Try to understand what he finds difficult about recalling how to spell words, and look for patterns in what he miss spells
sorry, long one but I’m passionate about this as solutions given here are literally useless for a lot of bad spellers.
i am a terrible speller. To the point dictionaries are no good as often I don’t know what comes after the first letter. But I have a big vocabulary, am now in my 60s, read avidly , have a degree and retired from long acedemic career. And my mum was an English teacher 🤦♀️
i spent huge amounts of time up to 18 being “ punished” because I could not spell …writing stupid words out 10 times , failing spelling tests, then being given more spellings to learn cos I failed those
But, by the time I was in my mid 20s I figured out what my issue is. I speed read and read by recognising pictorially the overall shape of a complete word . Phonics or other techniques back in 70s completely useless for me. I have a very pictorial and placement memory- if I can’t see things in my head I can’t recall them. It took me quite a while to learn to read but when I got it at around 7, I would read continuously and get through 4-5 books a week . But when it comes to spelling I can see the overall word in my minds eye, but don’t pick out individual letters. So an example is word “decision” ; I know it begins with D -, I know it ends in “ sion” easy enough as that’s a shape that is used so much I know how the letters sequence…I do know it has a “c” in it somewhere, but even now at 60, I’m blowed if I can see the rest …it could be de, Di, and the order of all those similar round letters, vowels and the 2 “i” is just a blur when trying to picture it and recall. Words with lots of vowels are ones I can’t read ..”beautiful “ aghh..took me 3 goes just now to get past “b” and select it from precursive text.🤷🏼♀️🤣🙄
I am also a terrible proof reader - I used to write technical documents and procedures and completely relied on spell check. But I’d often ask someone else to check if it was important or external documentation. Same problem, I can’t see and therefore can’t recall the detail of the spelling - I don’t spot letters missing, switched etc especially if they’re vowels and things like “c”, “r” ( all small curvy letters)
here’s the thing though…it runs in my family, exactly same issue . Me and one of my siblings have this issue, one of my 2 dc does, my niece but not my nephew…when you actually dig into why they can’t spell it’s exactly the same thing…we just can’t read in our memory all those little curly letters and the vowels…all look too similar strung together in a word. We need stand out letters going above and below the line to give structure: g, h, f, all great. But a lot of issues early on with using p/a and b/d the wrong way round , we knew the letter needed but just wrote it in mirror ( deb not bed )
someone once told me it’s a form of dyslexia. But our reading skills are advanced and fast once we get to 6-7 years old, we all use extensive vocabulary, no issues with crosswords but can’t do anagrams. My son and niece both tested for dyslexia at university ( they wanted to get a freebie laptop 🤣🤣) but no issues found.
There is nothing that we can do, other than rely ( ok, that’s a word that doesn’t look right as I’ve written it but can’t tell you why) on technology . My son used a more advanced piece of software ( can’t remember what) that helped him through university and producing reports at work but it’s not foolproof.
curiously though we are extremely numerical and can spot anamolies in vast swathes of numerical data- it was something of a skill that led me to the career I had and we all went a scientific/ maths route
so, point is, find out exactly what the issue is. Very few kids that are poor spellers can be taught to improve by copying out 10 times. If that works for a kid they’re probably the ones that already learn to spell by learning for spelling tests and being able to recall spelling easily by more photographic or verbal memory. . Some kids get phonics then can build on exceptions. Some of true dyslexia where words seem to swim about and again they struggle to read or recall the spellings
in my case there’s not anything that can be done, other than learning certain words are my downfall, and if I get stuck it’s because of my usual culprit letters missing in my picture in my mind , so I’ll go to google and play around a bit in search till it pops up …different from using a dictionary as I can often find it by typing a sentence with it and google tries to correct it when returning what it thinks I’m saying…very handy for me.
thank god for technology or I’ll have continued to struggle and piss people off as I did till the late 1990s when we got personal computers
Once figure out exactly what and where the issues are you can start to manage your weakness by finding tools or tricks that can help, but maybe accept that for some people you even 55 years at it still won’t cure you
And don’t even get me started on my abject failure to learn French as a child in days when it was mostly all written French..all those bloody silent letters . Merd! 🤣🤣🙄😱