The mirror., 1915-10-14
For Measuring Spelling Ability

Tor measuring 0PcAAAAAS 1OAAsy
DIR. L. P, Ayres, of the Russell Sage
| foundation division of education and a no
ted writer on educational subjects, has
complied test or scale for determining
just what percent of the pupils of the grades
of public school can spell correctly any of
the 1000 most common words in the Eng
lish language. In the new scale or table
are complied 1000 words which, with their
numerous variations, constitute nine-tenths
of the words actually used in writing, be-
ing arranged so that words of like difficulty
fo spelling are grouped together.
1t was found by careful reading and
checking that SO words, with their repeti-
tons, make up half of the words used in
| writing. Several English authors works,
the Bible, 5000 business and personal let
tiers and four issues of four Sunday newspa-
pers were used in making the selections.
| In the newspapers it was found that only
5000 different words were used; from this
| it is evident that few words are greatly
overworked. Withthe exception of Every"
the much-used words were found to be all
| monosyllables.
From a combination of 36S, 900 words,
written by $500 different persons, another
study was made and the 1000 words which
appeared the greatest number of times were
selected This test showed that 10 words
constitute 25 percent of the written Eng
lish language. These important words are:
the, and, of, to, l, a, in, that, you and for.
In each 100, 900 words it was found that
''the'' appeared 6,4OO times, "and'' 8, 100,
''of' 3,4OO, 'sto'' $500, ''I' 1880, "a'
and ''in'' 900 each.
When the words had been selected the
public school superintendent of 81 differ
ent cities assisted in making the spelling
tests in the various grades. The words
were divided into SO lists of twenty words
each and given to the pupils. An aggre-
gate of 400, 600 spellings by 10000 pupils
in the "a cities was recorded and from the
results the various groups which are des-
ignated in the scale for the different grades
were made up.
The idea was to obtain scale for mea-
suring relative efficiency in spelling, con-
sisting of groups of words, SO arranged
that all the words in each group were equal
ly difficult and with the groups so arranged
that each successive one would represent
step to words ofgreater difficulty than the
group Immediately preceding it
These groups are formed by placing to-
gether the words which were correctly spell
led by an equal proportion of children in a
certain grade. For example, the, in, so,
no, now, man, ten, bed and top were spell
led correctly by "a per cent of the pupils
in the second grade. These words were
then included in one group.
DR.. Ayres reports that in his study he
found intellectual ability to be distributed
about the same way among people as are
physical traits. ''Just as there are few
dwarfs,'' he declares, ''many people of
medium height, and few giants, so there
are very few exceedingly bad spoilers,
many medium ones and very few excellent
ones. The child that masters the 1000
words given in the scale will make few spell
ling errors
He believes his system will be an ad-
vantage in overcoming the evil results at
tending the failure under systems in COM
mon use to give sufficient attention to the
grouping of words of equal difficulty. 1t
will make the pupil more efficient in spell
| ling and for that reason the study will give
him less difficulty. Under the system COM
monty prevailing the child may find a sim
pie word and very difficult one in the
came lesson. He learns the simple one
but probably fails to master the difficult
one. If all the words in his first lesson
were simple and if his subsequent lessons
were arranged so that from day to day he
would be gradually introduced-t to words of
greater difficulty, all of the words would
have an equal chance of being learned.
THE PATHFINDER.
Autr,tI uffnt1