Effects of explicit rules in learning to spell open- and closed-syllable words

Second graders (N = 222; 7.7 years of age) practiced with open- and closed-syllable words in a computer-assisted training program and appropriate spelling rules were either explicitly provided during practice or not. Also, children practiced either with a small set of exemplars or with a large set; the latter condition was expected to promote the use of rules. A control group consisting of 209 second graders, who did not practice in the computer-assisted training program, was also included in the study. Learning effects of practice were established by testing the spelling of practiced words, as well as novel transfer words, in pre-, post-, and retention tests. The results in the posttest showed that with a large set of exemplars during practice explicitly provided spelling rules are supportive for learning to spell novel words but no further effects of explicit rules were found, either for practiced words or in the retention test.     

Children's sensitivity to rime unit frequency when spelling words and nonwords

This paper presents two experiments investigating 8–9 year old children's sensitivity to rime level sound-spelling correspondence units when spelling words and nonwords. In Experiment 1, children spelled more words correctly if they contained a common rime unit rather than a unique or irregular unit. In Experiment 2, children spelled more words and nonwords correctly if they had many rime unit neighbours; words and nonwords with average or few rime unit neighbours were spelled less well. These findings show that children's spelling can not be described simply according to one-to-one phoneme-grapheme mapping. Instead, children are sensitive to lexical factors such as rime unit sound-spelling correspondence. The findings are interpreted within the framework of a connectionist model of spelling development.     

Adult spelling strategies

The goal of this study was to investigate how adult English speakers, who are good readers, but who differ in spelling ability, remember word-specific spelling information. In the first experiment, participants learned the spellings of words they had previously misspelled, while thinking out loud. The main strategies observed in order of popularity were: letter rehearsal, overpronunciation, comparison of the remembered and the correct spelling, morphological analysis and visualisation. All strategies produced good learning success for the better spellers, but weaker spellers had less success with overpronunciation, comparison and morphological analysis. In a second experiment, when participants were shown their misspelling and the correct spelling, and instructed to use either overpronunciation or comparison to learn the correct spelling, learning success was independent of spelling ability. However, sequential verbal memory ability was associated with greater success in using overpronunciation, and sequential visual memory ability with greater success in using comparison. The findings provide new insight into the types of strategies that advanced learners use spontaneously to memorise arbitrary letter sequences, as well as revealing how effective the strategies are.     

Is children's spelling naturally stage-like?

Children's spelling development is often described by researchers and educators as proceeding through a series of stages. Two properties of stages were analyzed in this study. If spelling development can be characterized by stages, then it should be possible to observe qualitatively different spellings at different points in development. In addition, spellings within a point of development must be consistent. Spelling samples were obtained from stories written by children in first through sixth grade. Stage classifications of spellings for (a) silent -e long vowel words (e.g., bake), and (b) regularly affixed past tense words phonologically represented as /t/ (e.g., helped), /d/ (e.g., opened), and /ed/ (e.g., listed) were analyzed. Little evidence was found for either predicted qualitative differences in stage classification of errors or in stage constancy across grades. Implications for theories of spelling development and instructional practice are discussed.     

Is it misspelled or is it mispelled? The influence of fresh orthographic information on spelling

The effect of exposure to incorrectly and correctly spelled words on subsequent spelling performance was examined as a function of spelling proficiency and of time lapse between exposure and test. Spelling accuracy was found to be respectively depressed and enhanced by such exposure, relative to performance on unexposed control words. The effect was persistent and pervasive, obtaining at both immediate and one-week delayed testing and in both good and poor spellers. The findings indicate that fresh orthographic information exerts an influence on pre-existing abstract orthographic representations, rather than establishing new episodic traces, and that this process takes place implicitly.     

Derivational morphology and spelling in dyslexia

This exploratory study aimed to evaluate the spelling of derived words by dyslexic adolescents and to verify whether this is associated with lack of vocabulary and/or morphological knowledge. A cross-sectional reading level-design was employed in order to determine differences in spelling, derivational morphology and vocabulary tasks between dyslexic students aged 13+ and age-matched and reading level matched control groups. The study confirmed a profound spelling impairment of dyslexic students in comparison with two control groups but this was not associated with poor vocabulary in relation with their age-peers. In contrast, they exhibited lower levels of morphological knowledge than age-matched controls but equivalent with the reading level controls. These results are interpreted in the light of current developmental models of spelling that support a reciprocal interaction between spelling and metamorphology.     

Continuities between speech and spelling in a case of developmental dyslexia

This paper explores the relationship between speech and spelling in a single-case study of developmental dyslexia. JM, a developmental dyslexic with a well-documented history of speech, reading and spelling difficulties, was examined when he was 13–14 years old. He still had subtle articulation difficulties causing some disfluency and his use of phonetic voicing was atypical. We argue that these difficulties were recapitulated in his spelling where he was more sensitive to the prosodic aspects of words than normal spellers, exhibiting a strong tendency to spell accurately words which are stressed on the first, rather than the second syllable. He also had more difficulty with phonetic voicing and spelling errors reflected this uncertainty. Thus, when word-specific (orthographic) spelling information is unavailable, JM, like all spellers, must make use of phonological spelling strategies. In his case, these are compromised because of underlying phonological speech problems. It is argued that, while young children make use of a phonological frame on which to organize orthographic information, dyslexics, like JM, who have inadequate phonological representations, are unable to do so. This has a detrimental effect on their acquisition of spelling.     

Can self-report data on deficits in reading and spelling predict spelling disability as defined by psychometric tests?

Questionnaire data concerning spelling and reading self-assessment, habits, and school history were obtained for 79 adults (54 women and 25 men). The items were used to predict affectedness as defined on the basis of psychometric tests. For this purpose, two different discriminant analytical approaches (linear discriminant analysis and hierarchical classification with CART) were compared using a cross-validation design. 86.8–92.6% of the learning sample and 87.5–88% of the cross-validation sample were classified correctly. The CART model was preferred due to a balanced relation of sensitivity and specificity. Our results support the conclusion that self-report data are appropriate to substitute psychometric tests if these cannot be administered.     

Grammar and phonology predict spelling in middle childhood

We report the findings of a follow-up study of 34 9-year-old children who had participated in a longitudinal study of phonological and literacy development between the ages of 4 and 6 years. In a series of concurrent and longitudinal analyses, measures of phoneme awareness proved to be better predictors of spelling than measures of rime awareness. Children's awareness of grammatical relations influenced their orthographic skills in spelling. Although we were able to demonstrate that later orthographic knowledge is influenced by earlier phonological processes, our results are also consistent with the view that awareness of grammatical rules has an important role in determining orthographic proficiency as children get older.     

Little Frog and Toad: Interaction of orthography and phonology in Polish spelling

The interaction of lexical and non-lexicalprocesses in spelling was investigated throughlexical priming of non-lexical spelling, inPolish, a language in whose relativelytransparent orthography lexical informationmight be expected to play a less influentialrole than in English. Orthographic choice fornonwords was assessed under free and primedspelling conditions for both adults andchildren using direct and associative priming.The findings indicated that lexical orthographyinfluences resolution of nonlexical phonologyin spelling and identified two sources ofinfluence: one in unprimed spelling, wherelong-standing orthographic knowledge affectednonword orthographic choice so that it was notdetermined solely by phonology, the other inprimed spelling, where orthographic solutionsto nonwords were influenced by the covertorthography of the prime. The most powerfulevidence for lexical influence comes from thefinding that lexical orthography not onlyinforms resolution of phonology in cases ofambiguity, but overrides phonology whenresolution is unambiguous.     

Morphological,phonological, and orthographic differences between the spelling of normally achieving children and basic literacy adults

In this study, we compared 41 adults in a basic literacy class with 92 achievement-level-matched children on their use of English print conventions, as inferred by a qualitative analysis of spelling errors. The two groups followed similar patterns in their mastery of basic spelling features, including letter reversals, consonant blends, and short vowels, with the adults showing relatively more advanced skill in using orthographic patterns. However, the adults made a preponderance of misspellings that were rarely made by the children, including omissions, substitutions, and additions of derivational and inflectional morphemes, and neglect of word endings in general. The findings indicate clear morphological difficulties along with more subtle phonological coding deficits. We suggest that low literacy adults would benefit from specific direct instruction in linguistic analysis, with particular attention to the morphological principles underlying inflections and derivations. Such instruction should be based on a careful assessment of reading and spelling knowledge.     

Phonological spelling errors in the writing of dyslexic adolescents

Spelling researchers in the past have disagreed about the meaning of spelling errors for the diagnosis of dyslexia. Many studies have reported that spelling errors of individuals with dyslexia are similar to those of younger children but that they are not deviant or unusual. In this study, spelling errors from the spontaneous writing of 19 adolescents with a history of reading problems and persistent spelling difficulties were analyzed. The poorer spellers in this group made more errors than the better spellers on certain phonological and morphophonological constructions. Specifically, the poorer spellers made a disproportionately large number of errors in their representation of liquid and nasal consonants, especially after vowels, and their spellings of inflections -ed and -s. Even though poor spellers might eventually learn to spell with reasonable phonetic accuracy, their spelling appears to be marked by persistent, intractable difficulties representing specific phonological and morphophonological features of words.     

Context-sensitive regularities in English vowel spelling

The predictive value of rime spellings in English was compared directly to other types of regularities beyond the level of the single letter. A computer-assisted analysis of a list of twenty-four thousand written words, each paired with its corresponding pronunciation, reveals that only a small number of rime spellings are highly regular in their pronunciations. The conventional division of vowel letter pronunciations into short and long in closed and open written syllables is the most reliable key to English pronunciation. Our findings support the notion that English spelling is based at least in part on syllable structure. In addition, prefixes and suffixes provide very reliable clues to pronunciation, which suggests that their regularity should be exploited in the teaching of reading.     

Reading and spelling error analysis of native

This study was an investigation of reading and spelling errors of dyslexic Arabic readers (n=20) compared with two groups of normal readers: a young readers group, matched with the dyslexics by reading level (n=20) and an age-matched group (n=20). They were tested on reading and spelling of texts, isolated words and pseudowords. Two research questions were the focus of this study: What are the reading and spelling profile errors of dyslexic native Arabic speakers? What is the effect of the Arabic orthography on these types of errors? The results of the reading error analysis revealed a clear contribution of the uniqueness of the Arabic orthography to the types of errors made by the three different groups. In addition, the error profiles of the dyslexic readers were similar to the error profiles made by the younger reading-level-matched group in percentages and in quality. The most prominent types of errors were morphological and semiphonetic, which highlighted the contribution of the Arabic orthography to these types of errors. Consistently, the profile of the spelling errors was similar in percentages and quality among the dyslexics and the reading-level-matched group but different from the age-matched group on the spelling measures. The analysis of the spelling errors revealed that the dominant type of error was mostly phonetic due to the limited orthographic lexicon. In addition, the Arabic orthography also contributed to these types of errors because many spelling mistakes were made due to poor knowledge of the spelling rules. The results of the reading and spelling errors are discussed from a reading development point of view. Further, two models are suggested, one for reading and one for spelling, to illustrate the cognitive processes that underlie the reading and spelling mistakes in this type of orthography.     

Reading and spelling difficulties in high school students: Causes and consequences

Basic skills in reading and spelling and supporting metalinguistic abilities were assessed in ninth and tenth grade students in two school settings. Students attending a private high school for the learning disabled comprised one group and the other comprised low to middle range students from a public high school. Both the LD students and the regular high school students displayed deficiencies in spelling and in decoding, a factor in reading difficulty that is commonly supposed to dwindle in importance after the elementary school years. Treating the overlapping groups as a single sample, multiple regression analysis was used to investigate the contribution of nonword decoding skill and phonological and morphological awareness to spelling ability. The analysis revealed that decoding was the major component, predicting about half of the variance in spelling. The effect of phonological awareness was largely hidden by its high correlation with decoding, but was a significant predictor of spelling in its own right. Morphological awareness predicted spelling skill when the words to be spelled were morphologically complex. An additional study showed that differences in decoding and spelling ability were associated with differences in comprehension after controlling for reading experience and vocabulary. Even among experienced readers individual differences in comprehension of text reflect efficiency of phonological processing at the word level.     

Text-to-speech,text, and hypertext: Reading and spelling with the computer

This paper introduces the Special Issue on the use of text-to-speech computer systems and hypertext to aid reading and spelling. It discusses (1) the analysis-by-synthesis principle of text-to-speech conversion, (2) some classroom and research issues in designing usable computer texts, and (3) the criteria of hypertext. The paper emphasizes the importance of the contextual aspects of text and hypertext and situated learning.     

Length awareness predicts spelling skills in Finnish

Abstract. The main type of phonemic analysis skill considered to affect spelling acquisition has been awareness of phoneme quality. However, it is also important to find out whether other measures of phoneme awareness might contribute to literacy acquisition. Thus, the influence of phoneme length and phoneme quality awareness on spelling in Finnish was compared. The Oddity task was used to assess phonemic awareness and spelling skills were investigated by a spelling-to-dictation task. The results showed that length awareness predicted spelling better than quality awareness did. Moreover, length awareness was more strongly related to spelling of long phonemes, which specifically require analysis of phoneme length, than to spelling of phoneme clusters not involving length analysis. Additionally, only length awareness predicted children's general spelling skills. These findings suggest that awareness of length, which is a phonemic attribute of the Finnish language, is connected to children's spelling skills more strongly than awareness of phoneme quality is.     

Rules versus analogies in children's spelling: Evidence for task dependence

Two experiments were conducted to investigate developmental changes in children's use of rime-level units of sound-to-spelling correspondence when spelling nonwords under varying task demands. In Experiment 1, nonwords were presented in isolation. Older children spelled more of the nonwords by analogy than younger children. Experiment 2 adopted versions of the clue word technique employed by Goswami (1988a) and found that significantly more analogous, rime-based responses were given to the same stimuli in both younger and older children. However, fewer analogous responses were given when the salience of the clue word was reduced by presentation of multiple target nonwords. The results suggest that while children in the early stages of development possess the ability to use rime-based units in spelling, they do not always make spontaneous use of this analogy strategy. However, when the potential to use rime-based units is highlighted by task demands, as is the case in Experiment 2 when a clue word is provided, even young children make considerable use of analogy in spelling.     

Morphological awareness and early and advanced word recognition and spelling in Dutch

This study investigated the relations of three aspects of morphological awareness to word recognition and spelling skills of Dutch speaking children. Tasks of inflectional and derivational morphology and lexical compounding, as well as measures of phonological awareness, vocabulary and mathematics were administered to 104 first graders (mean age 6 years, 11 months) and 112 sixth graders (mean age 12 years, 1 month). For the first grade children, awareness of noun morphology uniquely contributed to word reading, and none of the morphological tasks were uniquely associated with spelling. In grade 6, derivational morphology contributed both to reading and spelling achievement, whereas awareness of verb inflection uniquely explained spelling only. Lexical compounding did not uniquely contribute to literacy skills in either grade. These findings suggest that awareness of both inflectional and derivational morphology may be independently useful for learning to read and spell Dutch.