Thesis title: Spelling Abilities

Thesis statement:

Statement of the problem:

Research Question

I. What is the profile of the respondents in terms of :

1. Age

2. Sex

3. Course

4. Educational attainment

5. Family background

6. Family income

7.

II.
Introduction

Spelling is one of those skills that, more often than not, children are expected to pick up as

they go along in school. But sometimes it’s not that simple and there are many adults now

who are poor spellers because they didn’t acquire the skill of learning to spell as a matter of

course.

Spelling will only improve with writing practice but poor spellers are often reluctant to

write. When working on spelling, the emphasis should always be on ‘having a go’, rather

than on the correct spelling of every word.

There can be a number of different causes for a child not being able to spell, such as having

a learning disability related to language, poor motivation, attention, disorder and the like. If

you suspect a deeper reason for your child’s inability to spell, read or write, you should

consult a professional or seek the counsel of your child’s teacher.

It is important for tutors to realize that they do not ‘teach’ spelling as such, but rather equip

the learner with a number of strategies they can use to help them with their spelling. Many

students believe that English spelling has no structure. However, it is important to point

out to learners that many words do follow a pattern.

Most of all, it is essential to approach spelling in the context of the student’s needs. We

remember things that interest us most and are relevant to our lives. A builder might like to

spell words that relate to his trade, such as ladder or mahogany.

Many studies have found robust correlations between disabilities in word reading, phonological

decoding of printed onwards, and language measures of phonological awareness. Moreover, the

potential causal role of phonological deficits in reading disabilities has been supported by

“reading-level-match” studies, wherein older children with reading disabilities are compared to

younger normally developing readers at the same absolute level of word recognition. Most such

studies of English readers have reported significantly lower phonological decoding and/or

phonological awareness for children with reading disabilities.

Poor phonological decoding and poor phonological awareness are also correlated with poor

spelling ability. A longitudinal study on spelling development demonstrated that proficient

spelling depends on both phoneme awareness and letter-sound knowledge. In this paper, we

present evidence supporting this causal role through analyses of spelling errors within the setting

of a spelling-level-match comparison between older children with spelling disabilities (SD) and

younger normally progressing children. In addition, we compare the spelling-level-matched

groups on language measures of phonological awareness, word recognition, phonological

decoding, and orthographic coding. In the introduction, we review a theory suggesting shared

mechanisms for spelling and reading, describe some recent studies with similar paradigms, and

outline how the current approach tackles some of the issues facing the inconsistent findings in

this line of research.

Review of Related Literature

Research on spelling reviews of the literature are helpful in synthesizing findings,. Individual’s

studies contribute a point of views and define variables, but it takes a review to examine each

study in light of others. Fortunately, there have been many outstanding personalities reviews of

the literature. For example, Romani, Olson, & Di Betta (2005) have argued that spelling and reading

share the same orthographic and phonological representations. These representations are thought to

be utilized within the framework of a dual-route model that posits a non-lexical and a lexical path. In

the indirect phonological (non-lexical) route, phoneme-grapheme rules are used in the decoding of

written words into spoken words and vice versa, whereas in the lexical path, words are retrieved as

whole units. A weakness in the phonological route may explain the pattern of deficits in decoding

words in children with reading disabilities (RD). Under the premise of shared phonological and

orthographic structures for reading and spelling, children with reading disabilities (RD) should not

only demonstrate a phonological processing deficit in single word decoding but also a similar

phonological processing deficit in spelling.

Several previous studies have investigated whether normally progressing children make the same

kinds of spelling errors as older spelling-level-matched children with SD. Spelling-level-match

comparisons typically involve pairing older spelling disabled (SD) children with younger normally

progressing children on the number of words spelled correctly in a standardized spelling task. A few

of these studies have found that normally progressing children tend to make errors that are more

phonologically accurate than older children with SD. However, findings have been inconsistent.

Moats (1983) matched 27 4th to 8th grade children from a private school for children with dyslexia,

who exhibited a minimum of a two-year lag in their reading achievement compared to their

intellectual ability and a spelling grade level between 2.6 and 3.6 on the Stanford Dictated Spelling
test, to 27 normally progressing children in second grade equated on their spelling performance. She

conducted a detailed analysis of misspelled words for a variety of error types such as serial order

confusions and phonological accuracy. Moats did not find significant group differences in the level

of phonological accuracy, or in the number of serial order confusions. In her discussion, Moats stated

that there was a moderate correlation between years of remediation training and phonological

accuracy, and the majority of children with dyslexia in her study had between 7 months to 3 years of

remedial instruction. Moreover, she stated that the children with dyslexia demonstrated the positive

effects of phonics instruction. This suggests that the phonological remediation that the disabled group

received may have eliminated or reduced apparent deficits in the phonological accuracy of spelling

errors that would have been present without phonics intervention.

In contrast, Bruck and Treiman (1990) found a significant phonological deficit in the attempted

spellings of children with SD in their study. They recruited their sample of 33 disabled spellers

(mean age of 10 years and 2 months) from an assessment center for dyslexia, as well as 23 younger

normally progressing children (mean age of 7 years and 5 months) from public schools. The groups

were matched on a standardized spelling test. Bruck and Treiman’s (1990) data analysis

demonstrated that the SD group made more initial consonant cluster errors (omission of a consonant)

and thus made more errors that were considered non-phonetic, or not pronounceable in English.

Bourassa and Treiman (2003) conducted a study using a spelling-level matched design to compare

oral and written spelling errors of children with SD (mean age 11 years and 1 month) from clinics

specializing in tutoring for dyslexia, with that of younger children (mean age 7 years and 5 months)

of normal reading and spelling ability. Their initial analysis consisted of a spelling sophistication

composite based on a point system that gives more points to spellings where most or all of the

phonemes in the target word are represented and higher scores are given to spellings that follow

graphotactic conventions (i.e., use of legal letter sequences) and conventional spelling. They failed to
find any significant group differences on their composite measure for either words or nonwords. The

groups also performed similarly on graphotactic acceptability, wherein graphemic sequences are

checked for whether they occur in English, and on the phonological skeleton, which measures how

closely consonant and vowel sequences match target words. However, in a post hoc analysis of

specific kinds of errors, they found a non-significant trend for higher graphotactic accuracy in the SD

group, and some subtle but significant differences for specific types of errors. For example, older

children with SD were more likely to include a final vowel in words like supper, wrongly include a

final “e” in words with a short vowel, and use single consonants for words requiring double

consonants more often than younger normally progressing children. Bourassa and Treiman

(2003) argued that these results were due to the SD children’s greater experience with patterns in

print compared to the younger controls. Overall, however, this study does not support a phonological

deficit in spelling and does not replicate the results of Bruck and Treiman (1990).

More recently, Cassar, Treiman, Moats, and Pollo (2005) compared 25 children identified with

dyslexia through standard clinical practice from private schools and institutions that provide tutoring

with that of 25 normally progressing children from public schools. The children with dyslexia had a

mean age of 11 years and 7 months, whereas the normally progressing children had a mean age of 6

years and 8 months. The groups were matched on the spelling subtest of the WRAT-R (Jastak &

Wilkinson, 1984). Analyses of phonological skills consisted of phoneme counting and onward

spelling, neither of which was found to demonstrate significant differences between groups. They

also did not find any significant differences on their spelling choice task, which tested the children’s

knowledge of legal letter patterns.

The present spelling-level-match study of phonological and graph tactic accuracy differs from the

previous studies described here on several points. First, children with SD and the younger ability

matched-controls came from the Colorado Learning Disabilities Research Center sample, which
recruits solely from Colorado public schools. This is in contrast to the clinic samples used in some of

the studies described earlier wherein phonological deficits may have been remediated. Many studies

have demonstrated that tutoring in phonological awareness and phoneme-grapheme correspondences

improves phonological accuracy in reading and spelling (cf. Wise, Ring, & Olson, 1999, 2000). It is

possible that remediation of phonological deficits in the clinic-based samples may have eliminated or

reduced differences between groups in their phonological spelling accuracy that would have been

present without this intervention. However, with the exception of the study by Moats (1995), the

studies described here do not report what type or amount of remediation that children with SD may

have received.

In addition, the present sample is much larger than previous studies with 77 matched pairs of children

and utilizes a within-subject design, which provides greater power for finding differences between

the groups. Lastly, the present study included analyses of both spelling and reading measures, which

allows for parallel comparisons of phonological and orthographic skills in spelling and in reading in

the same sample.