Effects of spelling pronunciations during spelling practice in Dutch

Abstract

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.

An evaluation of spelling pronunciations as a means of improving spelling of orthographic markers

“…Hilte, Bos, and Reitsma (2005) e also found that loan words with large deviations from transparent spelling profited more from spelling pronunciations than Dutch words that had only small deviations from transparent spelling. Thus, the earlier studies, in English (Drake & Ehri, 1984), in Dutch (Bosman et al, 2006;Hilte et al, 2005;Hilte & Reitsma, 2006) and one in our own lab (Landerl et al, 2007) suggest that spelling pronunciations are an efficient means to help childre n to store word spellings in orthographic memor y. The training words of the studies in German and Dutch were irregular spelled loan words.…”

“…The training words of the studies in German and Dutch were irregular spelled loan words. Hilte et al, (2005) used inconsistent Dutch words as well: for these no effect of spelling pronunciations could be shown. It therefore seems that the effect of spelling pronunciations is highly dependent on the deviance of the trained words from the typical conversion of phonemes into graphemes.…”

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

“…Moreover, all other studies that did find a beneficial effect for spelling pronunciation used English words or loan words as stimuli, too (Drake & Ehri, 1984;Holmes & Malone, 2004, Ormrod & Jenkins, 1989Schiffelers, Bosman, & van Hell, 2002). Similarly, Hilte, Bos, and Reitsma (2005) found in an item-analysis that the words from French or English origin did profit more from spelling pronunciation than Dutch words that had only small deviations from transparent spelling. Thus, inconsistencies in findings for the effects of spelling pronunciation during training may well be related to differences in the degree of transparency in words.…”

“…As noted by Hilte, Bos, and Reitsma (2005), the study of Landerl, Thaler, and Reitsma (2006) in which spelling pronunciation appeared to be effective, provided no visualspelling patterns when spelling (or normal) pronunciation was presented. In contrast, in the study (Thaler, Landerl, & Reitsma, 2006), in which no effect of spelling pronunciation was found, visual-spelling patterns were presented simultaneously to the phonological information.…”

“…This particular problem can easily be solved by using explicit instructions on spelling pronunciation or by simply providing these artificial (spelling) pronunciations (Graham, 1999;Graham, Harris, & Chorzempa, 2002). Further empirical evidence showed that providing spelling pronunciations was more effective than providing standard pronunciation to spellers in both normal and special education (Hilte, Bos, & Reitsma, 2005;Schiffelers, Bosman, & van Hell, 2002).…”