The correlation between orthography and syntax as an urgent issue of teaching the Russian language at school

The article deals with the problem of underestimating the value of syntactic knowledge and language learning skills in teaching orthography at secondary school. The author notes that the most difficult spelling cases are determined by syntactic conditions. This fact is confirmed by the diagnostic experiment conducted among 8th-9th grades students. The main reason for spelling mistakes is a low level of the basic syntactic learning skills. Students are unaware of the necessity to analyze the sentence structure for correct spelling. The article specifies the basic syntactic learning skills required to address the spelling tasks. Understanding of the linkages between orthography and syntax allows one to develop the efficient methods for improving orthographic skills and helps to perceive speech structure.