I conclude that, the study reveals that the spelling
constitute a real problem among students at the
University of Dongola. As Macline (2001:310) says:
"English spelling is difficult and irregular, but some rules
work almost all the time". This is due to the nature of
English spelling system. There is no one to one
correspondence between sound and letter. Letters do not
highly represent the speech sounds, for example, the
letter "a" represents different sounds as illustrate bellow:
/ei/ as in cake /keik/, table /teibl/.
/ͻ:/ as in saw /sͻ:/, tall /tͻ:l/.
/e/ as in many /meni/, ate /et/.
/a:/ as in calm /ka:lm/, bar /ba:/.
Another example is that one sound can be represented
by more than one letter, the vowel sound /i:/ can be
represented by:
(ea) as in tea /ti:/, repeat /ripi:t/.
(ie) as in chief /ʧi:f/, believe /bili:v/.
(ei) as in conceive /kənsi:v/, seize /si:z/.
Also, one can notice that one combination of letters is
used to represent different sounds, the combination of
letters (ough) represents sounds such as:
/au/ as in bough /bau/, plough /plau/.
/u:/ as in through /Ɵru:/.
/əu/ as in though /Ɵəu/.
The study also indicates that, vowel errors are a major
area of difficulties among the students at the University of
Dongola.