Why is spelling so hard?

Most of us depend on spell check to catch our spelling mistakes when we write. What would we do if we didn't have spell check? Do we memorize every spelling? Do we know certain rules that help us? I'll bet you remember this rule we learned in school - "When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking." Unfortunately that rule works for less than half of English words with vowel teams.

What do we do when we hear the sound:
ew as in few,
ea as in breath or great,
ow as in cow,
au as in auto,
oi as in oil,
ou as in house,
eigh as in eight?

Often teachers fall back on the statement that these are exceptions to the rule. Actually, they follow a different rule - ones that we just haven't learned yet. People to whom language comes easily, pick up these different spellings, but people who struggle with language processing must learn spelling rules in a conscious way. When they do, they actually learn more completely than others and can tell you why something is spelled the way it is rather than just "feeling" that it looks right.