oa De verenigbaarheid van didactische middelen en taalkundige spellinglogica bij Nederlandse werkwoorden

The compatibility of didactic resources and the linguistic logic of spelling in Dutch verb spelling

Despite years of dedicated education, a significant number of Dutch pupils leave primary school each year without mastering verb spelling. At this point, the spelling system appears to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The system underlying Dutch verb spelling is logical, but it violates the basic rules of Dutch spelling and leads to homophonic forms that have to be spelled differently. The effect of frequency and context increases the uncertainty on how to spell these verb forms. The latest research, by now already about thirty years old, indicated that verb spelling is learned best by whole-class teaching and by means of an algorithm. In this article we discuss the available didactic resources and the problems that students have to overcome when learning Dutch verb spelling. It provides us with a tentative answer as to whether didactic resources and the logic of Dutch verb spelling are compatible.