Patricia M. Cunningham

THE MULTISYLLABIC WORD DILEMMA: HELPING STUDENTS BUILD MEANING, SPELL, AND READ “BIG” WORDS

Facility with multisyllabic words is essential for students as they read, write, and learn. Many big words occur infrequently, but when they do occur they carry much of the meaning and content of what is being read. English is a language in which many words are related through their morphology. This relationship is preserved through our spelling system. Students who learn to look for patterns in multisyllabic words will be better spellers and decoders. If they learn to look further and consider possible meaning relationships, they will increase the size of their meaning vocabulary stores. This article summarizes research and presents practical teaching strategies for developing facility with multisyllabic words.

Assessing Decoding from an Onset-Rime Perspective.

This study investigated decoding assessment from an onset-rime perspective, and consistent with an interactive model of cognitive constructs underlying silent reading comprehension. Participants were 128 first and second graders in a public elementary school. Two kinds of decoding items were examined: one-syllable words and nonwords, each comprised of a high- to moderate-utility onset and a high-utility rime. Data were analyzed mainly with stepwise multiple regression and conditional probability analyses. The principal finding was that the construct validity of decoding items varied, depending on whether they were words or nonwords. Tests of knowledge of onsets and rimes accounted for 14% more variance in real-word test than nonword test scores. The superior construct validity of words over nonwords as decoding items seemed to occur because decoding nonwords requires an additional ability that decoding real words does not.

Applying a Compare/Contrast Process to Identifying Polysyllabic Words

To investigate the theory that readers might mediate the identification of an unfamiliar-in-print word by comparing and contrasting that word to known words, a population of readers was identified who were able to correctly pronounce common one- and two-syllable words but unable to pronounce common polysyllabic words. From 117 fourth and fifth graders screened, forty subjects met the established criteria. Once randomly assigned, the 20 experimental subjects participated in 7 1/2 hours of instruction designed to (1) teach them a cognitive word store of polysyllabic words and (2) develop a mind set towards identifying an unfamiliar word by comparing and contrasting an unknown word to known words. Post-test measures administered to both experimental and control subjects indicated that experimental subjects correctly identified more untaught polysyllabic words in isolation (p < .05) and in context (p < .01) than did control subjects. It was concluded that, within stated limitations, the results supported the hypothesis that readers might identify an unfamiliar word by using an analogue or compare/contrast strategy.