Role Of Spelling Research Articles

Literacy Activities that Highlight Emergent and Beginning Literacy Development

AbstractActivities that teach PreK–1 students the six components of emergent literacy and beginning reading and word study are presented for classroom settings. These activities are adaptable developmentally and they highlight four important aspects of teaching phonics, spelling and word knowledge that are often overlooked: the rhythm of literacy, Concept of Word in Text (COW‐T), articulation in word study, and the role of spelling in the reciprocal processes of reading and writing (decoding/encoding). Research underlying these activities suggests that rhythmic activities in early literacy instruction can be a precursor to explicit instruction for phonological awareness with young children and students who struggle to learn to read. The research also shows how articulation and other multisensory aspects of learning to read are parts of development and instruction for emergent and beginning readers. The role of spelling during these early periods is highlighted and discussed.

Is It Time for a Hard Conversation about Cueing Systems and Word Reading in Teacher Education?

Recent media reports suggest that teachers and teacher educators are using the three-cueing system model to justify an overemphasis on context to help students read unfamiliar words. In this conceptual article, the authors argue that although these critiques are exaggerated, the current climate provides an opportunity for teacher educators to reflect on their ways of talking about word reading with teachers. The authors propose answers to nine questions, derived from recent conversations with teachers as they navigate conflicting messages about reading. To answer these questions, the authors describe a model of word reading, the Sound-Spelling-Meaning (SSM) model, and related instructional routines that are consistent with current evidence. The SSM model offers teachers and teacher educators a consistent language for talking and learning about word reading processes. It can be useful in teacher education to guide discussions of how words eventually become effortless for readers, the pivotal role of spelling in reading development, and the role of context in word recognition.

The Impact of Different Teaching Strategies on Teaching Spelling to Kindergarten Children

Many specialists in the field of foreign language teaching consider spelling as an important and perhaps necessary part in language teaching, and observe that spelling is a significant concern among both the language arts community and the public. The teaching of spelling is an issue that provokes strong feelings and attitudes in teachers, students, and parents as well, and those involved have strong opinions about the importance of correct spelling at school. A close look at the role of spelling in the general language curriculum, makes it known that learning to write and read in the whole language can benefit greatly from teaching spelling. Searching the Net under the keywords ‘spelling’ and ‘teaching spelling’ reveals many studies on spelling and the interest of the readers. In this study, we made use of two techniques to teach spelling, which included “the Personalized Instruction Technique”, or simply the PI technique, and “the Detection Technique” or the D technique. Meanwhile, a control group was included to make up for and take into account any possible background differences.82 kindergarten children, studying at three kindergartens in Tarom, Zanjan, took part in the study. They were randomly assigned to three groups: one control group and two experimental groups. The PI group consisted of 28 kindergarten students both boys and girls, and the Group comprised 27kindergarten students, both boys and girls. The control group, too, contained 27 kindergarten students, both boys and girls. The findings indicated that both the experimental groups that used the spelling techniques performed significantly better than the control group. Meanwhile, the PI group exceeded the DT group.

The pathway to English word reading in Chinese ESL children: the role of spelling

The present longitudinal study investigated the role of spelling as a bridge between various reading-related predictors and English word reading in Chinese children learning English as a Second Language (ESL). One hundred and forty-one 5-year-old kindergarten children from Hong Kong, whose first language (L1) was Cantonese and second language (L2) was English, were administered tests of phonological awareness, letter knowledge, English vocabulary, spelling and English word reading at three time points (T1, T2 and T3) at 3-month intervals over a 6-month period. Nonverbal IQ was included as a control variable. The results showed that phonological awareness, letter knowledge and English vocabulary at T1 all predicted English word reading (T3) through spelling (T2). Further mediation analyses showed that, for phonological awareness and English vocabulary, full mediation effects were found. For letter knowledge, a partial mediation effect was observed. These results suggest that, in Chinese ESL kindergarteners, reading-related predictors foster word reading via spelling, a process that intersects phonology, orthography and semantics. Practical implications of these findings were also discussed.

Incremental learning of difficult words in story contexts: the role of spelling and pronouncing new vocabulary

In this exploratory study we examine the value of exposure to the spelling and pronunciation of word forms when introducing the meanings of new and difficult vocabulary words. Kindergarten English learners were randomly assigned to one of two types of storybook reading delivered by tutors. Students in both treatments listened to short stories containing novel target words. In both groups, students were told the meanings of the difficult words when they first appeared in the stories. However, in one of the groups (Definitions-Plus), students were also shown the printed words when they first appeared in the stories, and were asked to pronounce and spell the words aloud. Vocabulary learning was assessed with three researcher-designed measures including receptive vocabulary, vocabulary definitions, and spelling. Results showed that both groups made significant gains on all three measures, with average gains of 8, 4, and 3 %, respectively. Moreover, the Definitions-Plus group had significantly greater spelling gains (d = .57), and exhibited similar, albeit nonsignificant, trends on vocabulary gains (ds = .30 and .41 for receptive and definitional vocabulary, respectively). Results extend previous studies’ results to younger English learner students on general benefits of novel word exposure in story contexts, and specific benefits for spelling and pronunciation practice in learning new words.

The implication of spelling and frequency in the recognition of phonological variants: evidence from pre-readers and readers

Hearing a reduced variant of a word seems to delay access to the representation of this word. One hypothesis explaining the precedence of full variants over reduced ones is that they correspond to the orthographic form of the word. In this study, we examined the role of orthography on the processing of variants resulting from schwa deletion in French. In a word-monitoring experiment, we compared the performance of pre-readers and readers on two word types. For words whose schwa variants are more frequent and correspond to the words' spelling, schwa variants were recognised with shorter reaction times by both pre-readers and readers. For words whose schwa variants are less frequent but correspond to the words' spelling, non-schwa variants were recognised faster than schwa variants by pre-readers, whereas there was no difference between the two variants for readers. Taken together these results suggest that the recognition of phonological variants changes when children learn to read, highlighting the crucial role of spelling in the processing of phonological variation.

The Role of Spelling in American Education

The Role of Spelling in American Education