Simplex Spelling Phonics 2 app now on sale

[eloquacious]

It's currently $.99!!

[kitten18]

Thanks, going to try this.

[Way2blessed]

Was excited about this, but lost my enthusiam after the first word.

 

The first word is "spelling" and they divide it into sylables as spel-ling, which is incorrect.

[LoveBaby]

Was excited about this, but lost my enthusiam after the first word.

 

The first word is "spelling" and they divide it into sylables as spel-ling, which is incorrect.

That is correct...always divide syllables between doubled consonants.

 

Spel-ling. according to the Spalding method.

 

Eta...wait a minute. Now I am confused, since that is adding a suffix to a base word.

 

Ellie...where are you?

[Guest Craig Welburn]

Was excited about this, but lost my enthusiam after the first word.

 

The first word is "spelling" and they divide it into sylables as spel-ling, which is incorrect.

 

Hello,

 

I'm the developer of Simplex Spelling and I just found your post.

You make a very good point about the way syllables should be divided.

 

The word "spelling" is a special case in "Phonics 2" as it is the only word that uses the "ing" suffix. As covering suffixes was not the focus of our latest app, they have been avoided for the most part.

 

Normally in "Phonics 2" we do divide syllables on a double consonant even though that is not typically what is done in dictionaries. We do this as it aids students in learning spelling rules and helps them to better understand how syllables affect spelling in the English language in a more logical and consistent way.

 

However, for the word "spelling" as the base word "spell" follows the floss rule, should the syllable be broken down in this case between the double 'l' when adding the "ing"? I'll actually need to go away and research this a bit to determine what the correct syllabication should be in this instance (as we don't follow dictionaries, but try to make it easier for children to understand).

 

I'd love to hear some discussion about this and which method people feel is the correct approach.

If we uncover that our implementation on this word is incorrect, we will gladly make a fix for the issue and submit an update to our app asap.

 

Where do others feel the syllable break should occur and why?

 

Looking forward to an ongoing discussion on this topic.

 

Craig.

[Guest Craig Welburn]

Wow this thread completely died.

 

I would like to apologize if I scared everyone off. That was not my intention.

 

My wife Lisa and I are homeschooling parents that really struggled with teaching our own children how to read and spell. We tried so many different reading and spelling curriculums with our children that we've lost count. To make a very long story short, we were unable to find any available curriculums that taught a spelling based phonics approach that met our desires and needs. Lisa created her own curriculum that worked well for our kids and we turned it into a software program to improve and simplify the approach for children and to share our success with others.

 

We've spent a bit of time looking into the syllabication of the word 'spelling' and we personally feel that the way the syllables are broken down for the word "spelling" in Simplex Spelling are the best for teaching children how to spell and read. Following is an explanation of our conclusions:

 

The way words are broken up into syllables in most dictionaries is not consistent even between dictionaries. For example the word "speller" in the Merriam-Webster dictionary is syllabicated as spe-ller where the double 'll' is clearly separated from the base word 'spell'. While other dictionaries even the online one 'dictionary.com' will syllabicate this as 'spell-er". Which dictionary is correct? It is hard to say as each syllabication is somewhat subjective even between the experts.

 

From a teaching and learning perspective, separating words on a double consonant is more consistent with spelling rules followed in English and is much easier for children to understand. I'll use the words 'diner' and 'dinner' as an example to illustrate.

 

The Merriam-Webster dictionary separates these words into syllables as follows:

 

di-ner

di-nner

 

I would argue that looking at the above syllabications a child would have a difficult time knowing how each word is pronounced in English. Which word uses a long 'i' and which uses a short 'i' sound? The dictionary syllabication in this case is not very conductive to learning.

 

Then we can take into account the concept of open syllables (syllables that end in a vowel) and closed syllables (ones that end in a consonant) and the idea that open syllables frequently make a single ending vowel say it long sound, while closed syllables make a single vowel say it short sound, The dictionary syllabication still does not convey easily how each of the above words is pronounced or spelled.

 

However, taking into account open and closed syllables, if you divide the words up between the double consonants as follows:

 

di-ner

din-ner

 

It becomes much more obvious that the first word most likely is pronounced with a long 'i' sound. While the second word most definitely uses a short 'i' sound.

 

This is why we took an approach in Simplex Spelling that syllabicates between double consonants. This is also an accepted and recommend approach in some other spelling curriculums.

 

We could find no evidence in Spalding's approach to indicate that syllabicating the word "spelling" in this manner is either correct, nor incorrect. As the syllabication is consistent with how we are syllabicating other words with double consonants throughout Simplex Spelling we believe separating the word in this manner would lead to the least amount of confusion for a student. If anyone else has an argument for why they feel the syllabication of this word is incorrect and would cause confusion for students learning to read, I would love to hear your opinions so that the issue could be discussed in more depth.

 

Looking forwarded to hearing your thoughts,

 

Craig Welburn

Pyxwise Software Inc.