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.     

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 development in Brazilian Portuguese

This paper describes the development of reading and spelling procedures in Portuguese speaking children from 1st to 4th grade and discusses whether the developmental models of Frith, Seymour and Stuart & Coltheart may account for this development. This study is based on reaction time and error measurements of the reading and spelling of isolated words and pseudowords. The words varied in frequency, length and spelling-to-sound-regularity and the non-words varied only in length and spelling-to-sound regularity. The results indicated that the children tested did not pass through a logographic stage and that their reading and spelling initially involved a non-lexical process which from the beginning was influenced by a developing lexical process (that became progressively more important as development progressed), suggesting the use of overlapping processes. This finding contradicts Frith's strictly sequential theory but not Seymour's model, which allows for concurrent development of processes. Despite the fact that the present data do not fit into the definition of Seymour's orthographic stage, there were indications of a shift from the alphabetic to the orthographic stage and also that the process of lexicalization occurs more rapidly in reading than in spelling. Another finding was that the dual-process reading/spelling model, developed in English, can be extended to Portuguese.     

Reading and spelling acquisition in Thai children

Thai, a tonal language, has its own distinctive alphabetic orthography. The study investigates reading and spelling development in Thai children, with an aim of examining the grain size that is predominantly used when reading and spelling. Furthermore, word and nonword lists were developed to examine the acquisition of the complex system of vowels and tone rules in Thai. Reading and spelling of words and nonwords were assessed in 60 Thai children ranging in age from 7 to 9 years 8 months from Grade(s) 1, 2, and 3. A lexicality effect was found for both reading and spelling. Spelling lagged behind reading in the Grade 1 children. Development rapidly increased between the youngest Grade 1 children and the older Grade 2 and 3 children. For word reading there were significantly more lexical errors than phonological errors. Beginning readers appear to predominantly use a larger lexico-syllabic grain size to read Thai.     

Reading,spelling and two types of irregularity in word recognition

How do good and poor readers, and good and poor spellers, vary in their decisions about words which have varying spelling-to-sound correspondences? This experiment isolates the effects of visual and phonological characteristics of words with schoolchildren of varying reading and spelling ability, aged between 9 and 11.5 years. Three groups of children were tested: good readers and good spellers, good readers who were poor spellers, and children who were both poor readers and poor spellers. The difference between‘good’and‘poor’was about two years according to the standardised tests which were used. The children performed a lexical decision task, deciding whether each letter-string was a word or not. Response times to three types of words were compared: standard regular words (e.g. SLOT, SPADE), words with common orthography but irregular spelling-to-sound relationships (e.g. HAVE, FEVER), and words with unusual orthography as well as irregular spelling-to-sound relationships (e.g. BISCUIT, ANSWER). The performance of good readers but not of poor readers was impaired on the words which were phonologically irregular (compared with regular words). Poor spellers were worse again on the dually irregular words, although not significantly, while the good spellers performed almost as well on these words as on the regular words. These results have a number of implications: that the regularity effect is phonologically and not orthographically mediated, that good readers use a predominantly phonological strategy in lexical decision while poor readers do not, and that for the best readers/spellers as tested here the orthographically and phonologically irregular words have some sort of special status which allows them to gain fast and accurate responses.     

Multisensory teaching approach for reading,spelling, and handwriting,Orton-Gillingham based curriculum,in a public school setting

This paper includes an overview of curriculum information and the basic techniques of a multisensory approach for teaching alphabet and dictionary skills, reading, spelling, and cursive handwriting. It also reports the results of a four-year study of reading and spelling in both remedial and nonremedial classes in a public school. The California Achievement Test (CAT) scores in reading and spelling for students in both remedial and nonremedial classes improved over baseline scores following this multisensory approach. Additionally, there was a tendency for the CAT mean scores to increase corresponding to the number of years students had been taught by the multisensory program.     

Reading and spelling acquisition in European Portuguese: a preliminary study

We investigated the initial development of reading and spelling in European Portuguese. First-graders, tested in February and June, had to read and spell words and pseudowords. In February there were regularity and graphemic complexity effects, indicating that these children relied on grapheme–phoneme conversion. The lexicality effect found in spelling, in June, suggest that by the end of first grade these children had begun to construct an orthographic lexicon. However, lexical addressing is not inconsistent with phonological mediation as regularization errors increased between the sessions. Additionally, the previously reported similarity in global performance of Portuguese and French beginning readers may conceal processing differences that are related to specific characteristics of the corresponding orthographic codes.

Reading and spelling acquisition in French first graders: Longitudinal evidence

This study was aimed at investigating the development of reading and spelling skills in French. First graders were tested twice (in February and in June). Phonological mediation was expected to play a major role at the beginning of reading and spelling acquisition, and thus a regularity effect was predicted. Under the assumption that alphabetical processing is primarily sequential, i.e. letter by letter, a complexity effect was predicted as well. In other words, subjects would read and spell words containing one-letter graphemes more accurately than words containing multi-letter graphemes. Further, processing was assumed to be strictly alphabetical at the beginning of acquisition, no frequency effect was expected. Overall, the role of phonological mediation is confirmed. A complexity effect testifying to sequential alphabetic processing was observed for spelling but not for reading. The hypothesis of a strict reliance on alphabetical processing is not confirmed since a frequency effect was observed in both reading and spelling. These findings are discussed in the light of the Frith, Morton, and Seymour models.     

Severe developmental language disorder — Reading and spelling

Linguistic awareness i.e. the ability to identify phonemes, to segment words into syllables and to rhyme is highly correlated with reading/spelling proficiency. Children with severe developmental language disorders DLD (syntagmatic type) have been shown to specifically lack linguistic awareness. Two non-identical twin boys with severe, specific DLD were studied longitudinally with respect to their linguistic, neurolinguistic and pragmatic development. In spite of poor linguistic awareness, the boys acquired normal reading/spelling skills. This might be due to the early and massive language training they were given. However, the boys differ considerably in some aspects of reading and spelling performance. These findings are discussed with reference to their different neurolinguistic and pragmatic profiles.     

Journal Writing and Learning: Reading between the structural,holistic, and post-structural lines

This paper explores the use of journal writing for providing adults with the opportunity of reflecting on their learning. The article examines the author's own experiences teaching students on an undergraduate part-time degree evening course where journal writing was an important component. Three understandings of journal writing are compared using examples from students' journal entries. They are characterised as structural, holistic, and post-structural positions, respectively. Structural approaches to journal writing claim benefits in enabling the learner to manage her/his own subjectivity with a view to finding an “objective truth”. An holistic approach, while “useful”, attempts to synthesise multiple ways of knowing and presents a false sense of completion and inclusion. The post-structural view positions the learner intertextually in a processual learning context where the text the student writes is driven by other discourses. Here, the student/journal writer is constituted by discourse but not necessarily determined by it because the strategies of reflexivity and deconstruction are available. This last position draws on the sociology of interpretative biography and narrative theory. The implications for assessment and the ethical dimensions of privacy and disclosure of student journals are examined also.     

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.     

Finger-writing intervention impacts the spelling and handwriting skills of children with developmental language disorder: a multiple single-case study

Learning to use grapheme to phoneme correspondences (GPCs) provides a powerful mechanism for the foundation of reading skills in children. However, for some children, such as those with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), the GPC learning process takes time, is laborious, and impacts the entire reading and spelling processes. The present study aims to demonstrate the effectiveness of a finger-writing intervention on reading, spelling and handwriting performances. A visuomotor support was designed to help them to learn more efficiently GPCs since children with DLD appear to have altered phonological representations in memory. Over a period of two months, five children with DLD from a special primary school (aged from 7.42 years to 10.17 years) received individually either a finger-writing intervention or a control intervention, both focusing on phonological awareness and the learning of specific GPCs. In the finger-writing intervention, the child had to explore with their fingers the shape of relief-graphemes and excavated-letter. In the control intervention, the same exercises were made except that the two finger-writing tasks were replaced by two visual discrimination tasks. Children were compared on several measures (reading, spelling, handwriting and phonological awareness) before and after the treatment. Results indicated that the children from the finger-writing intervention showed greater improvement than the children from the control group in learning GPCs to improve their graphemic spelling and, for two of the three children, in handwriting. These findings have a clear practical implication for teachers' instructional practices at school.     

Reading and spelling acquisition in two different teaching methods: A test of the independence hypothesis

The development of word reading and word spelling was examined in French speaking children initially instructed either by a phonic or a whole-word method. Second, fourth and sixth graders were administered to reading and spelling tests in which grapho-phonological regularity, frequency, length and lexicality were manipulated. The results showed that in both curricula, reading and spelling acquisition can be characterized by a parallel increase in the use of sub-lexical correspondences and in the reliance on word-specific information. Contrary to a simple view of lexical development according to which the use of analytical knowledge and the use of word-specific knowledge correspond to two different cognitive processes that develop independently from each other, whole-word children did not appear to rely more on whole-word knowledge. On the contrary, and paradoxically, grade 2 whole-word children tended to use analytical correspondences to a greater extent than their peers. In later development, reading matched phonic and whole-word groups did not differ from each other. It is argued that the results support the hypothesis that the acquisition of sub-lexical correspondences constitutes a necessary step in the acquisition of reading and spelling. We conclude that the analytic comparison of different curricula provides a naturalistic tool for the study of the dynamics of development.