What type of computer-assisted exercise supports young less skilled spellers in resolving problems in open and closed syllable words?

Abstract

Dutch bisyllabic words containing open and closed syllables are particularly difficult to spell for children. What kind of support in spelling exercises improves the spelling of these words the most? Two extensions of a commonly used dictation exercise were tested: less skilled spellers in grade 2 (n = 50; 7 years and 10 months) either received explicit syllabic segmentation cues or received spelling cues by means of a visual preview. Comparisons between pre-, post-, and retention tests of spelling skill showed that extra syllabic cues did not show a significant improvement beyond normal spelling dictation and that visual preview was most effective as compared to the other types of training. The findings suggest that word-specific knowledge can effectively be improved by exposure to the correct letter pattern during exercises in spelling and seems to result in lasting improvement of word-specific orthographic representations, at least for 5 weeks.

The Efficiency of Briefly Presenting Word Forms in a Computerized Repeated Spelling Training

“…In contrast to an earlier study, repeated spelling of rulebased words in this study did not lead to higher spelling accuracy of comparable untrained rulebased words (Hilte & Reitsma, 2011b). Future research should consider a larger number of examples per spelling rule in order to trigger implicit spelling rule acquisition or explicit spelling rule explanation (Hilte & Reitsma, 2008, 2011b. Still, the transfer effect for loan words found in this study should be considered with caution because the attention of the participants to comparable loan word spellings in their daily environment could have been increased.…”

“…Third to sixth graders showed higher spelling accuracy for loan words trained with visual preview than after auditory dictation with feedback after mistakes (Hilte & Reitsma, 2006). The same was true for second graders who practiced rule-based words and native irregular words (Hilte & Reitsma, 2008). No differences were found between the word types, and untrained control words of various word types also improved from pre-to posttest.…”

“…For both word types an increase in spelling speed RT2 (time between the first pressed key and the pressing of "Enter") was found. It seems that the participants were only able to use their acquired knowledge during training for analogy spelling in order to spell comparable untrained loan words more accurately (e.g., Tucker et al, 2016), but they did not implicitly acquire a spelling rule from the training (Hilte & Reitsma, 2008, 2011b. The increase in spelling speed for rule-based words might indicate that words for which a spelling rule had already been acquired were spelled with higher automaticity (Perfetti, 1992(Perfetti, , 2017.…”

“…Previously it was discussed that visual dictation fosters lexical learning especially and thus should be an efficient memorization strategy for irregular word spellings, such as for loan words (Hilte & Reitsma, 2006). It is not clear whether visual dictation is only efficient in teaching word-specific representations of trained rule-based words and loan words or whether it is also efficient for transferring knowledge to untrained words of those two word types by making use of analogy or by implicitly teaching spelling rules (Bosman, Van Huygevoort, et al, 2006;Hilte & Reitsma, 2008, 2011b. The studies mentioned above either were small, used inconsistent study material, did not compare different word types, or did not contrast the benefit of visual dictation practice with simple word copying.…”