Word Length and Complexity Variables in Spelling Difficulty

Spelling Difficulty—A Survey Of The Research

“…It was con cluded that such a simplistic analysis was an inefficient predictor of spelling difficulty. Bloomer (1956) used a correlational methodology to investigate parameters of spelling difficulty. The criterion of difficulty was the percentage of error in the occurrence of a word in children's writing as determined by Brittain and Fitzgerald (1942).…”

The Prediction of Spelling Difficulty: I. A Review of the Literature and a Preliminary Statement of a Model to Predict Spelling Difficulty1

“…The analysis of this data showed that these nine phonemes were correctly spelled more frequently than they were incorrectly spelled, The conclusion to be drawn from this study is that a simplistic analysis, such as determining which phonemes are found most frequently in persistently difficult words, is not likely to be em efficient predictor of spelling difficulty. Bloomer (1956) has conducted a series of investigations that attempt to find the parameters of spelling difficulty, using a correlation or regression approach. In the first published report of his results, the criterion of spelling difficulty used was the percent of error per occurrence of the word in children's writing as determined by Brittain and Fitzgerald (1942), The Brittain and Fitzgerald work is a word frequency count that also records the percentage of misspellings in the s ampLe , 'I'he independent variables used were frequency as measured by Rinsland (1945) and by Brittain and Fitzgerald (1942)~the grade placement of the word in spellers according to Gates (1937), the length of the word, the word complexity (which included a sound variable and a shape variable)~and the meaningfulness of the word, which was defined as the grade level at which 90% of the children understood the word according to Gates.…”

“…The analysis of this data showed that these nine phonemes were correctly spelled more frequently than they were incorrectly spelled, The conclusion to be drawn from this study is that a simplistic analysis, such as determining which phonemes are found most frequently in persistently difficult words, is not likely to be em efficient predictor of spelling difficulty. Bloomer (1956) has conducted a series of investigations that attempt to find the parameters of spelling difficulty, using a correlation or regression approach. In the first published report of his results, the criterion of spelling difficulty used was the percent of error per occurrence of the word in children's writing as determined by Brittain and Fitzgerald (1942), The…”

Morphological Word Families and Learning to Spell

“…Word Length. Word length is one of the most studied characteristic that influences spelling attempts (Bloomer, 1956;Gibson, Osser, & Pick, 1963) Research has used different measures of word length, counting orthographic units such as the number of letters (Rapp & Dufor, 2011;Weekes, 1997) and graphemes (Rastle & Coltheart, 1998) in research on reading, and phonological units such as the number of phonemes (Spencer, 2007) and syllables (Naylor, 2014) in research on spelling. To illustrate the difference in these counts, consider that the French word chat /ʃa/ [cat] has 4 letters, 3 graphemes, 2 phonemes, and 1 WORD FAMILIES AND SPELLING syllable.…”

“…To illustrate the difference in these counts, consider that the French word chat /ʃa/ [cat] has 4 letters, 3 graphemes, 2 phonemes, and 1 WORD FAMILIES AND SPELLING syllable. Early research assumed longer words were harder to spell because of the larger potential for error given the increased number of letters to produce (Bloomer, 1956).…”