Spelling proficiency and sensitivity to word structure

The connection between spelling and pronunciation in many English words is somewhat remote. To spell accurately, a writer may need to appreciate that the orthography maps regularities of more than one kind. Two experiments explored the possibility that young adults who differ in spelling ability also differ in sensitivity to morphophonemic structure and word formational principles that underlie the regularities of English spelling. In the first, an analysis of misspellings showed that poor spellers were less able than good spellers to exploit regularities at the surface phonetic level and were less able to access the underlying morphophonemic structure of words. A second experiment used pseudowords to extend these findings and to confirm that spelling competence involves apprehension of generalizations that can be applied to new instances.