Alternative Uses of Phonemic Information in Spelling

The well-known and frequently lamented idiosyncracies of English spelling raise serious doubts as to the role that information about the spellings of individual phonemes can play in learning to spell correctly. The purpose of this paper is to distinguish several different ways in which phonemic information might be employed in spelling, to examine some empirical data on the consequences of using these different information sources, to formulate hypotheses about the underlying processes involved, and to suggest possible implications for the teaching (and learning) of spelling.