So, your child has problems with spelling? Brendan Culligan's book, Improving Children's Spelling, challenges parents to move away from the traditional role of signing their children's spelling tests on Friday nights and, instead, help their children learn to spell.

It also challenges teachers to stop "giving" spellings and to start teaching them.

As an aside, it also almost caused me to miss my bus stop on the way home. Where I had expected a mildly interesting read, I was unexpectedly engrossed in reading about causes of spelling failure and strategies to tackle these failures.

The book, which is aimed at both parents and teachers, grew out of a survey Culligan carried out in 1992. Children were surveyed at the end of third class and at the beginning of fourth class. The average age was 10 years and the survey was carried out in a cross-section of 17 schools in the greater Dublin area, including mixed, single sex, all-Irish, socially advantaged and disadvantaged schools.

Unsurprisingly, it found that children in disadvantaged areas were at a lower level of spelling development. Girls are more likely to be accurate spellers than boys, regardless of class area and school type.

As children learn to spell, they pass through distinct phases of spelling development - precommunicative, prephonetic, phonetic, transitional and correct or competent.

Only one-10th of the 1,185 children surveyed by Culligan used a cursive style of handwriting (what we often call "joined writing"). All of these were at the competent stage of spelling development; the association of cursive writing with spelling competence is shown in another statistic: of the 6 per cent of children who achieved total accuracy, 86 per cent used cursive writing. With its rhythmic continuity, it is said to pose fewer physical demands on students.

Culligan says the high percentage of children (51.6 per cent) who had not reached the transitional stage of spelling development is alarming. These children are still at the phonetic stage of spelling and they need to be taught that spelling transcends sound, he says.

There is no single answer as to why children fail at spelling and, consequently, no single solution. Culligan presents the various reasons for spelling failure - poor linguistic ability or visual perception, a lack of familiarity with the serial probability of letter occurrences (for instance, if a word begins with b, certain letters cannot come next), poor visual memory, weak auditory analysis, faulty pronunciation, reliance on sound, poor recall. There are also environmental factors that may have an influence on children's spelling.

The debate about which words children should learn has been going on since the last century. Culligan examines three Irish commercial spelling books in common use and finds that each have a number of shortcomings. These books were not designed with the struggler in mind, he says.

"Success in the Friday test must not be confused with spelling improvement, and learning lists of words must not be confused with learning how to spell, the latter being a skill that needs to be taught. To have weak spellers learning words in isolation - the `Five-a-night test and a test on Friday' approach - is definite not the best way to enhance children's spelling ability," he adds. A child's spelling ability should be assessed in a passage of free writing.

It is wrong, he writes, to assume that just because children are good or avid readers they will be good spellers. Spelling is a different and much more demanding skill than reading.

Nine different methods of teaching spelling are outlined in chapter four. Parents and teachers may need to experiment with a few methods before they find one which suits the learner. Whichever method is adopted, Culligan suggests that parents and teachers liaise closely.

"It is important that your child does not look upon you as another teacher. You are a helper. Your relationship with the child is much more important than spelling." Ten to 15 minutes a night, five nights a week are needed, he says - once or twice a week is of little value. Parents are advised not to look on spelling as an all-or-nothing activity. "Be positive with corrections. The child may have five letters right out of six. Give praise for doing something right."

Having set out the various methods of teaching spelling, the book looks at the value of core words and dictation. Parents using core words are not to be tempted into using them as alphabetical spelling lists, he says. The proper use of core words is within dictation. A child can then compile his or her personal dictionary.

Spelling is one of the most assessed areas in the primary school curriculum. Almost all parents are familiar with the lists of spelling and spelling tests. However, these are of little use in identifying a child's specific spelling needs. Culligan gives some useful guidelines for profiling weak spellers.

He also describes effective practices for classroom management. For instance, he suggests teachers group pupils according to their spelling abilities rather than adopting a whole class approach. He says it is possible, despite the very high pupil teacher ratio which exists in Irish primary schools, to meet the needs of even the weakest spellers. Culligan, who teaches in Bayside Senior School, Dublin, and who has specialised in remedial education for the past 15 years, says he is aware "of the constraints of the teacher's time and the sheer effort of the initial organisation, but the success of the children will make the effort worthwhile".

Improving Children's Spelling is written and published by Brendan Culligan and costs £12.