[stylist] Quote to ponder - taken to another level

Sat Feb 16 22:06:33 UTC 2013

Hi Lynda,
Now that you explained what you meant, I see. Yes sighted people do see 
whole words and visualize them and since you grew up sighted, I see why you 
made this connection. But I think braille readers can make the same 
connections, just using their fingers.

Blind people can learn to spell well though if given the right 
opportunities.
Ashley

-----Original Message----- 
From: Lynda Lambert
Sent: Saturday, February 09, 2013 8:30 AM
To: Writer's Division Mailing List
Subject: Re: [stylist] Quote to ponder - taken to another level

Ashley,
I agree with you, in part.
Spelling is visual to "ME" as a fully sighted person who learned to spell
over 60 years ago. We learned to spell by the look of the word .

The word on a page,  initially,  is a visual object.  Mark making is
visual - the marks create a visual effect on a page. The page is a blank
canvas until the artist lays down a mark with paint or a pencil. The blank
canvas holds no content until this happens.

After  a mark is made on a plain sheet of paper, there is now content.  The
visual mark has created visual content that did not exist prior to the act
of marking the page. There is nothing odd about this at all unless you have
never seen a mark on a page. That is what I think makes our view of the mark
something different - we have to use a different sense to realize the mark
on the page - the sighted person realizes content/meaning through sight; the
blind person finds content/meaning through touching a mark (but only if it
has been altered so that it can be felt.)  A word is an assortment of visual
marks that are strung together to create meaning. Spelling is recognition of
the visual marks in a particular sequence and then being able to speak the
sound of the marks. But it is more than that.

Spelling then, I think, would be another step in trying to figure out
content.  The fact is very clear that there are people both sighted and
blind who will never fully grasp how to spell. Something just does not click
and I have no idea what that might be. I just know it is so and have
observed it in the classrooms of many young adult students.  These days  we
can use spell check.

I fully agree with you on the different ways of learning to spell. That was
not the issue. We  know that there are some people who will never learn to
spell regardless of all the ways that are possible and all the help
imaginable. My husband is one of them!  lol   He would not be happy to know
I am writing this about him.  He is a brilliant man, with a very high IQ.
He can discuss just about any topic intelligently. He has a fantastic memory
and loves to read about a very wide variety of topics. He retains what he
reads and has very good recall of facts. He reads several  books a week,
gets two daily newspapers and reads them cover to cover. He is a financial
whiz.  And yet, he cannot spell very well. His sight is nearly perfect since
birth. So that has nothing to do with his lack of spelling skill.

I am not at all sure exactly how we learn to spell - and that is completely
outside of my interests or expertise.
What I do know is that  some children never will.

I know things are taught entirely differently in elementary levels since
the days when I was a young girl. My daughter is a teacher and a librarian
and I am fully aware of her educational process of learning to teach. In my
elementary education we learned almost everything by memorization and
drills. We would write a word hundreds of times to get the spelling burned
into our brains. Our parents would drill us nightly on our spelling words.
It had very little to do with the teacher in the classroom - it was our
responsibility to learn those words and our parents  were a very active part
of our education process.

I now have the vantage point of watching not only my children, but my
grandchildren, and my great-grandchildren learn to write and spell.  It
began very early with their parents teaching them to sing the alphabet
before they could talk clearly. They learned to sing their names, and sing
the words to songs. They learned the alphabet long before they started
school at the age of 3 or 4. They first learned to sing it, then they
learned to write the letters. This is all done by the parents to prepare
them to be good students, and they are.

This really does reflect back to the "stuff" we individually bring to the
text, or the table, doesn't it!  Now that I am thinking about it, we are
actually brining "stuff" to the table from day one in the classroom.

Lynda

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ashley Bramlett" <bookwormahb at earthlink.net>
To: "Writer's Division Mailing List" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, February 08, 2013 8:01 PM
Subject: Re: [stylist] Quote to ponder - taken to another level

> Hi,
> Um, actually, people spell bad probably because they are not taught
> braille, have had less support in school, or have a undiagnosed learning
> problem.
> I think spelling is about knowing the rules and sounding things out. You
> match the sounds or phonemes with the letters or graphemes.
> Oh my goodness. To say spelling is visual is well kind of odd.
> There are tons of ways to learn spelling from memorization to phonecs, to
> seeing the whole word in print or braille and more ways.
> Ashley
>
> -----Original Message----- 
> From: Lynda Lambert
> Sent: Friday, February 08, 2013 1:02 PM
> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [stylist] Quote to ponder - taken to another level
>
> This is a really good question, Robert.
> I have noticed that so many blind people spell things so wonky, and maybe
> this is why. I always wonder is spelling is  really taught and learned
> visually. I really have no experience with any of the discussion on
> Braille
> because I do not use it - I do everything with electronics and some things
> with a CCTV.   I have only had sight loss for 5 years, so I really have no
> idea how blind children learn things like spelling, grammar, formatting,
> and
> punctuation. To me, they are all visual, and it is very hard for me to
> understand it any other way - well, I really don't understand it any other
> way. When I am reading (listening to a voice on a machine) I am still
> listening visually. I see it in my mind, and if I cannot see it that way,
> it's confusing to me.  Auditory skills  would rate very low  for me.
> Everyone has strength in certain skills and ways of learning - and I am a
> Visual learner above all else. That did not change - I still have to be
> able
> to SEE it to remember it - I have to stop and SEE a picture in my mind
> before it sticks with me.
> Writing and reading, for me, has always been a visual experience.  This
> makes me wonder, can a person who has always been blind be a Visual
> learner?
> And, then, I wonder, how does a blind person visualize things?  These are
> some things I am thinking about and working with a blind painter friend to
> put together an exhibition on how people  see and visualize.
>
> Lynda
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Robert Leslie Newman" <newmanrl at cox.net>
> To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Friday, February 08, 2013 9:03 AM
> Subject: [stylist] Quote to ponder - taken to another level
>
>
>> We were discussing how the impact of what is read is influenced by the
>> reader, themselves (by what they personally bring to the reading-table).
>> And here is an interesting thought or outcome that is happening to too
>> many
>> blind people! First as a baseline thought - the sighted student/reader
>> who
>> uses print to read literature, educational stuff and the like - they are
>> reading the words themselves, visually scanning, actively processing ---
>> while during this process, the student is being exposed to important
>> "reading related/literacy" features/elements such as: format,
>> punctuation,
>> spelling, and features like tables, graphs, pictures, etc. Also, along
>> the
>> same line of literacy, of actively reading for oneself --- The blind
>> reader
>> who has the skill of Braille can get the same basic exposure to content,
>> plus all the important literacy features as - format, punctuation,
>> spelling
>> and the other stuff. However, in today's world, at least in this country,
>> Braille is not being taught as a first-line method of reading for the
>> non-print reader! And yeah, you all have heard this gripe, this warning
>> before. There again my point today is a bit different: My thought,
>> question
>> is --- hey --- picture this- if you could not read print, did not know
>> Braille and could only hear new information, be it a textbook, or poem or
>> piece of prose --- you were not getting exposed to formatting,
>> punctuation,
>> or spelling of anything you heard;
>> And so I ask does this then essentially take the blind person back to the
>> preprint era, back to learning via the oral tradition? Yeah --- what are
>> these teachers thinking? (Another bazaar thought - what do you think
>> these
>> teachers who are doing this to the blind would do --- if they were to
>> find
>> that in school their very own sighted children would have print taken
>> away
>> and their child was restricted to only listening to what was being
>> taught??)
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>
>
>
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