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.

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The present study examines the effect of activating the connection between meaning and phonology in spelling exercises in second-grade spellers (n 5 41; 8 years and 3 months). In computer-based exercises in a within-subject design, semantic and neutral descriptions were contrasted and provided either before the process of spelling or in feedback. Orthographic and phonological information was available in all practice conditions. The results indicate that words trained with semantic descriptions are better spelled than words trained with neutral descriptions, even when tested 1 month after a training period. No differential effects appear between descriptions that were presented before spelling or presented in feedback. The current study can be taken to suggest that activation of the semantic constituent is facilitative in acquiring a stable association between the phonological and the orthographic properties.Learning to spell a word in an alphabetic language involves acquiring knowledge about the phonological properties and how to relate these to an orthographic representation. Although alphabetic languages differ in the degree to which they depart from a consistent representation of phonemes in order to preserve linguistic or lexical information, the relationships between phonological and orthographic information should be a crucial focus in spelling training programmes (e.g. Bishop, Adams, Lehtonen & Rosen, 2005;Castle, Riach & Nicholson, 1993;Foorman, Francis, Novy & Liberman, 1991;Schneider, Roth & Ennemoser, 2000). On the assumption that there are three major constituents of word identity -phonology, meaning and orthography, the present study examines the extent to which activating the semantic-phonology connection facilitates the acquisition of word-specific orthographic information.The influence of the three lexical properties on the acquisition of orthographic knowledge has recently received considerable attention in studies using an orthographic learning paradigm (CunninghamThis paradigm suggests that orthographic knowledge increases along with multiple encounters with a specific word. Repeated exposure to a given word strengthens the

Because it is often assumed that difficulties in spelling are of phonological origin, the aim of this study was to examine whether emphasis on the pronunciation of individual graphemes is beneficial for learning to spell words in poor spellers. In the first experiment Dutch children with a spelling deficit had to practice words in two types of exercises: (1) full production after memorizing the orthographic pattern, and (2) a special pronunciation, so-called spelling pronunciation, accompanied by full production after memorizing. Spelling pronunciation showed to have no additional effect on spelling. The orthographic information might have overruled the effect of spelling pronunciation. Therefore, in Experiment 2 orthographic information was excluded from the comparison between training with spelling pronunciation and training with normal pronunciation. Spelling pronunciation appeared to be more effective than normal pronunciation. However, spelling pronunciation was as effective as priming the orthography in memorization training, which may indicate that the common process of uncovering orthographic details is the main driving force for accelerated learning.

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.