ophble

I wonder whether there’s data on the efficacy of teaching etymology as an approach to teaching spelling and vocabulary. This is what I do with my students, and it seems intuitively reasonable to me, but I don’t have any data to back it up.

But for instance, if Emily had been taught as a kid that “scend” means “to climb” in Latin, so that “descend” means “to climb down” and “transcend” means “to climb across”, I would like to think she’d have been more likely to spell it right for the school paper. I believe there’s research to the effect that people remember things better when those things are meaningful to them (i.e. the baker/baker paradox). Thus, there’s a connection between misspelling something and thinking “Seriously, why does that word have a “c” in it — that’s ridiculous.” If we can make spelling make more sense, then maybe people won’t have to work so hard to memorize it.