Read and Spell Blog

While most words are relatively easy to learn, every individual will encounter challenging spelling words that they frequently misspell. Making spelling mistakes is frustrating for students and can lead to low self-esteem for learners who may be labelled as lazy and penalized by losing points on written work.

For adults, having poor spelling skills can cause them to miss out on career opportunities and lose face in front of friends and family. It’s important to understand that spelling skills have nothing to do with intelligence and that there are plenty of strategies that can help. If spelling becomes a persistent problem, there may also be an undiagnosed learning difficulty to blame.

It is sometimes said that certain mood disorders and learning difficulties are more common in people who favor their left hand. Researchers have not yet found a genetic link between dyslexia and handedness and individuals with dyslexia, a learning difficulty that affects reading, writing and spelling abilities, are split 50:50 between right and left-handedness.

However, there are fewer left-handed people in the world. In fact, the difference is 90:10. This means that dyslexia may be more commonly found in left-handed people but the relationship is not necessarily causal. There is also the question of whether or not it is more common in boys than girls.

Some evidence suggests dyslexia is just as prevalent in girls as boys but not as well recognized, while other studies (Quinn & Wagner 2015) have found reading difficulties occur more often in male individuals.

Writing is one of the most important skills English as a second language learners must master, particularly for students and working professionals. That’s because unlike in speaking exercises, when you write you leave a lasting record of your language.

Mistakes in spelling, grammar and word choice are immediately evident. And while literacy skills are not a reflection of intelligence or knowledge, poor writing can cause a student to receive lower marks, even if they know a lot about the subject of the assignment. In a professional context, people may judge you as lazy or untrustworthy if you send poorly written emails full of mistakes.

They are also likely to assume your spoken ability in English is quite low, though this may or may not be the case. That’s why it is important to improve writing skills in English before they prevent you from reaching your full potential at school or in the workplace.

When we write, we want the language we produce to be recognizable to others. Our handwriting should be legible so that it doesn't hinder the reader’s comprehension and our text must conform to established norms when it comes to punctuation, formatting and spelling.

But putting words down on paper is not as straightforward as it may seem. In fact, there’s a complex process of orthographic encoding that we rely on to help us form the letters in words and use them correctly.

If the mechanics involved in writing cause cognitive or physical strain, as is the case with most common handwriting problems, this can affect our thought process and reduce the complexity of our writing. It also results in feelings of frustration and low self-esteem.

For a child with dysgraphia or dyspraxia, conditions that often cause poor handwriting, producing written language is a struggle that can drastically affect performance at school and get in the way of a child expressing him or herself in writing.

Most of us use a computer every day. And in the workplace, it’s no longer just administrative and clerical workers who require keyboarding skills. For the majority of job seekers, typing is as fundamental as using Word or being able to navigate the web.

That’s because almost everyone sends emails, even artists and salesmen, and if it takes you several hours to do the record-keeping and communications part of your job, you may not be as competitive a candidate as the next person applying for the position.