My son's flashcard routine

It's not unique to the USA - the French could tell you a thing or two about the Championnats d'Orthographe....

I agree with your point though. There is a telling moment in the OP, where it says that the son's reward for working the flashcards is the parent reading him books beyond his reading level. What is the point of spelling words ahead of your reading level? Spelling prowess comes from repeated exposure to written words[1]. It's called "reading" and I can't see any reason (aside from stupid standardised testing) that a kid's spelling ability needs to be ahead of their reading level.

[1] This is if why you are a perl programmer the word "pearl" starts looking wrong.

Edit, due to comments below:

The question is why are teachers asking for words to be spelled essentially out of context. I just can't think of a good reason because the only way you can learn them is by flashcard games, and like the comment above, I just can't see how it is a good use of a kid's time. I certainly do not blame the parent for making sure their kid does well at school, I just don't see the sense of school being this way.

Take the word, oh I don't know. Serialization. Or hypervisor. Or encryption. Most people here can spell them (I assume!) even though you were never required to learn to do so at school - you have learned by sheer exposure. You also know that the opposite of encryption is not unencryption, but decryption, and a decrypted message is not the same as an unencrypted message. Now of course there are linguistic reasons for all this, but the point is that you know these things because you encountered these words in context.

A kid that reads a Star-Trek tie-in is sure to be able to spell "teleportation". Yes, you can also teach a kid to spell that out of context with a flash card. But why? I just don't get it.

[Disclosure: frustrated non-native English speaker who had to teach a first grader to spell "reduce, reuse, recycle" this week, gaaaaah].

" There is one branch diligently taught in a backwoods school. The public mind seems impressed with the difficulties of English orthography, and there is a solemn conviction that the chief end of man is to learn to spell. "'Know Webster's Elementary' came down from Heaven," would be the backwoods version of the 'Greek saying but that, unfortunately for the Greeks, their fame has not reached so far. It often happens that the pupil does not know the meaning of a single word in the lesson. This is of no consequence. What do you want to know the meaning of a word for? Words were made to be spelled, and men were probably created that they might spell them. Hence the necessity for sending a pupil through the spelling-book five times before you allow him to begin to read, or indeed to do anything else. Hence the necessity for those long spelling-classes at the close of each forenoon and afternoon session of the school, to stand at the head of which is the cherished ambition of every scholar. Hence, too, the necessity for devoting the whole of the afternoon session of each Friday to a "spelling-match." In fact, spelling is the "national game" in Hoopole County. Baseball and croquet matches are as unknown as Olympian chariot-races. Spelling and shucking[10] are the only public competitions."

I had very hard time spelling words when I was at the beginning of the primary school. That didn't improve much but yay, we have spellcheckers now. And I have a Mensa membership and MA in computer science.

Also, algebra by flash cards? Is algebra something to remember and forget? I think you should learn it more like you learn to ride a bike not like the spelling. Physics obeys math. By getting math you are getting intuition about how world works and by remembering how to spell words you are getting a way of making yourself more understandable ... sometimes ... in writing ... without spellchecker.

Oh. And you might do well in a spelling competition (which is useless).

We have spelling competitions in my country too. They have written form. Most famous one had over 50 thousands participants over the course of 15 years. All competitors of given year write at the same time half a page of dictated text. Only 5 people in history of this competition didn't make any mistake in their text. Perfect should never be your target. Because even if task seems simple the difference between perfect and almost perfect is most likely luck.

You shouldn't overdo helping your kids. I know two parents who overdid this and their kids were doing extremely well but only up to the point when those parents stopped coaching them. One lasted till the end of primary school, other lasted till the end of the college.

Apart from all I said kudos for successfully helping your kid.

Spelling is important for a few reasons:

1. It creates a good first impression, if that impression is delivered in written form. (How many times have you degraded your opinion of someone because of a misused "your"?)

2. It broadens your ability to communicate because you can now focus on the message rather than remembering how to spell a word, or limiting yourself to words you can spell.

3. Perhaps most importantly, the rote memorization of unruly spellings is a great precursor to the rote memorization that is required to be competent in math. You can phonetically/use rules to determine how to spell "computer", but you need to memorize "receive", "sufficient" and "seize".

Again, not suggesting that this requires spelling competitions per se, but that spelling should not be discounted.

I think the author of this piece is really trying to help his struggling child succeed. To that point, right out of the gate, we learn that his child was, "[...] significantly behind his class in handwriting, letter reversals and spelling." In addition, we learn that his child was also receiving additional help from his teacher, in order to help bring him up to his learning level and potential. Finally, the author later notes that, "[...] I'm taking an hour per day with this."

That said, while I understand the overall sentiment of your comment, it comes across as condescending in this specific case. We're not talking about a parent that is grinding his child through hours and hours of flashcards, with no opportunity to play outside; we're talking about a parent that is trying to help his child succeed and be at the same level of his peers, by taking 1 hour a day to work through a learning routine.

Anyhow, Anki is AMAZING. The best thing it does is eliminate your downtime when you're studying. If you critically look at your periods where you sit down and do work, there's a fair amount of "staring out the window" time when you are not in [flow][0]. However, because of the timer system, I felt compelled to continue through flashcards throughout my 15 or 20 minute study periods. It feels great not to waste time. I should go donate to that project.

[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

The strategy that you describe causes you to spend most of your time looking at cards that you've already mastered. You don't have the ability to slowly add to the list. You don't have the ability to have as many flashcards. And, according to the research, long-term retention is worse.

He currently has 465 cards that he's shown some retention on. Of those, tonight he will do 14. Your system would have him spending 33x as much effort maintaining that knowledge as what we're currently doing. A factor of 33 is worth some bookkeeping on my part.

I have been using the Pimsleur Spanish CDs for almost 6 months. I have made a lot of progress (especially with vocabulary) but am still at a beginner level (high beginner though, almost low intermediate).

The way we work with the book is that I will read the first 2 or 3 words on the page and then she tries to read the rest. I help when help is needed. In a good day she can read about 95% of the text without any help. The reason for this is because the text is organized in an excellent way. There is only one new rule introduced in a lesson and the child can figure it out the from the first few words and can take it from there. In fact I have found that quite often when my daughter cannot read a word, it is because she has lost focus and forgot how she read the words that came before. We go back a few words and reread them and suddenly the new word that she could not read, now is easy.

One characteristic of this book that I haven't seen other people mention is that the book is great for non-native speaker teachers like myself. Before I started with this book I got another book that used the phonetics method. But I couldn't start teaching my daughter with that book because I couldn't make the phonetic sounds correctly myself. With Bloomfield's book there is no worry for me because I do not need to make any sounds, just read a few words when my daughter cannot read them.

I would love that. At least until I was faced with the shock of something like http://www.i18nguy.com/twain.html.

But that only applies to what I've been covering. For instance the word "because" has not appeared on his spelling tests since I began, so is not in the flashcard set. It turns out that he consistently misspells it and so there is some unlearning to do there.

That is issue #2 in the list at the bottom.

Until this week we hadn't encountered any facts that were sufficiently hard that he had to break them down to successfully master them. It is clear that he uses tricks acquired from one card to do another card. But I've not had to tell him how to do that.

I should note that drills usually involve under 10 cards. We're not talking about endless work. (In fact most of the work is reading to him. Which stretches his vocabulary, and is also a learning exercise, but I won't tell him that if you don't tell him that.)