The development of beliefs about spelling and their relationship to spelling performance

Abstract

This study examined relations among spelling performance and students' beliefs about spelling, including self-efficacy for spelling ability, outcome expectancy for spelling, and attributions for good spelling across grades 4,7, and 10. Spelling self-efficacy remained relatively constant across grades. Spelling outcome expectancies for adult life and school declined across grades, as did effort and ability attributions for spelling success, with a disproportional decrease in ability attributions between grades 4 and 7. Self-efficacy was the strongest predictor of spelling performance at all grade levels; attribution for ability entered into the regression for grade 4 students, while outcome expectancies for school and writing were more important in grades 7 and 10. Cluster analyses on the grade 10 sample showed that students with high efficacy as spellers and high outcome expectancy of spelling for writing were the best spellers, with the highest performance reserved for those who attributed good spelling more to effort than ability. The impact of spelling instruction on developing beliefs is discussed.Although the area of spelling has never captured the attention of educators and researchers to the degree that reading and writing have, over the past two decades there has been mounting interest in understanding the cognitive processes that underlie spelling and in integrating this knowledge with the larger body of knowledge of cognitive science (see Frith, 1980, and the review by Brown, 1990). As a maturing field, cognitive science in general has broadened its scope beyond the more 'purely cognitive' models proposed initially (Anderson, 1983;Rumelhart, 1975;Schank and Abelson, 1977;Winograd, 1975) to include a variety of affective and motivational variables affecting learning (Bandura, 1982(Bandura, , 1986 Dweck and Legget, 1988;Pintrich, We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Greg Schraw, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, for his feedback and helpful recommendations relative to data analysis and preparation of this paper.

Dyslexia and Self-Esteem

“…Some of it has led authors to generalize from their findings and hypothesize more global impact from subject-specific results. Rankin, Bruning, and Timme (1994) found a strong predictive relationship between lower self-efficacy beliefs for spelling and actual spelling performance, regardless of spelling ability otherwise measured. At a more global level, Panagos and DuBois (1999) found that dyslexic adolescents' self-efficacy beliefs were a strong and potentially limiting, mediating influence on their choice of possible career.…”

Use it or Lose it: Vocabulary Growth in the EFL Writing Classroom

“…Spelling, like other linguistic processes, should be viewed as a developmental cognitive process that requires the knowledge of orthographic rules and how they should be applied (Rankin et al, 1994). Such knowledge is a process that develops over time and depends upon considerable experience and interaction with meaningful reading and writing (Templeton and Morris, 2000, Rankin et International Journal of Linguistics ISSN 1948-5425 2015 al., 1994).…”

“…Alternatively, students who are acquiring spelling through functional writing activities might perceive spelling as one aspect of writing, but one that is less critical to the primary task of communicating. Therefore, students could be poor spellers and still view themselves as good writers (Rankin, et al 1994). There is evidence that good writers are not always good spellers and good spellers are not always good writers.…”

“…Another serious drawback of heavily attending to spelling mistakes is the false impression that students might get about the weighting of spelling in writing (Rankin, et al, 1994) compared to more important higher-level skills, such as the generation, development and organization of ideas. The heavy emphasis on correct spelling in a L2 classroom would cause International Journal of Linguistics ISSN 1948-5425 2015 poor spellers to perceive themselves as poor writers (as described above), where in some cases they might not be, and this will negatively affect their self-esteem.…”

Validation de l’Échelle de motivation à l’égard de l’orthographe (EMO)

“…de plus, nombreuses sont les études qui ont montré que la Mi est liée au rendement scolaire (Gottfried, 1985) et aux habitudes de lecture (wigfield & Guthrie, 1997). la perception qu'ont les élèves de leur compétence ou de leur efficacité est liée à leur rendement scolaire, notamment en lecture (shell, Bruning & colvin, 1995), en écriture (Pajares & valiente, 1999;shell, Bruning & colvin, 1995) de même qu'en orthographe (rankin, Bruning & timme, 1994). donc, on devrait s'attendre à ce qu'un élève motivé de manière autodéterminée ait une meilleure perception de sa compétence en orthographe et un meilleur rendement dans cette matière scolaire.…”