Spelling Difficulty—A Survey Of The Research

Cahen, Leonard S.; Craun, Marlys J.; Johnson, Susan K.

doi:10.3102/00346543041004281

Cited by 16 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 45 publications

(38 reference statements)

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“…Search for the source of problems and for ways to speed up the skill development process has led to a sizable body of research over a long period of years (Horn, 1969). Scholars have attributed the difficulty to the nature of English orthography (Hodges, 1972), explored the efficacy of different ways of teaching spelling (Petty, 1968), and carried out a large number of studies of the nature of spelling errors (Cahen et al, 1971).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spelling?A task analysis

Simon

1976

Instr Sci

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This paper analyzes a typical school spelling task in terms of an information processing model of spelling performance~ It explores the nature of the speller's internal representation of the word to be spelled, the information he must have in memory about the target word, and the organization of the processes available to use that information to produce a spelling and verify its accuracy. Sources of error in the execution of the task, with examples of errors from children's spelling tests, are discussed in terms of the model. Ways in which the model may be adapted to explain performance on other kinds of spelling tasks and some implications for instruction are suggested. A partially implemented computer simulation of the spelling process is described.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spelling?A task analysis

Simon

1976

Instr Sci

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“…That is, children had to copy a list of difficult words a number of times on a number of days. The rationale behind rewriting is that children form a visual representation of the correct spelling of the word by imprinting (Cahen et al 1969;Horn 1960Horn , 1969. According to Henderson (1987), this memorization approach fitted well in the zeitgeist that assumed young children were characterized by only strong memory capacity but poor higher-order reasoning skills.…”

Section: Instruction Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of instruction method and relearning on Dutch spelling performance of third- through fifth-graders

Bouwmeester

Verkoeijen

2010

Eur J Psychol Educ

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In this study, we compared two instruction methods on spelling performance: a rewriting instruction in which children repeatedly rewrote words and an ambiguous property instruction in which children deliberately practiced on a difficult word aspect. Moreover, we examined whether the testing effect applies to spelling performance. One hundred eighty-six Dutch elementary-school students (grades 3, 4, and 5) participated in this study. A mixed design was used in the present study, with age group and instruction as between-subject variables and relearning as a within-subject variable. We showed that after a 2-day retention interval, the rewriting condition outperformed the ambiguous property condition on spelling performance in all grades. The effect of relearning type was not significant nor was the instruction × relearning interaction. An error analysis showed that relative to the rewrite instruction, the ambiguous property instruction led to more errors on the non-practiced part of the words. By contrast, the rewrite instruction and ambiguous property instruction did not differ with respect to the errors on the practiced part of the words. The findings provide strong evidence for the superiority of a rewriting study instruction over an ambiguous property study instruction with respect to the performance on a delayed spelling test. Results from the conditional error analyses suggest that the beneficial influence of rewriting emerges because rewriting requires children to process the whole word rather than only a part of the word.Résumé La présente étude comparait deux méthodes d'instruction d'orthographe: celui de réécrire, dans laquelle les enfants écrions des mots répétèrent, et d'exercer avec des parts difficile d'un mot dans laquelle les enfants exercent les aspects difficiles des mots. De plus, on examine l'effet de tester en la performance orthographe. 186 enfants de l'école primaire de Pays-Bas (classes 3, 4, and 5) participaient en cette étude. Les résultats montraient que Eur J Psychol Educ (2011) 26:61-74 après une rétention de deux jours, les enfants de toutes des classes faisaient moins de fautes orthographes quand ils avaient eu l'instruction de réécrire que quand ils avaient eu l'instruction de exercer avec des part difficiles des mots. Il n'était pas un effet de tester et il n'était pas non plus un effet de l'instruction × tester. Une analyse de fautes orthographes montrait que, en comparaison de l'instruction de réécrire, l'instruction d'exercer avec des parts difficile d'un mot tournait a plus des fautes en le part du mot que on n'avait pas exercé. Au contraire de ceci, les deux méthodes d'instruction ne différaient pas à propos des fautes en le part des mots qui on avait exercé. Les résultats procurent l'évidence que l'instruction de réécrire est meilleur que l'instruction d'exercer avec des parts difficile d'un mot. Les résultats d'analyse des fautes suggèrent que l'instruction de réécrire est meilleur parce qu'il faut que les enfants exercent tout le mot au lieu de une part de mot seulement.

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“…In their attempts to explain why some words are more difficult to spell than others, researchers have consistently observed moderate to strong relationships between spelling difficulty and (a) frequency of word occurrence, (b) word length (number of letters), and (c) extent of phonemegrapheme regularity (5,6,11). Presumably, frequency of occurrence represents opportunity to learn, e.g., through reading; greater word length indicates increased opportunity for spelling error; and extent of phoneme-grapheme regularity suggests the degree to which a word may be spelled properly on the basis of sound alone.…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Research has ranged from studies comparing instructional approaches (12,14) to complex computer analyses of English orthography (10,18). Primarily , spelling research can be subsumed under one of three headings: (a) characteristics of spellers, (b) methods of spelling instruction, or (c) properties of spelling words (6). The latter is the subject of the present investigation.…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%