Spelling

I've talked about the importance of spelling before.  I think it is still an important component that leads to better reading comprehension and far better writing skills that go beyond the mere technical component of spelling.       

Using a spell checker on your word processor will help - but only if you have a reasonable knowledge of spelling in the first place.  Even then, as you could tell from one of my previous posts, the spell checking misses a lot of errors.
Also, just as using a calculator for math doesn't help teach you very much about math, using spell check doesn't teach you very much about how to spell!  

Here is an interesting article about spelling:

Reading Rockets - Spellinghttp://www.readingrockets.org/article/8845