Spelling Errors in English Written Work of Junior Secondary School Students in Katsina State

Spelling accuracy is a basic but frequently neglected component of English literacy development in Nigerian secondary schools, and systematic error documentation is a prerequisite for targeted remedial instruction. This study investigates spelling errors in English written work submitted by Junior Secondary School students in Katsina State, examining error frequency, type distribution, and the relationship between error rates and school location and teacher qualification. A collection of five hundred written exercise scripts from JSS 2 students across ten schools, five urban and five rural, was compiled and subjected to error cataloguing using a classification scheme distinguishing phonological, morphological, and visual-memory spelling error types. Phonological errors, particularly those reflecting Hausa phoneme inventory substitutions, constitute the largest error category at forty-four percent of all identified errors, reflecting the pervasive influence of Hausa phonology on English spelling attempts by L1 Hausa students. Morphological errors involving incorrect inflection marking account for twenty-eight percent of errors, while visual-memory errors including transpositions and homophone confusions make up the remaining proportion. Rural school scripts show significantly higher error densities than urban school scripts, and schools staffed by unqualified English teachers show higher error rates than those with specialist English staff. The study recommends a targeted phonological awareness programme in Katsina State junior secondary schools and advocates for specialist English teacher deployment to underserved rural schools. Keywords: spelling errors, junior secondary students, Katsina State, error analysis, English literacy.