Monday, January 22, 2007
Why Their Wrong and I'm Write
The other day at a party, I overheard an elementary school teacher explaining her school's new way of teaching kids spelling. Rather than making kids memorize long lists of spelling words, the new trick is to teach them Latin and Greek roots, and other word-parts, so that they have a vast reservoir of etymological* knowledge from which they can deduce the spelling of any word when they encounter it.
This idea troubles me, and I'll tell you why. The teacher in question used the word "hydrology" as an example. "They know hydro- means 'water,' and they know -ology means 'study of,'"she said. "So not only do they know how to spell it, they know what it means." That's great as long as no one uses words other than big Greek- and Latin-based compound words like "hydrology." But my concern with the spelling of the future is for words like "their" and "its."** One of the teacher's listeners even cautioned her, "Well, at least make sure they know that 'a lot' is two words, not one." Hear, hear.
I remember learning to spell words that won't fit into this new system, like prejudice, privilege, and my old nemesis, nemesis*** by rote memorization and messing up on the spelling. You're not going to get those words from a list of roots. I think root study has some merits, but you can't, as this teacher indicated was the case, stop studying words themselves. Spelling is important. There's no faster way to incur prejudice against you in schoolwork or job applications than to misspell an easy word. And Latin and Greek won't always save you.
* Or is it entomological? I always get the study of word origins mixed up with the study of insects. But you know what? Despite this being a post about the correctness of words, I don't really care about the difference between these two: I think it's funny to mix them up.
** I recall in a mid-level college class, the professor took half an hour to go over things like the difference between its and it's, so we wouldn't make those errors on our term papers. I remember thinking, "I learned this in first grade!" But apparently not everyone did: the professor said he sees this kind of error constantly in mid-level college term papers. Ugh.
*** When I was in sixth grade, I lost the school spelling bee to a fifth-grader because I spelled it nemisis. I have never forgotten how to spell that word, or what it means.
This idea troubles me, and I'll tell you why. The teacher in question used the word "hydrology" as an example. "They know hydro- means 'water,' and they know -ology means 'study of,'"she said. "So not only do they know how to spell it, they know what it means." That's great as long as no one uses words other than big Greek- and Latin-based compound words like "hydrology." But my concern with the spelling of the future is for words like "their" and "its."** One of the teacher's listeners even cautioned her, "Well, at least make sure they know that 'a lot' is two words, not one." Hear, hear.
I remember learning to spell words that won't fit into this new system, like prejudice, privilege, and my old nemesis, nemesis*** by rote memorization and messing up on the spelling. You're not going to get those words from a list of roots. I think root study has some merits, but you can't, as this teacher indicated was the case, stop studying words themselves. Spelling is important. There's no faster way to incur prejudice against you in schoolwork or job applications than to misspell an easy word. And Latin and Greek won't always save you.
* Or is it entomological? I always get the study of word origins mixed up with the study of insects. But you know what? Despite this being a post about the correctness of words, I don't really care about the difference between these two: I think it's funny to mix them up.
** I recall in a mid-level college class, the professor took half an hour to go over things like the difference between its and it's, so we wouldn't make those errors on our term papers. I remember thinking, "I learned this in first grade!" But apparently not everyone did: the professor said he sees this kind of error constantly in mid-level college term papers. Ugh.
*** When I was in sixth grade, I lost the school spelling bee to a fifth-grader because I spelled it nemisis. I have never forgotten how to spell that word, or what it means.
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