Dysorthographia: how to correct spelling mistakes without discouraging your child?
Correcting the spelling mistakes of a child with dysorthographia is a delicate task. Correcting too much discourages and exhausts. Correcting too little does not help progress. The right approach lies in the middle — targeted, supportive and effective. Here is how to find that balance.
Understanding why systematic correction is ineffective
Correcting every mistake in a text is counterproductive for a child with dysorthographia. Firstly, because they are overwhelmed by the volume of corrections and cannot manage to deal with all of them. Secondly, because systematic correction reinforces the association between writing and failure — which gradually blocks written expression. And finally, because isolated correction, without explanation or practice, does not embed learning in long-term memory.
Targeted correction: choosing your battles
The most effective strategy is targeted correction — choosing 2 or 3 types of errors to work on at any given time and temporarily ignoring the others. These goals are ideally defined in coordination with the speech and language therapist, who knows which skills are being developed in therapy. Working on homophones for two weeks, then moving on to subject-verb agreement — this gradual, targeted approach produces far better results than exhaustive correction.
Rephrasing rather than correcting head-on
Rather than pointing out a mistake head-on — “you wrote ‘a’ again instead of ‘à'” — you can rephrase by asking a supportive question: “can you check this ‘a’? Remember how we tell them apart.” This approach keeps the child in an active position of correcting rather than a passive position of receiving the correction.
Independent proofreading with tools
Teaching the child to use correction tools to proofread independently is far more instructive than correcting their texts yourself. Text-to-speech, the spell checker and the electronic dictionary are powerful proofreading tools that the child should gradually learn to master.
Valuing progress, not perfection
Comparing the child’s current work with their work from three or six months ago — rather than comparing it with that of other children — helps to recognise genuine progress that is often invisible when you only look at the day’s output. This long-term perspective maintains motivation and gives meaning to the effort made. For resources on supportive correction and DYS support, lesdys.fr offers practical guides for parents and teachers.
