Can you read this?

[Muhammad]

Cna yuo raed tihs?
i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

[Nooran]

ni teh smae wya, ti's a vrey ncie sllnpeig gmae.
shmoeow, ti rnmdies em fo wath's hnnapepig ni hte Mdlide Esat!

[Muhammad]

The question is :
Since we can read such things so easily, what's the importance of correct spelling?

To Nooran: do you really see what's happening in the region a nice game?

[Terry Phillips]

The human brain uses all sorts of tricks to speed up lexical access - finding words quickly in the memory store. English is lexemic - the whole of the meaning of the word is contained in the whole words - rather than morphological, like Arabic, where the meaning is a composite of a root and affixes or changes in voweling.
In reading English, first and last letters is one trick, first two or three letters is another, tops of letters is yet another, the overall shape of the word, with ascenders and descenders, also seems to be important.
We should help our students to retrieve words quickly by using all these methods otherwise they will not actually read text, but decode it with great difficulty. Flash words with only the first few letters visible, or only the tops of letters. Write on the board the first and last letters of words which students have just studied for recognition.

[Nooran]

I think there must be another question. What makes it easy for us to read passages of this type? As I see it, we already know all these misspelt words, so we find no difficulty with reading them. Just try to give this passage to your students and see how many of them can read it and how many words they can work out. I’ve already shown it to my son, 13 years, and he could read most of the words, which he already knows.
So, I don’t think that passages of this type are easy for EFL learners to read. Then correct spelling is very important. At least it enables us to look up new words in dictionaries.

To Nooran: do you really see what's happening in the region a nice game?

All what I meant by my words is that this mess and disorder is very similar to the current situation in the region.

[Muhammad]

Mr Terry,
Thank you very much for your informative reply but what do you mean by: the tops of the letters, ascenders and descenders? do you mean the shape of the letter or something else?
Also according to Nooran, correct spelling is important to EFL learners, is it the same to native speakers?

To Nooran, thank you for your reply.

[Terry Phillips]

Ascenders are letters which go above the middle stave line - like all capitals, h, l, t etc. Descenders are letters which go below the base line - like j, q, y.
A native speaker can identify words in context from very little information. That is why a native speaker is so good at reading. But our students need to be taught these native speaker skills.
Spelling IS important because sometimes the brain cannot work out meaning from limited information and needs fully correct forms. This is particularly true of our students.

[Muhammad]

Thank you very much for this reply.
As we are talking about reading, I'm now preparing for the IELTS Academic exam and the part I'm very worried about is reading. Would you give us some advice regarding this?
Thanks in advance.

[Terry Phillips]

I will. Give me a little while to think about and then I'll post a full reply.