Why Spelling Lab?

The Visual Spelling Strategy is based on research from the field of Neuro-Linguistic Programming that shows that good spelling is different from good reading. Phonetics, or sounding out the word, works fine for reading but does not work for spelling

Think about it. 1, 2, 3, and 4, if spelled phonetically would be spelled "won, too, three and for." One, two, three, and four, if you read them phonetically would sound like "oh-nee, t-woh, t-hree, and foo-er." You can't even spell the word phonetics phonetically! Good spelling is a visual process.

Spelling Lab is all about this new fun way of learning spelling! Parents and Teachers can take this process and create breakthrough results with their children using these techniques.

Steps of the spelling strategy

1. Place the correct spelling of the word in front of you so you can see it easily. If you can, place the word up and to your left.

2. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and think of something that feels familiar and relaxing. Tell yourself, "This is easy. I can do this." When the feeling is strong, open your eyes and look at the correct spelling.

3. Move your eyes up and to the left and picture the correct spelling in your mind's eye. (If you have difficulty use the Helpful Hints below.)

4. Open your eyes and see the word. (Repeat #3 and #4)

5. Look up at your mental image and type into computer the letters you see. Check what you have written against the correct spelling. If incorrect repeat step #3 and #4.

6. Look up at your mental image and spell the word backwards. (To type from right to left requires mouse clicking each letter or using the arrow keys.) Check the spelling. If incorrect, go to step #3.

7. When correct, celebrate! You are becoming a good speller.

Helpful Hints

1. Break the word into groups of up to three letters and build your picture group by group.

2. Make any unclear letters or groups stand out by making them look different than the others in some way - e.g. bigger, brighter, closer, a different color, etc.

3. If the word is a person or a thing, picture that person or that thing and put the letters over it or under it like a caption.

4. Picture the word in your favorite color.

5. If it is a long word, make the letters small enough so that you can see the whole word easily.

6. Trace the letters in the air with your finger and picture in your mind the letters you are writing. Say the letters to yourself while you do.

Hystorical Spelling Quotes

While we are aware of the importance of the correct spelling, we feel an obligation to provide access to alternate views :-)

"It is a damn poor mind indeed which can't think of at least two ways to spell any word."
- President Andrew Jackson

"I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way."
- Mark Twain

"...ours is a mongrel language which started with a child's vocabulary of three hundred words, and now consists of two hundred and twenty-five thousand; the whole lot, with the exception of the original and legitimate three hundred, borrowed, stolen, smouched from every unwatched language under the sun, the spelling of each individual word of the lot locating the sourceof the theft and preserving the memory of the revered crime."
- Mark Twain

"... the English alphabet is pure insanity...", "It can hardly spell any word in the language with any degree of certainty."
- Mark Twain

"But I appeal to you in behalf of the generations which are to follow you, ... age after age, cycle after cycle. I pray you, consider them and be generous. Lift this heavy burden (traditional spelling) from their backs. Do not send them toiling and moiling down the 20th century still bearing it, still oppressed by it ... I pray you, let the hieroglyphics (old spelling) go, and thus save millions of years of useless time and labor to fifty generations of posterity that are to follow you... This cost of time is much too expensive. It could be employed more usefully in other industries, and with better results."
- Mark Twain

"The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. They spell it so abominably that no man can teach himself what it sounds like. It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him. German and Spanish are accessible to foreigners: English is not accessible even to Englishmen."
- G.B. Shaw, Pygmalion, Preface

"Correct spelling, indeed, is one of the arts that are far more esteemed by school ma'ams than by practical men, neck-deep in the heat and agony of the world."
- Henry Louis Mencken

"A man occupied with public or other important business cannot, and need not, attend to spelling."
- Napoleon Buonaparte

"My spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places."
- A. A. Milne

"If the professors of English will complain to me that the students who come to the universities, after all those years of study, still cannot spell 'friend', I say to them that something's the matter with the way you spell 'friend'."
- Richard Feynman 1963