The best way to learn spelling

For decades, educators have been arguing about the best way to teach German spelling to students. A study finds a clear winner. Reform methods, some of which have been used for years in many schools, are apparently inappropriate.

Elementary students learn spelling best after the classical so-called Fibelmethode. This is the conclusion of a Bonn study in which the learning outcomes of more than 3,000 primary school children in North Rhine-Westphalia were analyzed. Other approaches, such as "reading by writing" and "spelling workshop", performed much worse. The results will be presented this Monday at a conference of the Society for Psychology in Frankfurt.


In the Fibelmethode letters and words are introduced gradually and according to fixed specifications. After that, children learning by far had the best spelling skills, as Una Röhr-Sendlmeier from the Institute for Developmental Psychology and Educational Psychology reports. For several years, the psychology team had compared the spelling skills of primary school children in North Rhine-Westphalia, who learned to read and write in three different ways.


Many parents were worried because their children barely mastered the spelling rules at the end of elementary school, according to Röhr-Sendlmeier. "They ask if this could also be related to the free teaching method used, according to which the children should only write about their auditory impression."

Looking back: The long common fibula learning was in some places, especially by the "reading by writing" has been almost displaced until it ignited more and more criticism, as education researcher Nele McElvany explained by the University of Dortmund. "In fact, there is a problem that there are practically no empirical studies on the effectiveness of this method." The idea: Students should write as much as possible freely and learn to read about it. Corrections of misspelled words are undesirable because that demotivates the children.
Fibula Method also helps non-native speakers

In doing so, students could well practice rules and principles while encouraging them with positive feedback, McElvany explains. The fibula learning was a rule, build structured on each other and put on practice phases. The result of the psychologists with the top grade for the fibula approach considers them to be "not implausible".

The participating Bonner scientist Tobias Kuhl explains to the research work: "We have made value-free." The "reading by writing" and the "spelling workshop" demonstrably led to many mistakes. A fixed sequence from the simple to the complex proved to be clearly superior.

According to Kuhl, the more than 3,000 children were first tested for their previous knowledge after their training. Thereafter, five times each half-yearly dictations were evaluated - always Fibelkinder were the most powerful. Pupils who were taught to read by writing made on average 55 percent more misspellings at the end of fourth grade, and "workshop" students even 105 percent more than Fibel children. Even students whose mother tongue was not German benefited from the "fibula" approach.
Criticism of the Education Association

According to McElany, however, the study leaves open whether there were already different requirements for the children during their school enrollment and how much they were maintained during the course of school. In view of the sometimes dramatically weak competences, a methodological debate is important. Orthography is diligent work and must be practiced in the first years of schooling. "Like reading, it's a core skill that primary school students need to learn, and that's why they need time in schools and at home."

According to the primary school reading examination IGLU at the end of 2017, every fifth ten-year-old in Germany can not read in such a way that he understands the text. And the IQB education trend of fourth-year students in 2016 showed that only 55 percent reach or exceed standard orthographic standards.

The education association VBE was skeptical about the new results. Basically, it was "not effective" to examine the spelling ability as an individual aspect detached from all other learning processes. The chairman Udo Beckmann says: "A unilaterally fixed return to teaching with the primer is not a solution."