Helping Your Child Spell in English When It Is Not Your Home Language

Your child comes home with a spelling list. Twelve English words, a quiz on Friday, and a note asking parents to practice at home. You look at the list and feel a small knot in your stomach. You are not sure how to say "through" correctly. You would spell "beautiful" from memory and get it wrong. And at home, you speak Arabic, or Spanish, or Tagalog, or Mandarin, because that is the language of your family.

Many parents in this position quietly decide they cannot help, and some go further and start speaking English at home, even badly, in the hope that it will help their child at school. Both decisions are understandable. Neither is necessary, and the second may cost your child something valuable.

This guide explains what the research says about children learning to spell in English while growing up with another language, what you can do at home without being an expert in English, and how to work with your child's school.

Your home language is not a problem to fix

The first thing to know is that speaking your own language at home does not hold your child back in English spelling. The evidence points the other way.

In 2006, a large review called the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth, edited by Diane August and Timothy Shanahan, brought together the research on children learning to read and write in a second language. One of its clearest findings was that children learning English often reach the same level as native speakers in word-level skills, which include decoding and spelling, when they receive good instruction. Their bigger challenge, the review found, was oral English vocabulary and comprehension, which develop more slowly.

Other research shows that some skills carry across from one language to another. A 1993 study by Aydin Durgunoğlu, William Nagy and Barbara Hancin-Bhatt found that Spanish-speaking first graders who could hear and play with the sounds in Spanish words were better at reading English words too. The ability to notice sounds, called phonological awareness, is not tied to a single language. The educational researcher Jim Cummins has argued for decades that a strong first language gives children a foundation for learning a second.

So keep talking, reading and singing in your own language. Rich conversation in any language builds vocabulary, thinking and confidence, and those are the things that carry over.

What your child's mistakes are telling you

When your child misspells English words, it can feel like a sign of trouble. Often it is a sign of learning. Young children everywhere spell words the way they hear them before they learn the conventional spelling. A five-year-old who writes "becos" for "because" is using real knowledge of sounds and letters. We explain this stage in why invented spelling is a good sign.

Children who grow up with two languages sometimes add a second kind of mistake: they use the sound or spelling habits of the home language. A child who reads Spanish may write "i" for the English long e sound, because that is how the Spanish i sounds, producing "sit" for "seat". A child who speaks Arabic at home may mix p and b, because Arabic has no p. A child who speaks Hindi at home may mix v and w, because Hindi does not separate those two sounds. These mistakes follow a logic, and they are a sign that your child is applying what they know about one language to another.

Most of these mistakes fade as the child gets more English input and practice. If you notice the same pattern again and again, though, it is useful information. Tell the teacher. A teacher who knows that a child's b and p errors come from the home language can target them directly, instead of treating them as carelessness.

You do not need perfect English to help

Here is the most important practical point in this guide. To help with spelling practice, you do not need to know how to spell the words yourself. You need the list, and you need to be the person who checks.

Think of yourself as a coach rather than a teacher. A football coach does not need to be the best player on the team. They need to watch carefully, give clear feedback and keep practice regular. With a spelling list, your job is to say or play each word, let your child write it from memory, and then compare their spelling with the list letter by letter. You can do that perfectly whatever your own level of English.

If you are not sure how to pronounce a word, do not guess. Use a recording. Most online dictionaries have an audio button, and many school spelling programs provide recordings too. Your accent is not a problem for most words, but for spelling practice the clearest model is best, and it removes the worry from you. Many parents find that they learn the words alongside their children, and some say it is the most useful English practice they have ever had. Our guide on helping your child when your own spelling is weak has more on this.

Talk about the two languages together

Bilingual children have something that monolingual children do not: two systems to compare. You can use this.

When a spelling surprises your child, talk about how your language would write the same sound. "In Spanish, we write this sound with a j. In English, this word uses an h." "In Arabic we do not write the short vowels. In English, every syllable needs one." "In Mandarin, we use characters for meaning. English letters stand for sounds, mostly." These conversations make the rules of each language visible, and they show your child that their home language is useful knowledge, not something to hide.

Conversations about words also build an awareness of how language works. Children who notice that "teacher" is "teach" plus "er" in English, or that their home language builds words from parts too, find long words much less frightening. The research on morphology, the study of word parts, suggests that this kind of awareness helps spelling. A 2010 review of 22 studies by Peter Bowers, John Kirby and Hélène Deacon found that teaching word structure helped children's reading, spelling and vocabulary.

A short practice routine at home

The most effective spelling practice is short, regular and from memory. It is not copying a word ten times. Copying feels like work, but it lets the hand move while the memory rests. Here is a routine that takes about ten minutes and works with any weekly list.

1. Say or play each word, and let your child repeat it out loud.
2. Your child writes the word from memory, without looking at the list.
3. You check it together against the list, letter by letter, and talk about any part that went wrong.
4. Words that were wrong go on a small "again" list for the next day.
5. Two or three days later, check all the words again, mixed up, not in list order.

This routine uses two of the best-supported findings in the science of learning. Recalling a word from memory makes it stronger than looking at it again, as Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke showed in 2006. And spreading practice across several days makes it last much longer than cramming it all into one evening.

Keep sessions short and calm. Five minutes at breakfast and five minutes after school are better than half an hour on Thursday night. If homework becomes a fight, see spelling homework without a fight.

Reading together, in both languages

Spelling and reading are separate skills, but reading feeds spelling. Every time a child reads a word by working out its sounds, the spelling gets a little more firmly linked in memory. The psychologist David Share called this the self-teaching hypothesis: decoding words while reading is how children build up their store of spellings over time.

So read with your child. Read English books together if you are comfortable, and let your child read to you if you are not. You do not need to correct every word. Ask questions about the story in whatever language you both prefer. Read books in your own language too. A child who loves reading in one language is likely to bring that love to the other.

Working with your child's school

Teachers want to know about your family's languages. Tell your child's teacher what language you speak at home and whether your child reads or writes in it. This helps the teacher understand the kind of mistakes your child makes and choose the right support.

Ask simple questions: what pattern is this week's list practicing, how the spelling quiz works, and whether there are recordings of the words. If your child has extra English language support at school, ask the support teacher what you can do at home.

Many schools, in the United States and in other countries, can provide an interpreter for meetings or translated letters for parents who need them. Ask the school office what is available, and ask early, because an interpreter may need to be booked. Do not let language stop you from going to a parents' meeting.

When to ask for more help

Learning in two languages does not cause spelling or reading difficulties. If your child struggles much more than their classmates, including those who also speak another language at home, it is worth asking whether something else is going on.

Signs that deserve a conversation with the teacher include difficulty linking letters to sounds after a year or more of good teaching, trouble remembering the alphabet, and spelling that stays very far from the target even for short, common words. Dyslexia occurs in children of every language background, and bilingual children are sometimes identified late because their difficulties are mistaken for normal language learning. Research by Nonie Lesaux and Linda Siegel in Canada found that children learning English who received good early reading instruction developed word reading skills much like native speakers, which is exactly why a child who falls far behind deserves a closer look. Our guide to signs of dyslexia in a child's spelling explains what to watch for.

What to do next

This week, take your child's spelling list and try the routine once: say or play each word, let your child write it from memory, and check it together against the list. That is your whole job, and you can do it in any accent.

If you want a recorded voice for the words, Spelling.School says each word in an American English voice, shows exactly which letters went wrong, and brings missed words back on later days; each account is for one person, so your child would use their own. Whatever tool you use, keep speaking your own language at home. It is part of what your child brings to English, not something standing in its way.

Questions people ask

Should I speak English at home to help my child's spelling?

Not if English is not your strongest language. Research on children learning a second language suggests that a strong home language supports learning in English, and that skills such as hearing the sounds in words transfer across languages. Rich conversation and reading in the language you know best do more for your child than limited English at home.

Can I help my child with English spelling if my English is weak?

Yes. To help with spelling practice, you only need the word list and a way to say each word, such as a dictionary recording. Your child writes the word from memory, and you check it letter by letter against the list. This kind of checking does not require you to know the spelling yourself.

Why does my bilingual child mix up letters in English spelling?

Children who grow up with two languages sometimes use the sounds or spelling habits of their home language when they write English. For example, a child who reads Spanish may write i for the English long e sound, and a child who speaks Arabic at home may mix p and b. These mistakes are usually logical and tend to fade with practice and good teaching.

Does being bilingual cause spelling problems?

No. Being bilingual does not cause spelling or reading difficulties. Research shows that children learning English often reach the same level as native speakers in word-level skills such as spelling when they get good instruction. If a child struggles much more than classmates with similar language backgrounds, it is worth asking the school about other possible causes, such as dyslexia.

How long should my child practice spelling each day?

A few short sessions of five to ten minutes are more useful than one long session. Practice works best when the child writes words from memory and checks them, and when the words come back again over several days. Keeping sessions short also keeps them calm, which makes practice easier to continue.

How do I tell my child's teacher about our home language?

Tell the teacher directly, in a note or at a meeting, which language you speak at home and whether your child reads or writes in it. This helps the teacher understand your child's mistakes and choose the right support. Many schools can provide an interpreter or translated letters, so ask the school office what is available.

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