Overview

Membean's primary focus is the development of a robust vocabulary, not spelling. This article will explain when students are required to spell things on the program. 

"Spelling" Questions

While we do have fill-in-the-blank cloze questions where students are expected to partially spell target words (they must provide the first 3 letters), spelling is not an explicit focus. Spelling is only orthogonally related to word knowledge, especially at the middle and high school levels; it is more relevant for elementary school children. During cloze questions, which students often mistake as spelling questions, we expect a student to spell just the first 3 letters of the word. If a teacher wants students to spell answers fully, they can turn on the full spelling option in student preferences.

Without the full-spelling required setting enabled, students only fully spell the word as an exercise the first time they see it. This has a dual benefit: it not only helps students learn to spell the word, but also slows down the pace with an activity, which helps to ensure that a word is explicitly registered in memory. This initial spelling does not count against their accuracy.