A century ago, spelling skills were highly valued and widely taught in schools using traditional methods, such as weekly lists, drill exercises, and low- and high-stakes spelling tests. That approach was featured in best-selling textbooks such as the Horn-Ashbaugh Speller of 1920. In the early 21st century, however, skepticism as to the importance of spelling has grown, some schools have deemphasized or abandoned spelling instruction altogether, and there has been a proliferation of non-traditional approaches to teaching spelling. These trends invite a reevaluation of the role of spelling in modern English-speaking societies and whether the subject should be explicitly taught (and if so, what are research-supported methods for doing so). In this article, we examine the literature to address whether spelling skills are still important enough to be taught, summarize relevant evidence, and argue that a comparison of common approaches to spelling instruction in the early 20th century versus more recent approaches provides some valuable insights. We also discuss the value of explicit spelling instruction and highlight potentially effective ways to implement such instruction, including the use of spelling tests. Overall, our goals are to better characterize the role of spelling skills in today’s society and to identify several pedagogical approaches—some derived from traditional methods and others that are more recent—that hold promise for developing such skills in efficient and effective ways.

一个世纪以前，拼写技能受到高度重视，并在学校中使用传统方法进行了广泛的教学，例如每周列表，演习，低和高桩拼写测试。畅销的教科书（例如Horn-Ashbaugh Speller）中采用了这种方法但是在21世纪初期，人们对拼写的重要性持怀疑态度，一些学校完全取消了对拼写教学的重视或完全放弃，并且非传统的拼写教学方法也在激增。这些趋势促使人们重新评估拼写在现代英语社会中的作用，以及是否应明确教授该主题（如果是，则应采用什么研究支持的方法）。在本文中，我们将研究文献以解决拼写技能是否仍然足够重要以至于可以进行教学，总结相关证据，并指出将20世纪初的常见拼写教学方法与最近的拼写教学方法进行比较可以提供一些有价值的见解。我们还将讨论显式拼写指导的价值，并重点介绍实施此类指导的潜在有效方法，包括使用拼写测试。总体而言，我们的目标是更好地表征当今社会中拼写技能的作用，并确定几种教学方法，其中一些方法来自传统方法，而另一些则是较新的方法，这些方法有望以有效的方式开发此类技能。