Gene Ouellette

What's Meaning Got to Do With It: The Role of Vocabulary in Word Reading and Reading Comprehension

There is at present no clear consensus as to the nature of the relations between oral vocabulary and specific literacy skills. The present study distinguished between vocabulary breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge to better explain the role of oral vocabulary in various reading skills. A sample of 60 typically developing Grade 4 students was assessed on measures of receptive and expressive vocabulary breadth, depth of vocabulary knowledge, decoding, visual word recognition, and reading comprehension. Concurrent analyses revealed that each distinct reading skill was related to the vocabulary measures in a unique manner. Receptive vocabulary breadth was the only oral vocabulary variable that predicted decoding performance after controlling for age and nonverbal intelligence. In contrast, expressive vocabulary breadth predicted visual word recognition, whereas depth of vocabulary knowledge predicted reading comprehension. The results are discussed in terms of interrelations between phonological and semantic factors in the acquisition of distinct reading skills.

Pathways to Literacy: A Study of Invented Spelling and Its Role in Learning to Read

This intervention study tested whether invented spelling plays a causal role in learning to read. Three groups of kindergarten children (mean age = 5 years 7 months) participated in a 4-week intervention. Children in the invented-spelling group spelled words as best they could and received developmentally appropriate feedback. Children in the 2 comparison groups were trained in phonological awareness or drew pictures. Invented-spelling training benefited phonological and orthographic awareness and reading of words used in the intervention. Importantly, the invented-spelling group learned to read more words in a learn-to-read task than the other groups. The finding are in accord with the view that invented spelling coupled with feedback encourages an analytical approach and facilitates the integration of phonological and orthographic knowledge, hence facilitating the acquisition of reading.

A Window Into Early Literacy: Exploring the Cognitive and Linguistic Underpinnings of Invented Spelling

Childrens early spelling attempts (invented spellings) and underlying component skills were evaluated in a sample (N = 115) of 5-year-old children. Letter-sound knowledge and phoneme awareness were shown to be important predictors of invented spelling performance in this age group. The results also showed associations between invented spelling and measures of orthographic awareness and morphological processing. The findings support the view that invented spelling is a developmentally complex and important early literacy skill that involves phonemic awareness, letter sound knowledge, and other oral language skills and orthographic knowledge.

What exactly is a yait anyway: the role of semantics in orthographic learning.

This study investigated whether semantic information presented along with novel printed nonwords facilitates orthographic learning and examined predictors of individual differences in this important literacy skill. A sample of 35 fourth graders was tested on a variety of language and literacy tests, and participants were then exposed to 10 target nonwords, 5 of which were presented with semantic information. Children were tested 1 and 4days later on their ability to correctly recognize and spell the target nonwords. Results revealed a significant main effect on the recognition task, where items presented with semantic information were identified correctly more often than were words presented in isolation. No significant effect of training condition was found for the spelling posttests. Furthermore, multiple regression analyses revealed that both phonological and semantic factors were significant predictors of orthographic learning. The findings support the view that orthographic learning, as measured through visual recognition, involves the integration of phonological, orthographic, and semantic representations.

Orthographic learning in learning to spell: The roles of semantics and type of practice

This study investigated the relevance of type of practice and presence of semantic representation for orthographic learning in learning to spell. A total of 36 students in Grade 2 (mean age = 7 years 10 months) were exposed to 10 novel nonwords, 5 of which were paired with semantic information. Half of the participants practiced reading these new items, whereas the others spelled them. The students were then tested 1 and 7 days later on a dictation task. Results revealed a significant main effect of practice type favoring spelling practice and a main effect of the teaching condition, where taught items paired with semantic information were spelled correctly more often than words presented without semantic support. There was no effect of testing time, with learned words being retained well over the 1-week delay, nor were there any significant interactions. The findings support the contention that spelling offers an excellent milieu for orthographic learning to occur. Furthermore, semantics are proposed as a relevant factor in learning to spell, supporting the view that orthographic learning involves the integration of phonological, orthographic, and semantic representations.

Guiding Children's Invented Spellings: A Gateway Into Literacy Learning

This teaching study tested whether guiding invented spelling through a Vygotskian approach to feedback would facilitate kindergarten childrens entry into literacy more so than phonological awareness instruction. Participants included 40 kindergarteners whose early literacy skills were typical of literacy-rich classrooms, and who were receiving a structured balanced literacy curriculum. The children were randomly assigned to one of two teaching conditions (phonological awareness; invented spelling) and participated in 16 teaching sessions over an 8-week period in kindergarten. Before these teaching sessions, the groups were equivalent in early literacy and language skills including alphabetic knowledge, phonological awareness and oral vocabulary. Children in both conditions saw growth in alphabetic knowledge and phonological awareness (marked by large effect sizes), but the invented-spelling group showed more growth in invented spelling sophistication and learned to read more words on posttest. These advantages were reflected in medium to large effect sizes. Follow-up assessment in Grade 1 revealed potential lasting advantages for the invented spelling group. These findings support the view that with guidance and developmentally appropriate feedback, invented spelling promotes early literacy by providing a milieu for children to explore the relations between oral and written language.

Invented spelling in kindergarten as a predictor of reading and spelling in Grade 1: A new pathway to literacy, or just the same road, less known?

In this study we evaluated whether the sophistication of children’s invented spellings in kindergarten was predictive of subsequent reading and spelling in Grade 1, while also considering the influence of well-known precursors. Children in their first year of schooling (mean age = 66 months; N = 171) were assessed on measures of oral vocabulary, alphabetic knowledge, phonological awareness, word reading and invented spelling; approximately 1 year later they were assessed on multiple measures of reading and spelling. Path modeling was pursued to evaluate a hypothesized unique, causal role of invented spelling in subsequent literacy outcomes. Results supported a model in which invented spelling contributed directly to concurrent reading along with alphabetic knowledge and phonological awareness. Longitudinally, invented spelling influenced subsequent reading, along with alphabetic knowledge while mediating the connection between phonological awareness and early reading. Invented spelling also influenced subsequent conventional spelling along with phonological awareness, while mediating the influence of alphabetic knowledge. Invented spelling thus adds explanatory variance to literacy outcomes not entirely captured by well-studied code and language-related skills.

The write way to spell: printing vs. typing effects on orthographic learning.

Prior research has shown superior orthographic learning resulting from spelling practice relative to repeated reading. One mechanism proposed to underlie this advantage of spelling in establishing detailed orthographic representations in memory is the motoric component of the manual movements evoked in printing or writing. This study investigated this contention directly by testing the effects of typing vs. printing on the orthographic learning achieved through spelling practice, and further evaluated whether practice modality interacts with pre-existing individual characteristics. Forty students in grade 2 (mean age 7 years 5 months) were introduced to 10 novel non-words. Some of the students practiced spelling the items by printing, while the others practiced spelling them on a keyboard. Participants were tested for recognition and spelling of these items 1 and 7 days later. Results revealed high rates of orthographic learning with no main effects of practice modality, testing time, or post-test modality. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed an interaction between typing proficiency and practice modality, such that pre-existing keyboarding skills constrained or facilitated learning within the typing-practice group. A similar interaction was not found between printing skills and learning within the printing group. Results are discussed with reference to both prominent reading theory and educational applications.

Learning from Our Mistakes: Improvements in Spelling Lead to Gains in Reading Speed.

ABSTRACT The present study tested the hypothesis that underlying orthographic representations vary in completeness within the individual, which is manifested in both spelling accuracy and reading speed. Undergraduate students were trained to improve their spelling of difficult words. Word reading speed was then measured for these same words, allowing for a direct evaluation of whether improvements in spelling would bring about faster reading speeds. Results were clear: Spelling accuracy and reading speed were strongly related across and within participants. Most important, words that improved in spelling accuracy were read more rapidly at posttest than words that did not show improvement in spelling. These results provide direct evidence showing that the quality of orthographic representations, as indexed by spelling accuracy, directly relates to reading speed. This is consistent with the lexical quality hypothesis and highlights the relevance of spelling in literacy acquisition.

Introduction to the Special Issue. Orthographic Learning and Mental Representations in Literacy: Striving for a Better Understanding of a Complex Lead Role

As skilled readers, we are able to recognize printed words with apparent ease. Indeed, you are most likely to find reading this text now to be far from an arduous process, and it has thus far taken only seconds of your time. Yet when children first begin down the pathway to becoming literate, the task of word reading is often far from an effortless one. And, of course, for some individuals the process of reading can remain challenging throughout life. In our attempts to describe and explain skilled reading, to better understand development, and to account for individual differences, many researchers are focusing on word representations, both in terms of delineating their role in literacy and explaining how they are acquired or learned. In this special issue, the topic of orthographic representations and learning is explored in considerable detail, through six studies employing diverse research methods with varying samples and languages. When young children are first learning to read and spell, the process can be slow and laborious. As they apply their growing knowledge and awareness of the alphabet, letters are sounded out and blended together in serial decoding of printed words, a process that consumes considerable cognitive resources. Matching individual sounds with letters during spelling can also be time-consuming and fraught with error. Much developmental research has focused on this early entry into learning to read and spell, and our knowledge of the importance of the alphabet and awareness of speech sounds (phonology) has grown exponentially as a result. Yet as children become more adept at reading, they begin to recognize words rapidly and with seemingly less conscious effort. In spelling, word-specific patterns are reproduced, testimony to having fully specified orthographic representations. There thus seems to be a transition on the pathway to literacy, where children progress from sounding out words to being able to more effortlessly recognize and spell print, implicating the importance of orthographic learning. Ehri (2005, 2014) eloquently described this development in literacy as a progression to being able to utilize memory representations for longer letter strings and entire words and proposed that children store or learn these representations as they progress in their developmental proficiency with processing written text. In essence, they become able to store longer and longer letter strings in memory through experience with, and exposure to, printed language. This storing of representations, or orthographic learning, is further detailed in Share’s (1995, 1999, 2004) oft-cited self-teaching hypothesis. Share proposed that a reader’s own independent attempts to decode print allow the reader to store longer and more detailed orthographic representations (i.e., more fully specified as per Perfetti, 1992). These representations then become available to the individual for future encounters with these words, providing a more direct route to fluent word reading. This connection between orthographic learning and efficient literacy is made explicit in other prominent developmental theory as well, in that more advanced word recognition and spelling skills are linked to better specified orthographic representations (e.g., Castles, Davis, Cavalot, & Forster, 2008; Ziegler & Goswami, 2005). Indeed, the common element among leading developmental reading theories appears to be a critical role attributed to orthographic learning and representations in helping