Abstract: The aim of this paper is to investigate misspellings of some everyday English words among undergraduate students of English. The research is based on Katz and Frost’s (1992) Orthographic Depth Hypothesis. Through random sampling, 48 participants were selected from a total population of 58 400 level undergraduates of Yusuf Maitama Sule University, Kano. Experimental and controlled groups were formed, both of which sat pretest and posttest. The experimental group learned some spelling tips before the second test. Comparing the misspelled words to Wikipedia’s (2023) 100 most frequently used English words, it has been identified that some of the commonest misspelled words are “there”, “their”, “government” “a lot”, “day”, “child”, “important”, “other”, “and”, “are”, “about”, “into”, “my”, “for”, “woman”, “this”, “her”, “an”, “want” and “go”, all of which are available in the Wikipedia’s list. Thus, the research findings show that the misspelling of everyday English words among the undergraduate students of the English language is because of a lackadaisical attitude they exhibit towards correct spelling, and being a word familiar to them does not always help in their attempt to spell it. The study further suggests that, since spelling is a prime example of writing sub-skill, it should receive greater attention to both researchers and teachers.
Keywords: Spelling,
Error, Word, English
DOI: www.doi.org/10.36349/tjllc.2025.v04i01.011
author/Ali Abubakar Idris & Ali Umar Muhammad
journal/Tasambo JLLC 4(1) | May 2025 |
