Abstract
Homophonous verb forms are notoriously difficult to spell. Two intervention studies - one with secondary-school students and one with university students - compared the effectiveness of an Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) teaching approach that was very interactive with traditional instruction (TI) on Dutch homophonous verb spelling. The two approaches differ in the attention dedicated to the identification of the grammatical functions of verb forms and in the teacher’s guidance of the students, which affects the interactivity during the classes. Students were pre-tested and post-tested on their knowledge of grammar and spelling of homophonous verb forms embedded in sentences. Both the EDI and the TI courses consisted of 4.5 hours of training. Secondary-school students’ verb-spelling performance improved, irrespective of the type of instruction. University students’ verb-spelling performance increased after both interventions, probably resulting from their improved grammatical knowledge. Importantly, the EDI students’ performance increased more than the TI students’ performance because the EDI students had learnt to rely more on their grammatical knowledge or make better use of their increased grammatical mastery. These results are in line with our hypothesis that the explicit interactivity that is inherent to EDI is beneficial for teaching verb spelling to students beyond primary-school level, who already possess some grammatical knowledge.
Highlights
Spelling in alphabetic languages transforms orally presented information, that is, sounds into visual codes
This study investigates whether the combination of a more explicit attention for grammar and spelling yields better verb-spelling results than traditional verbspelling instruction among students who already have some basic grammatical knowledge
This study investigated whether verb-spelling errors diminish if Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) is used as teaching approach, rather than traditional instruction (TI), to explicitly clarify the relationship between grammar and verb spelling
Summary
Spelling in alphabetic languages transforms orally presented information, that is, sounds (i.e., phonemes) into visual codes (i.e., graphemes). An English example is the word /sɛnt/, which has at least three different meanings and three different corresponding spellings: (past participle of the verb to send), (one hundredth of a standard decimal currency), and (smell or fragrance). These words are referred to as lexical homophones, because the difference in spelling is determined by the meaning of the word. The number and difficulty of lexical homophones in these languages are relatively limited compared to these languages’ grammatically-determined homophones, dominant in verbal paradigms, where the grammatical function of the verb form determines how the word is spelled. The only way to spell homophonous verb forms correctly is to make a proper grammatical analysis and subsequently apply the corresponding spelling rules
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
