This study focused upon (1) whether the errors of sixth-grade children in spelling American English words were related to the dialect spoken by the children, and (2) what effect the teaching of phoneme-grapheme correspondence rules based upon a single dialect pattern would have on the spelling of second-grade children. First, eight sixth-grade classes in four major geographic dialect areas completed a 150-word spelling test in which each word presented a particular phoneme whose spelling was predictable on a "regular" basis for the "standard" dictionary pronunciation. The number of times the particular phoneme was misspelled was compared to the number of times the word was misspelled at any point. Eight phonemes (out of 19) showed significant differences between at least two of the geographic groups, indicating that the child's dialect affected his perception of phoneme-grapheme correspondences. In the second investigation, eight second-grade classes in the same schools were given six week-long lessons on specific phoneme-grapheme correspondence rules based on dictionary pronunciation. Although indefinite, the results indicated that teaching standard patterns had little effect upon the child's personal dialect. (Author/LH)