Adult spelling strategies

Abstract

The goal of this study was to investigate how adult English speakers, who are good readers, but who differ in spelling ability, remember word-specific spelling information. In the first experiment, participants learned the spellings of words they had previously misspelled, while ''thinking out loud''. The main strategies observed in order of popularity were: letter rehearsal, overpronunciation, comparison of the remembered and the correct spelling, morphological analysis and visualisation. All strategies produced good learning success for the better spellers, but weaker spellers had less success with overpronunciation, comparison and morphological analysis. In a second experiment, when participants were shown their misspelling and the correct spelling, and instructed to use either overpronunciation or comparison to learn the correct spelling, learning success was independent of spelling ability. However, sequential verbal memory ability was associated with greater success in using overpronunciation, and sequential visual memory ability with greater success in using comparison. The findings provide new insight into the types of strategies that advanced learners use spontaneously to memorise arbitrary letter sequences, as well as revealing how effective the strategies are.

Spelling pronunciation and visual preview both facilitate learning to spell irregular words

“…This finding is supported by others, who argue that poor spellers rarely come up with strategies themselves, suggesting that they are less likely to adopt a spelling pronunciation strategy on their own (Drake & Ehri, 1984). And when they actually do adopt a spelling pronunciation strategy, they often form incorrect spelling pronunciations, which are generally misleading and rarely bring about the correct spelling (Holmes & Malone, 2004). This particular problem can easily be solved by using explicit instructions on spelling pronunciation or by simply providing these artificial (spelling) pronunciations (Graham, 1999;Graham, Harris, & Chorzempa, 2002).…”

“…Earlier studies showed a beneficial effect for spelling pronunciation when using English words or loan words as stimuli (Drake & Ehri, 1984;Holmes & Malone, 2004, Ormrod & Jenkins, 1989Schiffelers, Bosman, & van Hell, 2002). Spelling pronunciation seems to be less effective in Dutch or German words that have only small deviations from orthographic transparency (Hilte, Bos, & Reitsma, 2005;Landerl, Thaler, & Reitsma, 2006).…”

“…Landerl and collegues (2006) did find a beneficial effect of spelling pronunciation when they used words of foreign (mostly English) origin, so-called loan words, which had an extremely irregular spelling compared to the relatively regular spelling in German. Moreover, all other studies that did find a beneficial effect for spelling pronunciation used English words or loan words as stimuli, too (Drake & Ehri, 1984;Holmes & Malone, 2004, Ormrod & Jenkins, 1989Schiffelers, Bosman, & van Hell, 2002). Similarly, Hilte, Bos, and Reitsma (2005) found in an item-analysis that the words from French or English origin did profit more from spelling pronunciation than Dutch words that had only small deviations from transparent spelling.…”

“…Several studies investigated the effect of spelling pronunciation in older spellers only, Grades 5 or 6, or students (Hilte, Bos, & Reitsma, 2005;Holmes & Malone, 2004;Landerl, Thaler, & Reitsma, 2006;Ormrod & Jenkins, 1989). Among other studies focused on younger children, only Thaler, Landerl, and Reitsma (2006) addressed beginning spellers.…”

An evaluation of spelling pronunciations as a means of improving spelling of orthographic markers

“…The findings are in accordance with earlier studies with English and Dutch speaking children (Bosmann, van Hell, & Verhoeven, 2006;Drake & Ehri, 1984;Hilte & Reitsma, 2006) also showing benefic ial effects of spelling pronunciations for both normally developing and poor spellers for irregularly spelled foreign and loan words. Findings by Holmes and Malone (2004) suggest that overpronunciation of word spellings is a widely used strategy to memorize difficult spellings among adults, while Ormrod and Jenkins (1989) report that children do not use such a strategy spontaneously. Still, the mentioned empirical findings suggest that children too are able to use spelling pronunciations efficiently if instructed to do so.…”