TV goes through a difficult spell

YOU say potato, but former US vice-president Dan Quayle says potatoe. You say tomorrow, but Tony Blair says toomorrow.

Potato, potatoe; tomorrow, toomorrow. Let's call the whole thing off... and find a dictionary immediately.

Last year we were all going apoplectic about apostrophes, thanks to Lynne Truss and her bestseller Eats, Shoots And Leaves, but this year it seems that spelling is the new grammar.

A new book by linguistics professor Vivian Cook, sneakily entitled Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary, is in the shops ready for Christmas, and BBC1 yesterday launched Hard Spell, a new children's adventure programme, in which spelling is the key to success.

The Beeb's Swot Idol for keen young spellers runs all this week, and follows hot on the heels of ITV1's Great British Spelling Test, Five's daily Brain Teaser game, and the incredibly successful film Spellbound, a documentary exposing the hell that is an American 'spelling bee'.

But does spelling really matter? Shireen Shuster (try spelling that after a couple of shandies), a retired York teacher with more than 40 years' experience, believes it does. "Spelling matters because first impressions count," she said. "If the first impression a potential employer gets is of someone who can't spell on their application form, then it could mean the difference between getting a job and unemployment."

Spelling is so important to Shireen that she set up her own website, Spellzone.com, when she retired, offering non-patronising help to teenagers and adults with spelling difficulties. She has also written several successful books on spelling for schools.

"We are becoming more interested in spelling and language now because we are experiencing something of a backlash," she explained. "Learning the rules of spelling went out of fashion a couple of decades ago and we have paid the price with a generation of adults who are poor spellers.

"People are fed up with how low standards have been allowed to drop and want to do something about it."

She believes children in schools today are likely to be better spellers than their parents because teaching has come full circle, with the National Literacy Strategy harking back 40 years to an age when the rules of spelling were highly regarded and phonics - learning the sounds of letters before building full words - were widely used.

It may use methodology from a different century but, according to Shireen, this system can help to create better spellers and can give a much-needed confidence boost.

"People who can't spell can find words very intimidating," she said. "I used to teach a 12-year-old boy whose stories were always written using simple three-letter words.

"One day I told him not to worry about spelling and just to write down his ideas. The story he produced was brilliantly descriptive and creative.

"Just imagine how frustrating it must be to have all these wonderful things to say, but feel unable to say them because of your spelling."

After this year's GCSE results were revealed, an examiner wrote anonymously to The Times complaining that she had been required to give high grades for English Literature to pupils who were unable to spell the word 'literature'.

And in September, seven Scottish universities revealed they were providing students with remedial classes in basic English after ScottishPower criticised them for producing graduates who couldn't spell.

But does this signify a decline in standards or are these merely anecdotal anomalies?

"There is no evidence to suggest that we are worse spellers now than we once were," said Professor Maggie Snowling, who is based in the psychology department at York University and specialises in the development of reading and spelling. "But our attitude towards spelling has certainly changed.

"There was a time when anyone who couldn't spell was automatically labelled as stupid. That is not the case anymore.

"Unfortunately, however, people are still often labelled as lazy. In my opinion, laziness has nothing to do with it; if they were really lazy they wouldn't bother to write the word in the first place.

"In simple terms, you can either spell or you can't. If you can't, you can be taught, but it is hard work."

A common fallacy about spelling, according to Prof Snowling, is that good readers make good spellers. In fact, good readers often pay less attention to words than poor readers.

"You can read well without actually taking in all the words on the page," she explained. "This means of course that a particularly good reader is not necessarily equipped with spelling skills because they haven't spent time looking at the words in detail."

Whether you are a good reader or not, the inescapable problem facing spellers of any age is that English is a bizarre and unforgiving language.

George Bernard Shaw neatly summed up its peculiarities when he pointed out that the word 'fish' could logically be spelled 'ghoti' using basic principles of English.

Confused? Don't be. Simply take the 'gh' from 'rough'; the 'o' from 'women'; and the 'ti' from 'station', and all will be revealed.

"Spelling difficulties are actually much worse in English because our language is irregular, unlike say Spanish which is highly regular," said Prof Snowling. "With a highly regular language, if you can read it, you can write it.

"We underestimate how difficult it is to spell in this country. It is not a trivial matter."

It goes without saying of course that any spelling mistakes contained in this feature were done with the sole purpose of testing your skills of observation...

Updated: 10:35 Tuesday, November 30, 2004