Implicit and explicit instruction of spelling rules

Abstract

The study aimed to compare the differential effectiveness of explicit and implicit instruction of two Dutch spelling rules. Students with and without spelling disabilities were instructed a spelling rule either implicitly or explicitly in two experiments. Effects were tested in a pretest-intervention-posttest control group design. Experiment 1 suggested that explicit instruction of a morphological spelling rule led to instance-based knowledge in students with spelling disabilities and to rule-based knowledge in students without. Implicit instruction led to instance-based knowledge in students with spelling disabilities, and in the group without spelling disabilities no learning at all occurred. Experiment 2 revealed that explicit and implicit instruction of an orthographical spelling rule were equally effective in both groups and that the spelling knowledge they had acquired was instance-based. Findings suggest that explicit instruction is more effective than implicit instruction for the teaching of spelling rules when generalization is aimed at.