Does the study of Latin affect spelling proficiency?

This investigation explores Latin study as a possible route to superior spelling proficiency. The spelling ability of two groups of academically able eleventh graders — students of Latin and students of other second languages — is compared. It was found that the Latin students were superior in general spelling ability and were particularly proficient at spelling words of Latin origin. In addition, analysis of the spelling of derivatives for which knowledge of Latin could either facilitate or mislead the speller shows that Latin students were differentially affected by the two types of derivatives. In contrast, students of other second languages, lacking the knowledge of Latinate derivatives, simply made more errors on both types of words. Thus, it appears that Latin study does have an effect on spelling performance. Whether it can fully account for the superior spelling proficiency of the Latin students, however, remains a question to be answered by a prospective longitudinal investigation. Implications for instruction drawn from the present study are discussed.     

Spelling pronunciation and visual preview both facilitate learning to spell irregular words

Spelling pronunciations are hypothesized to be helpful in building up relatively stable phonologically underpinned orthographic representations, particularly for learning words with irregular phoneme-grapheme correspondences. In a four-week computer-based training, the efficacy of spelling pronunciations and previewing the spelling patterns on learning to spell loan words in Dutch, originating from French and English, was examined in skilled and less skilled spellers with varying ages. Reading skills were taken into account. Overall, compared to normal pronunciation, spelling pronunciation facilitated the learning of the correct spelling of irregular words, but it appeared to be no more effective than previewing. Differences between training conditions appeared to fade with older spellers. Less skilled young spellers seemed to profit more from visual examination of the word as compared to practice with spelling pronunciations. The findings appear to indicate that spelling pronunciation and allowing a preview can both be effective ways to learn correct spellings of orthographically unpredictable words, irrespective of age or spelling ability.     

The Role of Instruction for Spelling Performance and Spelling Consciousness

This study examined the role of instruction for spelling performance and spelling consciousness in the Dutch language. Spelling consciousness is the ability to reflect on one's spelling and correct errors. A sample of 115 third-grade spellers was assigned to a strategy-instruction, strategic-monitoring, self-monitoring, or control condition representing different types of metacognitive aspects. The results showed that students in all three training conditions made more progress in both spelling performance and spelling consciousness than students in the control condition. With respect to spelling consciousness, only students in the strategy-instruction condition made significant improvement between pretest and posttest. Students made more progress in spelling performance on regular words than on loan words. Students in all four conditions became more accurate at assessing which words they could spell correctly. Students in the control condition more frequently overestimated their spelling ability.     

Lexical and nonlexical processes in the skilled reading and spelling of Persian

The objective of the present study was to examine the contribution of lexical and nonlexical processes to skilled reading and spelling in Persian. Persian is a mixed orthography that allows one to study within one language characteristics typically found in shallow orthographies as well as those found in deeper orthographies. 61 senior high-school students (mean age = 17; 8, SD = 4 months) attending schools in Iran were tested on reading and spelling of words and nonwords. The word stimuli differed in terms of reading transparency (transparent when all phonemes have corresponding letters vs. opaque when short vowels were not marked with a letter) and spelling polygraphy (nonpolygraphic phonemes vs. polygraphic phonemes). The nonwords were transparent and nonpolygraphic. The reading results showed that both transparent and opaque words were read faster than nonwords, and that transparent words were read faster than opaque words. Moreover, both transparent and opaque words were affected by word frequency. These findings suggest that skilled readers of Persian relied on lexical processes to read words. In contrast, the spelling results failed to show a word-advantage effect suggesting that skilled spellers of Persian rely on nonlexical processes to spell words. Moreover, orthographic complexity also affected spelling. Specifically, nonpolygraphic words were spelled faster than polygraphic words for both transparent and opaque words. Taken together, the findings showed that skilled reading and spelling in Persian rely on different underlying processes.     

Unexpectedly Poor Spelling in University Students

University students who were unexpectedly poor spellers relative to above average spellers revealed less extensive word-specific knowledge in their misspellings but not inferior knowledge of phoneme-grapheme correspondences, indicating that many of their orthographic representations lack word-specific graphemic information. Performance on deceptive nonwords in a printed lexical decision task showed that the poorer spellers did not place particular reliance on word beginnings as the basis for identification. However, because they could classify accurately many words for which they did not know the precise spelling, they may make greater use of partial cues when identifying words. They were also slower at making lexical decisions and slower and more error-prone at making same/different judgments on pairs of common words presented intact or with misordered letters. These effects showed that the poorer spellers were inferior at rapid orthographic analysis. The origin of their disadvantage in orthographic knowledge and orthographic-processing skill was not explained by more limited print exposure.     

Do 2nd and 3rd grade teachers’ linguistic knowledge and instructional practices predict spelling gains in weaker spellers?

The relationship between 2nd and 3rd grade teachers’ linguistic knowledge and spelling instructional practices and their students’ spelling gains from fall to spring was examined. Second grade (N = 16) and 3rd grade (N = 16) teachers were administered an instructional practices survey and a linguistic knowledge test. Total scores on the two instruments were not significantly related (r = 0.20), indicating two different constructs. Students (N = 331 2nd graders, N = 305 3rd graders) completed a 40 item spelling dictation test in the fall and spring. HLM analyses were conducted on subsamples of weaker spellers (Ns = 226 2nd graders and 50 3rd graders) who spelled fewer than 20 words correctly on the pretest. Limiting the sample to weaker spellers eliminated ceiling effects on pre- to posttest gains. Results revealed that 2nd grade teachers’ linguistic knowledge of phonemic units in words, their teaching of spelling strategies, the time they spent in weekly spelling instruction, and the greater the number of weaker spellers in their classrooms, were significant predictors of weaker spellers’ improvement in spelling. For 3rd grade teachers, HLM analyses were not significant perhaps due to lack of power. However, 3rd grade teachers’ phonemic knowledge was significantly correlated with weaker spellers’ gain scores. Results while correlational provide tentative support for the conclusion that teachers who are more knowledgeable about phonemes in words and who utilize more effective, research based spelling instruction are more successful in teaching spelling to weaker spellers.     

Monitoring variability and change in children’s spelling strategies

This study examined the role of variability and change in children’s strategy performance within the context of spelling. The spelling ability of 34 eight‐ to nine‐year‐olds was examined using an experimental spelling task comprising 45 items, which varied with regard to rime unit frequency. The spelling task incorporated a series of consistent, unique, and exception word items. Children were tested on the same spelling task on three separate occasions over a period of three months. Performance was examined using immediately retrospective verbal self‐reports after the presentation of every word. The findings showed that children spelt words strategically and were adaptive in their strategy selection, showing a general change from using less efficient backup strategies to using more efficient direct retrieval methods over time. Finally, while those less skilled in spelling showed a greater reliance on less efficient backup strategies, the skilled spellers mainly retrieved the correct spellings from memory. However, accuracy only improved across time intervals for each skill group when spelling unique word items. Overall, the findings illustrate the benefits of using a detailed microgenetic approach to assess the progress children make in learning to spell.     

Spelling feedback in an ICT-learning environment: Issues of proficiency, training efficiency, and transfer

This study was designed to compare the effectiveness of two different forms of feedback on spelling performance of Dutch Grade-2 students, that is, knowledge-of-results and informational feedback. In the knowledge-of-results feedback condition, the speller is told that the word is spelled incorrectly, whereas in the informational feedback condition, the speller is told what is spelled incorrectly. Three main questions were investigated. One, to what extent does the nature of feedback affect students with good and poor spelling skills differently? Two, does the nature of feedback affect various forms of spelling difficulties differently? Three, is training efficiency differentially affected by the nature of feedback?The results showed that both feedback conditions were equally effective in teaching students the spelling of words, irrespective of spelling level and spelling difficulty. Both feedback conditions led to a similar level of transfer to a set of new words, the effect being stronger in good than in poor spellers. Transfer was best on analogy spellings, followed by rule-based, and worst on idiosyncratic spellings. The poor spellers learned the spelling of words more efficiently in the informational-feedback condition than in the knowledge-of-results condition, whereas for the group of good spellers efficiency was equally large in both conditions.     

What type of computer-assisted exercise supports young less skilled spellers in resolving problems in open and closed syllable words?

Dutch bisyllabic words containing open and closed syllables are particularly difficult to spell for children. What kind of support in spelling exercises improves the spelling of these words the most? Two extensions of a commonly used dictation exercise were tested: less skilled spellers in grade 2 (n = 50; 7 years and 10 months) either received explicit syllabic segmentation cues or received spelling cues by means of a visual preview. Comparisons between pre-, post-, and retention tests of spelling skill showed that extra syllabic cues did not show a significant improvement beyond normal spelling dictation and that visual preview was most effective as compared to the other types of training. The findings suggest that word-specific knowledge can effectively be improved by exposure to the correct letter pattern during exercises in spelling and seems to result in lasting improvement of word-specific orthographic representations, at least for 5 weeks.     

To what extent does children’s spelling improve as a result of learning words with the look,say, cover,write, check,fix strategy compared with phonological spelling strategies?

Abstract

The ubiquitous weekly spelling test assumes that words are best learned by memorisation and testing but is this the best way? This study compared two well-known approaches to spelling instruction, the rule based and visual memory approaches. A group of 55 seven-year-olds in two Year 3 classrooms was taught spelling in small groups for three lessons a week, 20-min per lesson, over ten weeks. In the first intervention, students learned statistically likely spelling strategies for vowel sounds, syllable breaking strategies, and the doubling rule. In the second intervention, students used a look, say, cover, write, check, fix strategy, listed words in alphabetical order, and wrote them in sentences. The control group completed non-spelling activities. Results showed that although both intervention groups learned to spell taught words better than the control group, the rule-based approach had greater transfer to spelling of new words for both proficient and less proficient spellers.     

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.     

Spelling performance of English consonants among students whose first language is Arabic

The purpose of the present study was to examine the influence of some aspects of the Arabic phonological system on spelling English words. In Study 1, the spelling performance of Arabic students from grades four and six was compared with English students in cognate phoneme pairs which exist across both languages (/d/ and /t/), and pairs in which only one of the phonemes exists in Arabic (/b/ and /p/, /f/ and /v/) using a spelling test which contained words with the target phonemes. The findings showed that the Arabic participants performed similarly to the English participants on the phonemes /t/ and /d/, but they tended to spell the phonemes /b/, /p/, /f/, and /v/ using their cognate pairs more often than the English participants did. In Study 2, the spelling performance of Arabic students was compared across grades 4, 6, 8, and 10 for the same target phonemes. The analyses showed no difference between the Arabic participants in how often they confused the target phonemes with their cognate pairs across the different grade levels, except for the phonemes /p/ and /v/, for which the effect size was small. The findings of this study demonstrate the importance of phonology in spelling, as well as the influence of the first language on spelling in a second language. They also indicate that Arabic students continue to be dependent on phonological processes when spelling English words even as they grow older.     

Spelling without phonology: A study of deaf and hearing children

To what extent does phonology play a role in spelling English words? The written responses of deaf students and groups of hearing children to five tasks were subjected to quantitative and qualitative analyses. The first three tasks were used to see if deaf students utilized phonology when they generated their own words and to compare their spelling performance with that of hearing subjects. The fourth and fifth tasks were designed to compare the spelling performance of deaf and hearing subjects when they were required to reproduce visually presented common words. Results showed that deaf students, who were chronologically much older, were not better spellers than hearing children from the fifth grade. Analysis of data revealed little evidence that the deaf students involved in the present study utilize phonology in spelling. Nor did word-specific visual memory for entire words appears to play a role in spelling by deaf students. Rote visual memory for letter patterns and sequences of letters within words, however, appears to play a role in the spelling by deaf students. It is concluded that sensitivity to the stochastic-dependent probabilities of letter sequences may aid spelling up to certain point but phonology is essential for spelling words whose structure is morphophonemically complex.

     

Phonological skill,lexical decision and letter report performance in good and poor adult spellers

Two groups of undergraduate students, matched for reading skill but differing in spelling ability, participated in three experiments with the aim of exploring the causes of differences in spelling skill in this population. In the first experiment participants were presented with a range of tasks to investigate the possibility that the poor spellers had poorer phonological abilities than the good spellers. No significant differences were observed. In Experiment 2, a lexical decision task was used. The words in the task differed in orthographic neighbourhood size (N) and frequency. Analysis of the latencies revealed effects of frequency and N, but the effect of spelling group was not significant and neither was the interaction with N. Analysis of the errors revealed that the poor spellers made significantly more errors than the good spellers. In Experiment 3 participants were asked to identify the letters in briefly presented words and non‐words. There was a significant effect of stimulus type in favour of words. Poor spellers made more errors in the task than the good spellers, although the difference was restricted to non‐words. Finally, an analysis of the errors made in spelling to dictation by the two groups was carried out. This revealed that the poor spellers were more likely than the good spellers to make errors that were not phonologically plausible and that differed markedly from the target. Overall, the results are interpreted in terms of a partial orthographic representations explanation of poor spelling in good readers.     

Spelling pronunciations help college students remember how to spell difficult words

Studies have shown that children benefit from a spelling pronunciation strategy in remembering the spellings of words. The current study determined whether this strategy also helps adults learn to spell commonly misspelled words. Participants were native English speaking college students (N = 42), mean age 22.5 years (SD = 7.87). An experimental design with random assignment, pretests, training, and posttests assessed effects of the pronunciation strategy on memory for the spellings of 20 hard to spell words. Half of the participants were trained to read the words by assigning spelling pronunciations during learning (n = 21). The comparison group (n = 21) practiced reading the words normally without the strategy. Strategy trained adults recalled significantly more words, total letters, silent letters, and schwa vowel letters correctly than controls. Poor spellers benefited as much if not more from this strategy as good spellers. Results support orthographic mapping theories. Optimizing the match between spelling units and sound units, including graphemes and phonemes, syllables, and morphemes, to create spelling pronunciations when words are read enhances memory for spellings of the words. As a result, higher quality lexical representations are retained in memory. Results suggest the value of teaching college students this strategy to improve their ability to spell words correctly in their written work.     

Orthographic processing and visual sequential memory in unexpectedly poor spellers

Does unexpectedly poor spelling in adults result from inferior visual sequential memory? In one experiment, unexpectedly poor spellers performed significantly worse than better spellers in the immediate reproduction of sequences of visual symbols, but in a second experiment, the effect was not replicated. Poor spellers were also no worse at the immediate recognition of symbol sequences. Overall, the results indicate that inferior visual memory is not characteristic of unexpectedly poor spellers. However, they do have less efficient orthographic processing skill: they were significantly slower and more error prone than better spellers at classifying both regularly and strangely spelt words, as well as at detecting letter transpositions in long words. They can thus be considered as subtly worse word readers than better spellers. While the findings question the notion of unexpectedly poor spelling in relation to normal adults, they provide confirmation of the intimate relationship between reading and spelling processes.     

Beyond phonics: Integrated decoding and spelling instruction based on word origin and structure

In this paper, the relevance of word structure knowledge to decoding and spelling instruction is discussed. An explicit, discussion oriented, direct approach to teaching decoding and spelling based on word origin and structure results in improved reading and spelling. This instruction leads students to a comparison and contrast of letter-sound correspondences, syllable patterns, and morpheme patterns in English words of Anglo-Saxon, Romance, and Greek origin.     

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.     

A possible contribution of word-retrieval difficulties to reading and spelling impairments

Good and poor readers at the junior high school level and good and poor spellers at the university level were compared on their ability to produce words in response to a semantic cue (a category name), a visual cue (three letters), and an auditory cue (a syllable rime). Kindergarten children were tested on a word-identification task and their retrieval of words in response to the semantic and auditory cues. At all ages, poor readers or spellers produced fewer words on all word-retrieval tasks than did good readers or spellers. Performance on the auditory and visual word-retrieval tasks correlated very highly with pseudoword reading and spelling ability in the two older groups; in the kindergarten children, auditory retrieval correlated with word identification. The results suggest that poor readers have not organized words in long-term memory according to rhyming families but that good readers have. We speculate that failure to retrieve rhyming words during acquisition of reading and spelling skills underlies the failure of poor readers and spellers to abstract the higher-order relationships between orthography and phonology.