Why the Human Brain Needs Spelling

Reading instruction in America seems to have lost sight of the crucial role of teaching English spelling for reading and writing. Here are four reasons why the brain needs spelling:

1. English spelling is a visual code needed for mapping to one’s already existing spoken language to create meaning as a reader or writer. At this moment, you are making meaning from this sentence by automatically, without conscious effort, using the English alphabetic code on the page or screen to activate the meanings and sounds of 43 English words you already have in your spoken language. Those 43 brain words—spelling images in your brain—enabled you to comprehend the sentence you just read.

The brain needs this code—spelling—because without it you can neither read nor write. Spelling knowledge literally ignites the reading circuitry and drives the reading process. Becoming literate changes and impacts all future thinking, as stated by professors Gentry and Ouellette in Brain Words: How the Science of Reading Informs Teaching:

“The neurological reading circuit, which was not present at birth, is in evidence by the start of second grade [for most normally developing English learners] and is connected to higher-order cognitive functioning such as feelings, language, and thought” (Gentry & Ouellette, 2025, page 129).

The importance of spelling knowledge cannot be underemphasized.

2. The reading brain uses spelling images in the visual word from area or “letter box” to help connect to long-term memory. Have you ever tried to access and recall a person’s name that you have stored in your long-term memory? You know the name but at a certain moment you simply can’t retrieve it? Sometimes one uses the spelling image in the brain associated with a particular individual’s name to think of the first letter as a hint, “I think it starts with a _____,” one says to oneself and voilà, the name pops up in the mind.

Retrieving spelling images from the cerebral cortex in the left hemisphere visual word form area is often problematic and one symptom for people who are dyslexic, as I am. For example, I sometimes have difficulty retrieving name spellings of even my closest acquaintances, or names of anything I’m very familiar with such as a particular flower, the name of a restaurant I’ve been to, a food or wine, a type of tree—literally any name that may be temporally forgotten. The word’s spelling image may be in long-term memory but in dyslexics it’s often not a complete spelling representation (Gentry & Ouellette, 2025). For example, at times a dyslexic person may know the beginning sound or vowel sound in a syllable but have difficulty mapping to the correct spelling as in recalling the spellings of Kathy or Cathy; Kate, or Cate; Dickenson, Dickinson, or Dickinsen—all examples of my recent failure to recall spelling images when composing my Christmas card list even though I have known these people for decades. Sometimes the spelling comes right up but sometimes not. In my dyslexic mind, it seems totally sporadic with my dyslexic brain playing tricks on me. It’s worse when I’m rushed, under the gun, tired, or multitasking.

3. Without being taught spelling explicitly and systematically with a curriculum such as a research-based spelling book, many children struggle to learn to read due to a lack of nourishment for the reading/writing brain with spelling images that include sound awareness and phonics knowledge as part of the instruction. Reading failure in America and beyond where two-thirds of students read below proficiency flies in the face of developmental psychology and neuroscience which now posit expectations of 90% or better reading proficiency with proper instruction based on research-proven methods, teacher training, and teaching resources such as a spelling curriculum (see, for example, Al Otaiba et al. 2009, Gentry & Ouellette, 2025).

As part of the current science of reading movement, government agencies, nonprofits, and even parents from California to New York City and beyond including Australia are demanding changes (Swartz, 2024; Lambert, 2024). One unprecedented and very recent development is that for the first time, publishers and some authors of reading curricula who made claims of teaching based on science are being sued, as reported in the School Library Journal (December 5, 2024 page 1):

“Two Massachusetts parents have filed a class-action lawsuit against Heinemann Publishing and Fountas & Pinnell, as well as Lucy Calkins, Irene Fountas, Gay Su Pinnell, and the Reading and Writing Project and the board of trustees of Teachers College at Columbia University.

The suit alleges “deceptive and fraudulent marketing and sale of products and services which are undermining a fundamental social good: literacy.”

Major criticisms of these materials include ignoring science-based methodology, promoting a flawed cueing system, and not supporting a curriculum and time in the school day for teaching spelling.

4. It’s been estimated that the English language has roughly 1 million words that map to its 44 sounds; the English spelling system can be challenging to learn without explicit and intensive word study, especially for multilinguals and first-time English learners. While there is wide disagreement among educators regarding how best to teach English spelling to multilinguals and first-time learners, there is good agreement that they need English spelling knowledge.

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Be actionable in supporting explicit, systematic, daily spelling instruction from a grade-by-grade curriculum for your students and children. Insist that teachers have training and resources for teaching spelling roughly 20 minutes each day.

For literacy, explicitly teaching spelling to nourish the brain with brain words is a very big deal. If a child can spell a word correctly, they likely can read it with comprehension and retrieve it for writing fluently.