An important component of teaching spelling is identifying why students have made an error. After reading this headline “OpenAI urges students to use AI for learning, not answers”, I was interested to see if Chat GPT might be a useful resource for helping students’ learn from their spelling errors and as a resource for parents and teachers.
I began by asking Chat GPT:
Can you explain why a student has spelled ‘preparation’ as ‘preperation’?
Below is the response received from Chat GPT followed by my thoughts.
Yes, the misspelling of “preparation” as “preperation” is a common error, and it usually happens due to one or more of the following reasons:
🔤 1. Phonetic Spelling
The student is likely writing the word as it sounds. In spoken English, especially in some accents, the schwa sound (ə) in the second syllable of preparation sounds closer to an “e” than an “a”, leading to:
“prep-er-ay-shun” → preperation
Yes, I agree that if a student is relying purely on a phonic based approach to spelling, this could be a likely explanation.
🧱 2. Base Word Confusion
The base word is prepare, which contains an “a”.
- Correct: prepare → preparation
- Mistake: prepare → preperation
Some students think the second vowel should match how “prepare” sounds, not realizing the spelling changes due to suffix rules.
Yes! For me this is the most critical reason that the student is making the error. Once students are learning words containing multiple morphemes you can no longer rely purely on a phoneme-grapheme connection.
📚 3. Lack of Familiarity or Practice
If a student hasn’t seen the word in writing often, they’re more likely to guess based on sound. The more a word is read, the more likely correct spelling is retained.
Sure, but at this level of spelling students need to be able to deduce the correct spelling of words by being able to identify the morphemes within the word and applying any relevant spelling rules. This relates directly to point 2.
🔄 4. Analogy with Other Words
They might be over-applying patterns from similar words:
- separation (from separate)
- operation (from operate)
This can confuse the rules and lead to spelling “preparation” with -peration instead of -paration.
This could be true as there are more words containing ‘eration’ than ‘aration’. However, it still gets back to the issue raised in point 2.
🧠 5. Spelling Memory and Processing
Some students rely more on sound-memory than visual-memory for spelling. They may spell complex words phonetically until they form a strong visual impression of the correct version.
This is basically the same answer as provided in point 1. We need to be moving students away from relying on visual memory (think look-cover-write-check) and explicitly teaching them how a word has been encoded. If students are relying on their visual memory of a word, they can only spell the words they have seen AND REMEMBERED.
I then decided to check if the same level of feedback was provided if more than one word was analysed. Below is my second question which was based on actual errors made by a real student:
Explain why these words have been spelled incorrectly and suggest a way to remember the correct spelling: hankercheif, salery, naighbur, sucesfull.
Below is the response received from Chat GPT followed my thoughts. You will notice that the response is nowhere near as comprehensive, and only focuses on one error even when the word was spelled incorrectly for several reasons.
Here’s a breakdown of each misspelled word, why it’s incorrect, and a helpful way to remember the correct spelling:
1. Incorrect: hankercheif
✅ Correct: handkerchief
- Why it’s wrong:
The word is often misspelled because people pronounce it like “hankerchief,” leaving out the silent “d” in “hand”. - How to remember it:
✏️ Think: “You use your hand to hold a kerchief.”
✔️ hand + kerchief = handkerchief
Yes, this addresses the first error, the absence of the ‘d’. However, it doesn’t really address the fact that handkerchief is a compound stem. It would also be useful to discuss the etymology of ‘kerchief’ which originates from the Old French word ‘couvrechief’ (literally meaning ‘cover head’ from ‘couvrir’ meaning ‘to cover’ + ‘chief’ meaning ‘head’). It would also be useful to link it to the word ‘neckerchief’.
Chat GTP didn’t address at all the wrong spelling of ‘ie’. Students need to learn and then practise applying the rule ‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’ when the sound is /ee/. See ‘i’ before ‘e’ post.
2. Incorrect: salery
✅ Correct: salary
- Why it’s wrong:
It’s a phonetic spelling mistake – the ending is spelled “-ary”, not “-ery.” - How to remember it:
💰 You earn a salary to afford things at the ary (think “bakery,” “library” – places that end in “-ary” not “-ery”).
This is not a bad explanation, but it could have focused a little more on the etymology. ‘Salary’ comes from the Latin ‘sal’ (meaning ‘salt’) + the suffix ‘ary’ (meaning pertaining to or connected to).
Another memory strategy might be pointing out that it is the same vowel on each side of the ‘l’ and also comparing it to ‘celery’ which again has the same vowel on each side of the ‘l’. If students are confusing ‘celery’ and ‘salary’ you could show them that by placing a line through the ‘s’ it looks like a $ sign – a salary is when you get paid money. If the word is ‘celery’, the next letter cannot be an ‘a’ because then the ‘c’ would no longer be pronounced /s/.
3. Incorrect: naighbur
✅ Correct: neighbour (UK) / neighbor (US)
- Why it’s wrong:
Confusion arises from the complex vowel combination “eigh” and the placement of letters. - How to remember it:
🏡 Think: “Neighbour has the word ‘neigh’ in it – like a horse neighing next door!”
✔️ neigh + bour = neighbour
(Or neighbor in American English.)
Again, Chat GPT addresses the first error, but not the second one. I’m not sure that linking it to the word ‘neigh’ would be helpful for most students as it is likely that they wouldn’t know the correct spelling of that word either. A better link would be relating it to ‘eight’ as most students at this level can spell this word: We have eight neighbours.
The second error relates to the final phoneme. Interestingly, ‘-our’ is most commonly used as a suffix meaning belonging to or pertaining to but ‘neighbour’ is actually a compound stem from the Old English words ‘neah’ (meaning ‘near’) + ‘gebur’ (meaning ‘dweller’).
A helpful strategy for the student to remember the correct spelling of the ‘our’ grapheme (or ‘or’ for American spelling) might be to link it to another word with the same grapheme that they can already spell correctly (e.g., colour/color, honour/honor, savour/savor, etc.).
4. Incorrect: sucesfull
✅ Correct: successful
- Why it’s wrong:
The spelling leaves out one “c” and one “s” – it should be double c, double s before -ful. - How to remember it:
🏆 Think: “Success is full of double letters – two c’s and two s’s!”
✔️ success + ful = successful
Again, Chat GTP only addressed two issues – the double ‘c’, and double ‘s’ but didn’t really provide a useful explanation.
The first ‘c’ is used to represent the /k/ phoneme and the second ‘c’ followed by the ‘e’ represents the /s/ phoneme. When the word is written with just one ‘c’ it would be pronounced as ‘susessful’.
The reason for the double ‘s’ is that the base word is success (consisting of the prefix ‘suc’ and the stem ‘cess’). Most commonly when a base word ends with ‘s’ you use double ‘s’ after a short vowel (miss, less), otherwise you use ‘se’ (horse, goose). The ‘e’ is pronounced as a short vowel sound, therefore double ‘s’ is used.
Lastly, we have the suffix ‘ful’. Students need to know that when ‘full’ is used as a suffix you need to drop an ‘l’.
At the bottom of the Chat GTP response, I was asked if I would like a quiz based on these errors. The table below is what was produced. I’m not sure how helpful this would actually be!!
Below are some commonly misspelled words. Choose the correct spelling or correct the misspelled word. Then, try to write a memory tip to help you remember it!
| Misspelled Word | Correct Spelling | Memory Tip |
| hankercheif | ||
| salery | ||
| naighbur | ||
| sucesfull |