The organisation of motor patterns for spelling: an effective remedial strategy for backward readers

A controlled training study is reported in which children backward in reading and spelling were taught to spell words by three different methods. 16 words were selected and were divided into groups of four, each group of words being taught by a different method. As a control, one of the four groups of words was not taught by any method. An adaptation of Simultaneous Oral Spelling was found to be the most successful method. It is argued that these results demonstrate that the ability to spell correctly is dependent upon the organisation of the correct motor patterns for writing the words.