Children's Retention of Word Spellings in Relation to Reading Ability.
| Number | 885 |
|---|---|
| Year | 1993 |
| Drawer | 16 |
| Entry Date | 11/19/1999 |
| Authors | Dreyer, L. G., Shankweiler, D., & Luke, S. D. |
| Contact | |
| Publication | In D. J. Leu and C. K. Kinzer (Eds.) Examining Central Issues in Literacy Research, Theory, and Practice: Forty-second Yearbook of The National Reading Conference. (pp.405-412). |
| url | http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL0885.pdf |
| Abstract | [Introduction] Even in schools where formal spelling instruction is offered and a generous amount of time is devoted to practicing spelling words, classrooms teachers sometimes notice that children learn to spell words for weekly spelling tests but do not consistently apply that knowledge in their written work. Indeed, some children appeal to forget the spellings of words that seem to have been mastered earlier. Spelling is of interest because it affords objective evidence of the level of mastery of the orthography, and because analysis of attempted spellings may also give insight into the development of decoding processes in reading. Word reading and spelling abilities tend to remain highly correlated, even beyond the early grades. Their close association is to be expected, given that both abilities draw on a common knowledge base. In as much as alphabetic writing is keyed to the phonological structure of language, it is relevant to note that phonological awareness is important both for learning to read and learning to spell (Bradley & Bryant, 1983; Rohl & Tunmer, 1988). In addition to the ability to analyze spoken words phonemically, mastery of reading and spelling requires knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondences and retention in long-term memory of the spellings of specific words (Ehri, 1989; Tierney, Caplan, Ehri, Healy, & Hurdlow, 1989). As Stanovich (1992) suggests, individual differences in the ability to form and store accurate orthographic representations may account of the significant individual differences in reading (and we would add spelling) over and above those accounted for by phonological segmentation ability alone. Why might some children be less proficient at developing stable orthographic representations? One likely possibility is that poorer readers and spellers seem not to fully apprehend either the regularities or the idiosyncrasies in the spellings of printed words, and accordingly do not benefit as much as better readers from exposure to those words in reading. For example, the word recognition errors of beginning and older readers frequently reflect guesses based mainly on word beginnings, with little regard for the internal letters (Fowler, Liberman, & Shankweiler, 1977). This suggestion might be tested by examining children’s acquisition of word spellings in classrooms where formal instruction in written spelling is offered. The requirement to practice the spelling of a word encourages the learner to focus on all of its component letters. We had the opportunity to examine children’s spelling performance in just such classrooms. Because we were interested to see if early word reading and spelling performance had implications for long-term achievement, we examined children’s ability to retain spellings of a small sample of words for a relatively short period of time to find out if observed differences would presage performance over the long term. Thus we checked their progress in reading and spelling four years later. The retention rate for spelling words taught in spelling lessons has not often been studied, yet it would seem to have genuine implications for understanding the conditions that promote both spelling and reading mastery. In the present study these questions were addressed: Is the ability to learn and retain spellings related to word reading ability? Can word reading and spelling achievement in Grade 7 be predicted from differences in short-and long-term learning in Grade 3? |
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