Spellings of Words: A Neglected Facilitator of Vocabulary Learning

Abstract

Vocabulary learning is central to reading ability and academic achievement. Vocabulary researchers and educators have viewed its essence as a process of associating the pronunciations and meanings of words in memory, and they have paid little attention to the contribution that spellings might make to vocabulary learning. We review theory and evidence showing that this is a serious oversight. Once children become literate, they retain the spellings of words bonded to their pronunciations and meanings in memory. Several studies show that spellings of words are retained in memory and influence phonemic and syllabic segmentation of words, they enhance memory for pseudowords, and they impact the detection of oral rhyming words. Two studies show that exposing second and fifth graders to the spellings of new vocabulary words enhances their memory for pronunciations and meanings of the words. Students with better developed orthographic knowledge benefit more from spellings in learning vocabulary words than students with weaker knowledge. In fact, the detection of a Matthew effect suggests that differences in orthographic knowledge create a difference in vocabulary size that grows increasingly large over time. Findings carry implications for enhancing vocabulary learning and instruction. Teachers need to show the spellings of new vocabulary words when they discuss their meanings. Students need to stop and pronounce unfamiliar words rather than skip them during independent reading. Researchers need to incorporate orthography into their theories explaining vocabulary acquisition, specifically phonological working memory theories, and they need to attend to its influence in studies they conduct.

Does learning to read shape verbal working memory?

“…15 Thus, for literate children and adults, orthography can support learning for more variable and transient phonological forms. As commented on by Ehri and Rosenthal (2007) and Ehri (2014), this should encourage revising current theories about the storage of words in memory and about the relations between phonological STM and reading abilities. Indeed, an influential view considers that good readers have superior phonological STM in comparison with poor readers, and that this memory difference partly explains why good readers have larger vocabularies (e.g., Gathercole, 2006;Gathercole, Service, Hitch, Adams, & Martin, 1999).…”

Age, sex, and verbal abilities affect location of linguistic connectivity in ventral visual pathway

“…For example, vocabulary influences reading comprehension and exception word reading (Ricketts, Nation, & Bishop, 2007). The acquisition of new vocabulary is itself influenced by orthographic knowledge (Ehri & Rosenthal, 2007), suggesting that visual areas involved in processing orthography interact with language areas involved in vocabulary acquisition. Vocabulary and knowledge of word similarities are both incorporated into verbal IQ (an age-normalized measure of verbal language abilities), and verbal IQ is correlated with both structural (Ramsden et al, 2011) and functional variability in cortical language processing (Everts et al, 2009; Lidzba, Schwilling, Grodd, Krägeloh-Mann, & Wilke, 2011).…”

Building Reading Fluency in Developmental Readers

“…A set of automatic processes triggered by the letters in a sight word result in the activation of the word's meaning in the lexicon, which may happen as quickly as 250 milliseconds for skilled adult readers (Rayner & Pollatsek, 1989). Researchers posit that such facility in sight word recognition is due to the construction of a three-way amalgam between the word's spelling, pronunciation, and meaning that accrues over time through repeated exposure to the word in meaningful contexts (Ehri, 2005;Ehri & Rosenthal, 2007;Perfetti, 2007;Perfetti & Hart, 2002).…”