Two studies investigated the intrinsic and contextual difficulties of English spelling for native Haitian Creole-speaking children (NHCSs), and the effect of phonemic awareness on the achievement on beginning spellers. Each study had 20 NHCS kindergarten children as subjects. In the first, the subjects were trained in English phonemics (blending, isolation, segmentation, deletion), then tested for phonemic awareness. Results showed the children made errors in increasing order of severity in segmentation, deletion, blending, and isolation, and made significant errors in cluster onsets and cluster coda. The second study had an experimental group of 10 students and a control group of similar size. The experimental group was trained in the same aspects of phonemics and also in pronunciation of syllables illustrating onset rime, vowel coda, cluster onset, and cluster coda, incorporating instruction addressing error patterns found in the first study. Results indicated a significant experimental effect of phonemic training on students' spelling. Recommendations for further research are offered. A 32-item bibliography is included. (MSE)