In this paper, we study a coupling of spectral methods and the p -version finite element methods for elliptic boundary value problems containing singularities. The method of auxiliary mapping, which is a recent development to deal with domain singularities in the p-version of the finite element method, is employed to remove the pollution effect caused by singularities. An iterative interfacial coupling between spectral methods and the p-version of the finite element method is used and investigated numerically. The advantages of such an approach are demonstrated by the high accuracy of spectral methods for the smooth part of solutions and the flexibility of the p-version of the finite element method for dealing with singularities and irregular domains. The efficiency of the coupling method is also evaluated by comparing results obtained by this method with those obtained by the full finite element algorithm.