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Assessing the extent of poor spelling among college students:

Many people do not realize how large a problem spelling is among college students. I like to think of myself as an average speller, but upon seeing some of my classmates' papers I find myself being an above average speller. What makes me better at spelling than they are? Is it my schooling and my teachers? My love for reading? My constant use of spell check? To some extent, these are all factors.

Remember those spelling tests we had to take back in elementary school? I hated them with a passion but they helped me. Oddly enough I was positive that "turkey" was spelled "churkey". It's the way I heard everyone say it, so I wrote that down on my paper and was upset when it got marked wrong. But I took that lesson and I have never spelled it incorrectly since. The same thing happened with "library". I called it the "liberry", and spelled it that way too. The most common problem with incorrect spelling is that students write words the way they hear them, forgetting that people pronounce things differently or incorrectly. Whoever would have thought that "receive" would be spelled that way? I certainly misspelled it until I learned the little rhyme I' before E', except after C'. Or as long A' like neighbor' and weigh'. But I am sure that other students didn't learn this rhyme, as apparent by the incorrect spellings of ie' words in their papers today.

So part of the problem is that students didn't learn when they were younger, and some of the blame may lay with the teachers. Some classes may have been so large that teachers didn't realize that certain students had spelling problems. Later, some teachers didn't care. Test scores that are reported are really all that matter in this day, so teachers found a way for the students to do extra credit or simply marked off minor points for spelling errors and solved that problem. Bad spelling happens the same way that a child graduating from high school being unable to read happens. Teachers aren't paying attention or don't care.

Reading, or not reading I should say, is also a big part of the problem. In an age filled with other things to do such as watch TV, play computer or video games, or simply participate in sports, reading takes a back seat. Students who read constantly learn new vocabulary constantly. And as they learn new vocabulary, they use it in everyday speech and in their papers, and learn how to spell it. If students don't read, and many of them don't,

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