if she doesn't like lists of concepts as a way of organizing information.

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