Effect of Reading on Spelling in the Ninth Grade

Contribution of spelling instruction to the spelling, writing, and reading of poor spellers.

“…For example, poor spellers learn to correctly spell only a small portion of the words they are not directly taught during a given school year (e.g., Morris, Blanton, Blanton, & Perney, 1995). They are also less likely than good spellers to learn the correct spelling of a word by encountering it in text (Gilbert, 1934a(Gilbert, , 1934b(Gilbert, , 1935Ormrod, 1986). Consequently, teachers may need to adjust how much emphasis they typically place on explicit instruction and the use of informal and incidental learning methods when working with weaker spellers.…”

Should the natural learning approach replace spelling instruction?

“…One way of assessing the contribution of reading to spelling development is to examine whether spelling improves as a result of reading connected text. This approach was applied in a series of experiments conducted by Gilbert (1934aGilbert ( , 1934bGilbert ( , 1935. Each of his studies used the same basic format: Students were first pretested on a list of difficult words.…”

Learning to Spell from Reading: General Knowledge about Spelling Patterns Influences Memory for Specific Words

“…Studies show that people who encounter new words while reading often learn about their spellings without intending to do so. Gilbert's early research with U.S. junior high school, high school, and university students showed that reading texts for the purpose of being able to answer questions on the content results in improvement in spelling for the words encountered in the texts (Gilbert, 1934a(Gilbert, , 1934b(Gilbert, , 1935. Ormrod (1986aOrmrod ( , 1986b, similarly, found that university students can learn to spell novel words while reading them in context when they are not specifically instructed to remember the spellings, although instructions to learn the spellings yield better performance.…”