This paper describes an intervention designed to enhance spelling achievement for learning-disabled (LD) elementary school children. A total of 39 LD children were instructed for 8 sessions over a period of 3 weeks. An experimental group ( n = 24) was taught with lessons that incorporated reduced unit size, distributed practice and review, and training for transfer, and a comparison group ( n = 15) with methods that are typically used in the teaching of spelling. While all children could spell less than 10% of the words on the pretest, the experimental group achieved 80% accuracy on spelling words taught and 75% accuracy on transfer words on a delayed posttest. This was higher than the average posttest performance of the comparison group (60% accuracy on training items and 50% accuracy on transfer items). These findings suggest that LD children can improve their spelling skills if sound remedial principles are applied consistently. The instructional sequence described in this paper can serve both as a model of effective spelling instruction and as a diagnostic, trial-remediation technique for a disabled population.
The investigation looked at the degree to which varying the number of spelling words taught relates to the percentage of words spelled correctly by learning disabled children. Sixty-four LD children were divided into three treatment groups that differed only in the number of phonemically irregular spelling words taught (three, four, or five per day) across three days of instruction. Results show that, even with efficient instructional procedures, overloading, higher failure rate, and percentage of transposition spelling errors and greater variance in performance may occur when the number of words presented each day exceeds three. The findings support the notion that LD children, in particular, may be subject to overloading if presented with more material than they may be able to handle.
This paper presents an outline of characteristics common to the complex syndrome of dyslexia. The author reviews its nature, variability, degree of impairment, and suggests remedial procedures which, he feels, will work toward the improvement of the dyslexic's reading ability.
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