Taught or Not?

Read aloud the first word in the headline. How would you know how to spell it on first hearing? That word can be spelled three different ways! Lessons are taught, a tightrope is taut, and a small child is a tot. How do you know which one to write?

What about “they’re,” “their,” and “there”?

The conventions and relationships between spoken and written English are not a matter of intuition, and they are not automatic. They’re not a mystery, either. How we learn to read, decode, and make sense of language is well-understood by researchers around the world who have studied the “science of reading” for decades.