Do spelling tests actually make students better spellers?
Summary: yes. Students get better at taking spelling tests, they get better at spelling correctly in their everyday writing, and they tend to become better readers too.
Spelling tests are a simple idea that have been around since the dawn of language. In the United States, Noah Webster pioneered educational texts with the Blue Backed Spellers, originally published in 1786 under the lengthy official title The American spelling book, containing an easy standard of pronunciation : being the first part of a grammatical institute of the English language.
Spelling tests in elementary and grade schools is a time-honored tradition, and often a core part of the curriculum in countries at those levels. And many a student has left behind their spelling tests possibly wondering, “what is the point of all these tests? Are they actually helping?”
What the research says about spelling tests
To answer that question, we have to look at three different questions:
- Do spelling tests make students better at taking spelling tests?
- Do spelling tests make students better at spelling words correctly during their writing in general?
- Does spelling practice make students better readers and writers?
Steve Graham and Tanya Santangelo tackled all three in their 2014 meta-analysis of 53 studies, Does spelling instruction make students better spellers, readers, and writers? A meta-analytic review. The review covered 6,037 students from kindergarten through 12th grade.
Some background on why they asked: for most of the last century, some scholars argued that spelling shouldn’t be formally taught at all. Kids would supposedly pick it up naturally through reading and writing. Graham and Santangelo set out to test that claim.
The results showed “strong and consistent support for teaching spelling.” Here is what they found, with effect sizes (ES) where the paper reports them. As a rough guide, education researchers treat 0.2 as small, 0.5 as moderate, and 0.8 or higher as large.
| Outcome | Effect size |
|---|---|
| Spelling performance vs. no or unrelated instruction | 0.54 |
| Spelling performance vs. informal or incidental learning | 0.43 |
| More formal spelling instruction vs. less | 0.70 |
| Gains maintained over time | 0.53 |
| Spelling correctly when writing | 0.94 |
| Phonological awareness | 0.51 |
| Reading skills | 0.44 |
A few things stand out:
- Teaching spelling improved spelling performance compared to no instruction, and it beat the “they’ll pick it up on their own” approach
- Students who got more formal spelling instruction improved more than those who got less
- Gains in spelling were maintained over time and not immediately forgotten (students weren’t just cramming for Friday’s test)
- The results were consistent regardless of the students’ grade level or literacy skills
Better spellers become better writers
The biggest effect in the entire review wasn’t on spelling tests at all. It was on how well students spelled when they were writing (ES = 0.94). Words practiced on a list didn’t stay on the list. They showed up spelled correctly in students’ own sentences and stories.
This matters more than it might seem. When a child has to stop and puzzle over how to spell every other word, that effort comes out of the same limited mental budget they need for ideas, word choice, and sentence structure. Graham’s broader writing research makes this point often: handwriting and spelling are “transcription” skills, and when they become automatic, kids are free to focus on what they actually want to say. Poor spelling also affects how writing is judged. Readers tend to rate misspelled writing as lower quality, even when the ideas are good.
So a spelling test isn’t only about getting 20 out of 20. It’s about making spelling automatic enough that it stops getting in the way of writing.
Better spellers become better readers
The review also found that spelling instruction improved reading skills (ES = 0.44) and phonological awareness (ES = 0.51), meaning the ability to hear and work with the individual sounds in words.
That makes sense once you see that spelling and reading are two directions of the same skill. Reading is decoding: looking at letters and turning them into sounds and meaning. Spelling is encoding: hearing sounds and turning them into letters. Both rely on the same knowledge of how sounds map to letter patterns. When a student carefully spells ship by segmenting /sh/ /i/ /p/ and choosing the right letters, they’re building the same connections they’ll use to read ship, shop, and chip quickly on the page.
This link is why many Science of Reading programs teach spelling and reading together instead of as separate subjects. The UFLI Foundations program, for example, pairs encoding and decoding in every lesson so that spelling practice directly reinforces reading. If your school uses UFLI, the UFLI word lists are organized lesson by lesson, which makes them a natural fit for weekly spelling practice.
Students benefit
In general, every student can benefit from additional spelling instruction. As the research shows, the gains aren’t isolated to those training for the National Spelling Bee or to those who struggle the most in the classroom.
Additional spelling test practice helps with all three questions above: students become better at taking spelling tests, better at spelling words correctly in their writing, and better readers.
How to make spelling tests more effective
The research supports formal spelling instruction, which means practice that is regular, deliberate, and built on real spelling patterns. A few practical takeaways:
- Be consistent. More instruction produced bigger gains (ES = 0.70), so a short test every week beats an occasional one.
- Use words that follow a pattern. Lists grouped by a shared sound or spelling rule (like the lessons in a phonics scope and sequence) build the letter-sound knowledge that transfers to reading.
- Revisit words later. Since gains were maintained over time, it helps to bring back earlier words in later tests.
- Get students writing. Have students use their spelling words in sentences so the practice carries over into their own writing.
If you want to put this into practice, you can make your own spelling test with your class’s word list in under a minute. Spelling Test Buddy reads each word aloud, uses it in a sentence, and grades the test automatically, so you can keep practice consistent without extra prep.
Frequently asked questions
Are spelling tests effective?
Yes, when they’re part of formal spelling instruction. Graham and Santangelo’s meta-analysis of 53 studies found that teaching spelling improved spelling performance compared to no instruction (ES = 0.54) and compared to informal or incidental approaches (ES = 0.43).
Do spelling tests improve spelling in everyday writing?
Yes. Gains from spelling instruction carried over to how students spelled when writing (ES = 0.94), the largest effect in the review.
Does spelling instruction make students better readers?
Yes. Spelling instruction improved reading skills (ES = 0.44) and phonological awareness (ES = 0.51). Spelling and reading draw on the same letter-sound knowledge, so practicing one strengthens the other.