Look left for the correct letters

The Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) method of teaching spelling has had success in turning non-spellers into spellers in just one or two lessons, according to Kevin Hendricks, NLP practitioner at the Albany Clinic in Dublin.

Hendricks is using the method with children from as young as six. "The process is linked to fun and creativity and often improves learning in other situations," he says.

Successful spellers visualise a word, then get a feeling of familiarity that lets them know the remembered image is correct. By scanning the eye movement of a child who is spelling, the teacher can identify the excellent and the poor speller.

The good speller will look up and to the left, and accesses the visual-memory part of the brain. NLP sees the poor speller as like someone looking for a cake recipe in the vegetable section of a cookery book, using the wrong part of the brain to access rote learning. His or her eyes typically go all over.

The solution, Hendricks says, is to train the child to use the appropriate part of the mind to find remembered images. If the teacher asks children to visualise favourite cartoon characters, they look up to the left and recognisably get the feeling of familiarity. Good spellers make pictures in their minds of words and get the feeling of familiarity that lets them know the image is correct.

NLP training simply requires the teacher to gesture to the pupils' left and get them silently to spell simple words as they look up and to the left. Children who read have stored images of correctly spelled words and by following the teacher's gesture they look in the appropriate direction to access the remembered images. After 10 or 12 words the teachers can stop gesturing to check if the students continues to looks up to the left automatically.

"Creative" spellers have lots of incorrect remembered images of misspelt words, so for a short period after learning the NLP method they may continue to make some mistakes. However, as they read more, their new skills in accessing remembered images of correctly spelled words should increase their accuracy.