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Spelling as a self-teaching mechanismin orthographic learningDaphna Shahar-Yames and David L. Share

University of Haifa

The present study examined the possibility that spelling fulfils a self-teachingfunction in the acquisition of orthographic knowledge because, like decoding, itrequires close attention to letter order and identity as well as to word-specificspellingsound mapping. We hypothesised that: (i) spelling would lead to significant(i.e. above-chance) levels of orthographic learning; (ii) spelling would actually resultin superior learning relative to reading owing to the additional processing demandsinvoked when spelling; (iii) there would be stronger outcomes for post-test spellingproduction compared with spelling recognition; and (iv) relative to reading, spellingwould produce superior orthographic learning in the case of later-occurringorthographic detail compared with information appearing earlier in the letter string.In a fully within-subjects design, third grade Hebrew readers were exposed to novelletter strings presented in three conditions: spelling, reading and an unseen controlcondition. With the exception of the position by condition interaction (our fourthhypothesis), which, although in the expected direction, failed to attain significance,all hypotheses were supported. These data highlight yet another dimension ofreadingwriting reciprocity by suggesting that spelling offers a powerful self-teaching tool in the compilation of word-specific orthographic representations.

The acquisition of orthographic knowledge, whether represented in localist (e.g.

Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon & Ziegler, 2001) or distributed architectures (Plaut,

McClelland, Seidenberg & Patterson, 1996), is agreed to be one of the cornerstones of

literacy. This knowledge consists of both word-specific orthographic representations

critical for rapid automatised word recognition (and proficient spelling) and generalised

(i.e. productive) knowledge of orthographic conventions (Siegel, Share & Geva, 1995).

According to the self-teaching hypothesis (Jorm & Share, 1983; Share, 1995), this

knowledge is accumulated largely via the process of phonologically recoding (i.e.

decoding) novel letter strings all letter strings being unfamiliar at some point. Each

successful decoding encounter with an unfamiliar letter string is assumed not only to

enable the reader to identify unfamiliar words independently but also, perhaps more

importantly, to provide an opportunity to acquire and consolidate word-specific (and

general) orthographic information. This exhaustive (or near-exhaustive) decoding

process1 is held to be critical in forming well-specified orthographic representations

because it draws attention to the order and identity of letters and how they map

phonological representations. In a sense then, the decoding process helps the reader see

the logic of a words spelling, that is, the spellingsound mapping. Thus, phonological

Journal of Research in Reading, ISSN 0141-0423 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9817.2007.00359.xVolume 31, Issue 1, 2008, pp 2239

r United Kingdom Literacy Association 2008. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road,Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

recoding is assumed to fulfil a self-teaching function, enabling the reader to inde-

pendently acquire the orthographic representations crucial for skilled word recognition.

The self-teaching notion has now received support from a modest number of empirical

studies (Bowey & Miller, 2007; Bowey & Muller, 2005; Cunningham, 2006;

Cunningham, Perry, Stanovich & Share, 2002; de Jong & Share, 2007; Kyte & Johnson,

2006; Nation, Angell & Castles, 2007; Share, 1999, 2004; Share & Shalev, 2004).

Collectively, these studies have demonstrated rapid and durable orthographic learning via

self-teaching across orthographies of varying transparency as well as in both oral and

silent reading. Furthermore, levels of orthographic learning have been shown to be

closely tied to levels of target word decoding whether the latter are naturally occurring or

created artificially via experimental manipulation (Bowey & Miller, 2007; Cunningham,

2006; Cunningham et al., 2002; Kyte & Johnson, 2006; Share, 1999; Share & Shalev,

2004; but see Nation et al., 2007).

Decoding, however, is not the only process that has been hypothesised to have a self-

teaching function. For example, the role of context as a supplementary (but not stand-

alone) source of self-teaching has also been debated (see, e.g., Landi, Perfetti, Bolger,

Dunlap & Foorman, 2006; Martin-Chang, Levy & ONeill, 2007; Share, 1995; Tunmer &

Chapman, 1998). The present investigation considers another candidate process that

might fulfil a self-teaching function in the growth of orthographic knowledge spelling.

Our study was motivated by the idea that the process of spelling, like the process of

decoding, requires the writer to attend to orthographic details (letter identity and order)

and sub-lexical print-to-sound relationships in a comprehensive manner. Several lines of

evidence are consistent with the idea that spelling influences reading.

First, there are longitudinal studies of early (preschool/kindergarten) writing that have

revealed significant predictive relationships with later first-grade reading (e.g. Mann,

Tobin & Wilson, 1987; Morris & Perney, 1984; Shatil, Share & Levin, 2000). Second,

longitudinal studies employing causal modelling techniques have reported a direct causal

pathway from spelling to reading (e.g. Berninger, Abbot, Abbot, Graham & Richards,

2002; Ellis & Cataldo, 1990; Shanahan, 1984). Finally, this causal link has been directly

confirmed in experimental training studies. In their study of a group of kindergarten

children, Ehri and Wilce (1987) taught their experimental group to segment and spell

(with the aid of letter tiles) words and pseudowords printed in phonetically simplified

spellings. The control group practised associating letters with isolated sounds. The

experimental group was found to be more successful than the control group learning to

read words comprising trained letters. Replicating and extending the Ehri and Wilce

findings, Uhry and Shepherd (1993) found that training first graders in segmenting and

spelling phonetically regular words (using lettered blocks) improved their pseudoword

reading ability, real-word reading and even oral text reading speed and accuracy.

It should be noted, however, that both these studies of spelling training among

beginning readers may be demonstrating general benefits of superior working knowledge

of the alphabetic code among children still learning the rudiments of print-to-sound

decoding rather than word-specific orthographic knowledge of the kind on which

automatised skilled word recognition depends. In this regard, it is worth remarking that

theoretical models of reading/spelling development (e.g. Frith, 1985) often place the

locus of spelling-to-reading benefits at the initial code-breaking stage. However, a study

by Cunningham and Stanovich (1990) provides some clues on the issue of acquiring

word-specific spellings because, unlike the previous two studies, this study examined the

contribution of spelling to first-graders reading and spelling for a set of words, most of

SPELLING AND ORTHOGRAPHIC LEARNING 23

r United Kingdom Literacy Association 2008

which have highly unpredictable spellings, which depend heavily on word-specific

orthographic knowledge (e.g. type, buy, calf, sign). This particular study focused

specifically on the contribution of the motor component in handwriting to spelling and

reading by comparing three modes of spelling, namely handwriting, computer keyboard

typing and manipulating letter tiles. Cunningham and Stanovich (1990) found superior

spelling outcomes among children who wrote words using pencil and paper (using the

Simultaneous Oral Spelling technique), compared with typing them on a computer or

manipulating letter tiles (experiment 1). In their second experiment, although handwriting

once again was superior to the other two spelling conditions, there were no significant

differences between the three conditions on reading. Nonetheless, it is important to note

that after spelling training children in all three conditions successfully read approximately

8 of the 30 training items compared with only 4 at pre-test. Unfortunately, spelling

success was very low (averaging o1 in 10 words correct). Because at least six wordscould be spelled successfully on a purely phonetic basis (e.g. small, check, shelf, man,

help, tell, car and possibly tribe), it is unclear to what extent word-specific orthographic

knowledge had been acquired. This potential problem also applies to the reading

outcomes. The data from these three experimental training studies among beginning

readers, therefore, remain inconclusive. The present study sets out to address the issue of

the contribution of spelling to the acquisition of word-specific orthographic knowledge

among somewhat older children (Grade 3) who, in Hebrews highly regular orthography,

are well past the initial code-learning stage.

As a general prediction, we hypothesised that spelling would yield significant (i.e.

above chance) orthographic learning in view of the fact that, like decoding, spelling

requires letter-by-letter consideration of word-specific spellingsound (or more precisely

soundspelling) relationships (Perfetti, 1997). Beyond this general prediction, however,

we suspected that spelling might actually lead to superior orthographic learning

compared with decoding in view of the greater processing demands involved in spelling

(Bosman & van Orden, 1997). In the process of spelling unfamiliar words, the writer

must segment the spoken form into its component phonemes. This same phoneme

segmentation skill has been shown to be one of the most powerful predictors of early

reading (see, e.g. Share, Jorm, Maclean & Matthews, 1984). Given the fact that most

orthographies have multiple ways of representing many phonemes (Daniels & Bright,

1996), the writer must select the correct word-specific grapheme associated with each

phoneme. Even when spelling highly familiar words, the writer is obliged to retrieve the

elements of the visual form of the word whereas reading only requires recognition

(Perfetti, 1997). When spelling, furthermore, the writer must process each and every

letter. In reading, on the other hand, the orthographic representation may be less than

fully specified yet sufficient for word identification, particularly when encountered in

meaningful context (Holmes & Carruthers, 1998).

According to the self-teaching hypothesis, the initial encounter with an unfamiliar

word is likely to be exhaustive or near-exhaustive but it seems likely that subsequent

occurrences, especially in connected text, may be less exhaustive. In spelling, however,

each and every spelling obliges the writer to process the complete letter array. In view of

these differences, we hypothesised that, relative to reading, spelling would provide

superior orthographic learning in the case of later-occurring orthographic detail compared

with earlier-occurring information. Thus, we predicted an interaction between learning

condition (reading versus spelling) and position (earlier-occurring versus later-occurring

orthographic information).

24 SHAHAR-YAMES and SHARE


Another unique dimension of spelling likely to enhance orthographic learning concerns

the motor-kinesthetic aspects of spelling production (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1990;

Graham & Weintraub, 1996). In this regard, it is noteworthy that there exists a long-

venerated tradition of multi-sensory teaching, emphasising the importance of tactile-

kinesthetic information in the process of writing as a technique for remediating reading

difficulties (Fernald, 1943; Gillingham & Stillman, 1956; Hulme, 1983; Montessori,

1915; Orton, 1928). The stated rationale for these practices is that the movements made

when writing (or tracing) the shapes and sequence of letters in a word are crucial in

providing additional associative links between spelling and sound. Several empirical

studies have now supported this assumption (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1990; Hulme &

Bradley, 1984; Hulme, Monk & Ives, 1987). Consequently, we anticipated that spelling

would have an added advantage over reading in the case of orthographic learning tasks

that require production of the target spelling compared with mere recognition that does

not invoke motor-kinesthetic processes.

Finally, it should be acknowledged that beyond the individual elements enumerated

above, spelling demands the integration of multiple sources of information from several

modalities including visual-perceptual, motor-kinesthetic and linguistic information

(Abbot & Berninger, 1993; Graham & Weintraub, 1996). Understandably, the process of

spelling typically requires more time than decoding.

To recap, we predicted not only that spelling a novel word would lead to significant

orthographic learning but also that spelling would actually be superior to reading (i.e.

decoding). In addition, we expected this advantage to be most clearly evident in the case

of spelling production compared with spelling recognition. Finally, we predicted that the

advantage of spelling over reading would be more pronounced for later-occurring

orthographic detail compared with earlier-occurring detail, that is, we expected an

interaction between learning condition and target letter position.

These hypotheses were tested in a sample of third grade (i.e. post-novice) Hebrew

readers. In a fully within-subjects design, each child was exposed to novel letter strings

(legal pseudowords) in three conditions: reading, spelling and a control (unseen)

condition. A week later, orthographic learning was assessed using measures of spelling

production and spelling recognition (orthographic choice).

Method

Sample

This study took place in several third grade classrooms in two regular schools in an area

of Haifa considered to be of average socioeconomic status. One of these schools is

situated in the city of Haifa (n5 19) and the other in the Haifa periphery (n5 26). Fifty-three parents gave written consent for their children to participate in this study. Eight

children failed to complete all three testing sessions (several of whom were very weak

readers), leaving a final sample of 45 participants all native-born Israelis (19 boys and

26 girls) with a mean age of 8.9 years (range, 8.410.0; SD, 3.80 months). All participants

were native Hebrew speakers with the exception of one child whose native tongue was

Russian and two other participants who spoke Hebrew and Russian at home (all three of

them showed the same pattern of results).



The reading ability of this sample was slightly above national norms. Table 1 presents

data on standardised tests of isolated word and pseudoword reading of the research

sample and the national norms (Shany, Lachman, Shalem, Bahat & Zeiger, 2006). This

sample scored 90% on word reading accuracy (national norm, 82%), read at a rate of 45

words per minute (wpm) (norm, 40), scored 72% on pseudoword reading accuracy (there

are no national norms for this measurement) and read at a rate of 24wpm (norm,

19wpm). This instrument yields a percentile-rank-based classification divided into eight

categories (ranging from the lowest 1st7th percentile to the highest 90th percentile

and above). Our sample included children representing all but one (the lowest) of these

eight percentile bands.

Design

This study was a fully within-subjects design with three conditions: reading, a reading-

and-spelling composite and a control condition. Each participant was exposed to four

target pseudowords in each of the three conditions 12 targets in all. Target items were

rotated across conditions in order to neutralise any uncontrolled item differences. In

addition, each target appeared in two alternate homophonic spellings with half of the

sample seeing one spelling and half the other. Each target pseudoword was embedded in

a pair of sentences, for example, Taguam is a very distant land. Taguam lies beyond the

hills of darkness. Order of conditions was also rotated across subjects.

The study was carried out in three consecutive sessions each separated by an interval of

a week. The first two sessions included a learning phase (exposure to the targets and

sentences) two targets in each of the two experimental conditions (reading and reading/

spelling) and, in the second and third sessions, the post-testing of targets from the

previous meeting. Post-testing also included the control condition in which targets which

were not previously seen were post-tested. Thus, in the first session, the children were

exposed to two targets in the reading condition and two in the reading/spelling condition.

A week later, these four targets were post-tested together with another two (unseen)

control items. Immediately following post-testing, another four targets were viewed

two in the reading and two in the reading/spelling conditions. The third and final session

was devoted to post-testing these four items and a further two control items.

Learning phase

Spelling. This condition consisted of reading followed by spelling because the learning

of new orthographic forms via spelling alone has limited ecological validity.2 Furthermore,

Table 1. Scores (means, standard deviations and percentiles) on standardised reading tests (Shany et al.,

2006) of isolated word and pseudoword reading regarding accuracy (% errors) and fluency (wpm) for the

research sample (n5 45) compared to national norms.

Standardised tests Sample National norms

M (SD) Percentiles M (SD)

Reading isolated words accuracy (% errors) 10.08 (6.07) 6580 18.4 (15.67)

Reading isolated words fluency (wpm) 45.48 (14.47) 6580 39.54 (16.87)

Pseudoword reading (% errors) 27.75 (15.17) * *

Pseudoword reading (wpm) 24.21 (7.51) 6580 19.32 (8.31)

*There are no national norms for pseudoword reading accuracy for the third grade.



when spelling words, the writer is likely to read the production in order to check spelling.

Thus, reading is often an inseparable part of spelling (Ehri, 2000; Perfetti, 1997).

In the spelling condition, the participant first read a target pseudoword that appeared in

each of two consecutive sentences (mean sentence length, 5.4 Hebrew words; range, 47

words) and then was asked to write down the target from memory with the sentences

removed from sight. For the first spelling production the target word was spoken aloud

(dictated) by the experimenter. The childs spelling was then removed from sight and

then he or she was requested to write it out again. On this occasion, the target was not

named. In this condition, therefore, each participant was exposed to the target five times

twice in reading, twice via spelling and once in spoken form.

Reading. In this condition, the participant only read the targets. These were embedded in

the same sentences as the spelling condition. However, in this condition, each pair of

sentences was read twice instead of once, making a total of four target exposures.

Immediately after sentence reading a comprehension question was posed orally in which

the target word was specifically named. For example, after reading Akezet is a serious

disease. You wouldnt want to get Akezet, the participant was asked Whats akezet? The

dual aim here (apart from ensuring reading for meaning) was: (i) to provide an additional

exposure to the spoken form of the target, thereby matching the spelling condition as

described above; and (ii) to extend the overall processing time in the reading condition to

make it more comparable to the spelling condition, which pilot work had indicated was a

lengthier procedure.

Control. The targets in this condition were neither seen nor heard, only post-tested.

Target words

The pool of target words was selected on the basis of suitability established in prior work

at comparable ages (Share, 1999, 2004; Share & Shalev, 2004). Each of the target words

used in the present study contained at least two homophonic letters comprising four of

the six pairs of homophonic consonantal letters that exist in Hebrew (the words that were

used as stimuli are presented in the Appendix). It is worth noting that items with two (or

even more) homophonic letters are very common in Hebrew as approximately one-third

of Hebrew phonemes can be transcribed by means of two alternate (homophonic) letters

a feature that creates considerable challenges in the acquisition of spelling (Geva &

Siegel, 2000; Ravid, 2002). Word length varied between four and six (consonantal) letters

(M5 4.7 letters). Although a majority of these items were bisyllabic, this set also includedfour three-syllable and one four-syllable words. We chose to present our targets in a

meaningful context to establish ecological validity and ensure that children read for meaning.

Post-tests of orthographic learning

Two measures of orthographic learning were administered 1 week after exposure to target

words and sentences.

Spelling production. In this dictation task, participants were requested to write a target

word named by the experimenter. Productions were scored for both overall spelling

accuracy (either as correct or incorrect) and accuracy of producing the two critical target

letters.



Orthographic choice. In this measure of orthographic learning, four fully homophonic

spellings of the target were presented. This foursome included all four combinations of

the two target letters, that is, the original spelling that appeared in the learning phase and

three homophonic foils.

Composite orthographic learning. Following Cunningham et al. (2002), we also

combined the above two tasks into a single composite measure by averaging the

(standardised) scores for spelling production and orthographic choice. The production

component was derived by averaging standardised scores for overall (whole-word)

spelling success and target letter spellings. An identical pattern of results was also

obtained when we used only whole-word spelling or only target letter spelling as the

spelling production measure.

Assessment of general reading ability

Two reading tasks were administered to gauge overall levels of reading ability in this

sample. These were two recently standardised tests of word and pseudoword reading

accuracy and fluency that supplied national norms (the Alef-to-Taf Battery for the

Diagnosis of Reading and Writing Disabilities according to National Norms; Shany et al.,

2006).

Reading isolated words (Shany et al., 2006). This test of oral reading accuracy and

fluency contains a list of 38 words varying in frequency, length and morphological

structure.

Pseudoword reading (Shany et al., 2006). The test of pseudoword reading accuracy and

fluency includes 33 words, of which 24 are structured according to the conventions of

Hebrew morphology and an additional nine are morphologically novel items.

Procedure

The experiment was conducted with individual children over three separate testing

sessions. These sessions took place during regular school hours in a separate room

allocated to the researchers.

As already indicated, session 1 included a learning phase in which children read two

targets (embedded in meaningful sentences) and spelled another two targets (with the

order counterbalanced across participants). At the beginning of the first session, the

Shany et al. (2006) word reading test was administered to establish minimal reading

competence. Although this test revealed several very weak readers, two of whom failed to

complete all the sessions, no child was dropped from the sample purely on the basis of

their standardised test result. A week later, session 2 began with the tests of orthographic

learning for the four targets learned in session 1 as well as two unseen control words. This

was followed by exposure to two more targets in reading and two more in spelling. The

final session, session 3, took place 7 days later and included the post-tests for the session

2 words together with the remaining two control items. Immediately afterwards,

participants completed the standardised tests of general reading ability. Finally, the Shany

et al. (2006) pseudoword reading test was administered.

The session began by showing the child a card with two printed sentences. The child

was asked to read the sentences aloud as accurately as possible. In the case of the spelling



condition, the child was also told that he or she would be asked to write something. The

child was also told that the experimenter would be measuring time with a stopwatch and

would be recording the childs reading with an audiotape recorder. The researcher hand-

recorded the total time elapsing between the commencement of reading the first word and

the response given to the comprehension question (in the reading condition) or the final

letter spelled (in the spelling condition). Errors committed while reading and spelling the

target words were also recorded.

Reading condition. Instructions were as follows: Read aloud the sentence on the card,

then turn the card over and read the next sentence. After the child finished reading both

sentences, he or she was asked to repeat this procedure. After completing this (thereby

having read the target words four times), the comprehension question was given. No

assistance was given with either reading the sentences or the comprehension question.

Only general non-contingent encouragement was given during reading and questioning.

Spelling. In this condition, children were first asked to read aloud the two sentences as in

the reading condition. After they had read each of the two sentences once, they were

given a piece of paper and asked to write the target word named by the experimenter.

This piece of paper was then removed and the child was asked to write the word once

again (this time without any mention of the pronunciation). If the child was unsure about

the spelling, he or she was told to try to write the word as best he or she could. No

additional help was given.

Session 2

The second session contained two parts post-testing and exposure to new targets. The

first part tested orthographic learning of the targets seen a week earlier and included both

spelling production and orthographic choice. These two measures were administered in a

fixed order spelling production and then orthographic choice. (No order effects have

been found with these measures, see Share, 2004.)

Post-test spelling (dictation). Each participant was asked to write a spoken target. If the

child seemed unsure, he or she was told to write it as best he or she could.

Orthographic choice. Following spelling, the child was presented with a page with the

four homophonic spellings of the target and requested to indicate the correct target. This

procedure was repeated for all six of the targets. The order of the six targets as well as the

location of the correct spelling among the four alternatives were rotated from subject to

subject.

The second part of this session was devoted to reading and spelling the remaining four

targets.

Session 3

This final meeting involved only the post-testing of the four targets (and two controls)

from the second session a week earlier. The standardised test of pseudoword reading was

then administered. This list was left until last in order to avoid any possible interference

with the target pseudowords.



Results

Target word decoding in the exposure/learning phase

Table 2 presents the data on reading and writing success during initial exposure to the

targets read in the two experimental conditions.

It can be seen from Table 2 that in both conditions performance levels were high the

vast majority of targets were accurately decoded and spelled (unassisted). It is also

evident that the level of spelling success matched decoding success. Fortuitously, there

were no significant differences between any of these figures (all t values were less than

unity). Thus, not only was decoding accuracy in the two conditions similar but also

spelling success was comparable to reading success both within the reading/spelling

condition and across the conditions; that is, spelling success matched the reading success

in the reading-only condition.

The fact that similar levels of success were achieved in both the reading and spelling

conditions is gratifying in that it ensures that comparisons of orthographic learning across

the two conditions are not confounded by initial differences in learning at the time of

exposure.

Post-test orthographic learning

In this study overall post-test orthographic learning was first evaluated by comparing

target spelling reproduction (spelling) and identification (orthographic choice) to chance

levels. In the case of spelling the complete letter string in which a range of errors are

possible (e.g. letter omission, interpolation, transposition, etc.), performance was

compared with the control condition alone.

If no orthographic learning had taken place, it would be expected that correct

reproduction of the critical target letters would be 50% per letter, or 25% for the correct

production of both letters. For three of the four homophonic letters, there were only two

phonologically plausible letters.3

Table 3 presents the post-test orthographic learning data (means and standard

deviations in percentages) across the three conditions (reading, reading/spelling and

control).

Above-chance levels of orthographic learning in reading and spelling conditions

First, it can be seen that levels of performance were very close to chance in the control

condition in which targets were only post-tested without any prior exposure. The

Table 2. Mean accuracy (in percentages) and standard deviations for target reading/writing in reading and

spelling conditions, length of time spent reading (or reading-and-spelling) in the two conditions (in seconds)

and percent response accuracy for comprehension questions (reading condition only) (n5 45).

Condition Target

decoding/spelling

(% accuracy)

Duration of

time spent in

condition in seconds

Reading

comprehension

(% accuracy)

M (SD) M (SD) M (SD)

1. Reading 82.9 (22.90) 23.4 (3.23) 93.9 (12.10)

2. Reading/spelling 85.3 (15.94) 27.5 (4.10)

Reading 86.1 (17.52)

Spelling 84.4 (22.63)



Table3.Post-testorthographiclearning(m

eansandstandarddeviationsin

percentages)acrossthreeconditions(control,reading,reading/spelling)with

tvalues

andeffect

size

(Eta

Squared)(n545).

Post-testmeasure

Condition

Control

Reading

Spelling

Reading/Control

Reading/Spelling

Spelling/Control

M(S

D)

M(S

D)

M(S

D)

tZ2

tZ2

tZ2

Spellingproduction

Whole

word

22.2a(19.38)

26.1a(19.91)

37.8b(25.35)

0.93

.19

2.36

*.11

3.39

**

.21

Target

letters(n52)

47.8a(14.91)

54.7b(14.67)

61.9c(19.02)

2.05

*.09

2.04

*.09

4.00

**

.27

Letter1

46.7a(23.60)

55.0ab(18.92)

60.0b(29.39)

1.80

.07

.99

.02

2.51

*.13

Letter2

48.9a(20.61)

54.4ab(25.16)

63.9b(22.96)

1.08

.03

1.68

.06

3.48

**

.22

Orthographic

choice(4-choice)

23.9a(21.29)

37.4b(20.61)

41.9b(26.02)

2.82

**

.15

.86

.02

3.46

**

.21

Composite

orthographic

learning(z)

0.79a(1.39)

0.07b(1.68)

0.67c(1.36)

2.67

**

.14

2.12

*.09

4.81

**

.35

No

te:Superscriptsindicatedifferencesbetweenconditions;conditionswithdifferentsuperscriptsaresignificantlydifferent.

*Indicates

significance

at0.05level.

**Indicates

significance

at0.01level.



outcomes for the two experimental conditions, as anticipated, contrasted sharply with the

control data. Spelling of the individual target letters (treated separately) in the reading

condition did not exceed the designated 50% chance level; first letter, t(44)5 1.77,p5 .083, second letter, t(44)5 1.19, ns (whole word spelling, as already noted, was notevaluated against chance performance). On the other hand, performance on the combined

target letter spelling and on the orthographic choice measure, as well as the composite

measure of orthographic learning, exceeded chance in both experimental conditions

according to one-sample t-tests, indicating significant orthographic learning. These data

replicate a number of prior studies indicating robust orthographic learning among young

non-novice (Grade 2 and 3) Hebrew readers following unassisted reading of targets

embedded in text (Share, 1999, 2004; Share & Shalev, 2004).

The data from the reading/spelling condition confirm the central prediction that

spelling would also result in significant orthographic learning. However, we expected that

spelling would not only yield reliable orthographic learning but also actually be superior

to reading owing to the unique processing demands involved in reproducing (from

memory) the complete array of letters. To examine this hypothesis we turn to the

comparisons between the conditions.

Comparisons across reading, spelling and control conditions

Planned comparisons in the form of paired-sample t-tests were used to examine pair-wise

differences between (i) the control condition and reading, (ii) the control condition and

spelling and (iii) reading versus spelling.

The reading condition led to significant orthographic learning (relative to the control

condition) in orthographic choice, t(44)5 2.82, po.01, and on production of the targetletters (combining both letters), t(44)5 2.05, po.05, although not on the target lettersconsidered individually first letter, t(44)5 1.80, p5 .079, or second (non-initial) targetletter, t(44)5 1.08, ns or the spelling of the entire string of letters (whole word),t(44)o1.0, ns. Performance in the reading condition also exceeded control levels on thecomposite measure of orthographic learning, t(44)5 2.70, po.05.Spelling, on the other hand, led to more powerful and more consistent learning

outcomes. Spelling surpassed control levels significantly on all six measures: whole word

spelling, t(44)5 3.39, po.005; combined target letter spelling, t(44)5 4.00, po.000;first target letter spelling, t(44)5 2.51, po.05; second letter spelling, t(44)5 3.48,po.005; orthographic choice, t(44)5 3.46, po.005; and the composite, t(44)5 4.74,po.000. Absolute scores in this reading/spelling condition also exceeded performance inthe reading condition (at least numerically) on each of the six measures,4 reaching

statistical significance in three instances: whole word spelling, t(44)5 2.36, po.05;combined target letter spelling, t(44)5 2.04, po.05; and the composite spelling/orthographic choice measure, t(44)5 2.06, po.05. There were non-significant differ-ences on the first letter, t(44)o1.0, ns; second letter, t(44)5 1.68, p5 .079; and inorthographic choice, t(44)o1.0, ns. By and large, these findings are consistent with ourhypothesis that spelling (reading/spelling) would lead to greater orthographic learning

than reading alone.

Does spelling provide unique benefits for non-initial letters?

We predicted that because spelling obliges the reader/writer to process the letter string

exhaustively, with no possibility of earlier closure as in reading, spelling production



might be expected to show unique benefits for orthographic information appearing later

in the printed word relative to initial letters. Thus, we hypothesised that later-appearing

letters would enjoy an added advantage compared with word-initial target letters when

spelled. Consistent with this expectation, in the reading condition, spelling accuracy for

initial and non-initial target letters considered individually (55.0% and 54.4%) was very

similar and, as already noted, neither was significantly above either chance or control

levels. In spelling, the second letter was actually superior (numerically) to the initial letter

although not significantly so. The difference between reading and spelling in the case of

the second letter was almost twice the difference in the case of the first letter (9.5% versus

5.0%). This interaction between target letter position and experimental condition was

submitted to a repeated measures analysis of variance, but failed to attain significance,

F(1, 44)o1.0, ns. It should be noted, however, that the present data do not provide thestrongest test of this hypothesis because, in a large number of target words, most non-

initial letters were not word-final. We return to this outcome in the discussion.

Does spelling provide added benefits for spelling production compared with spelling

recognition?

Owing to the fact that the act of writing requires memory retrieval as well as motor-

kinesthetic processing, we predicted an advantage for the reading/spelling condition in

spelling production relative to spelling recognition. Summing across the two target letters

and across the entire string (whole-word spelling accuracy), this expectation was

confirmed. Furthermore, in both cases, the spelling contribution was substantial the

spelling contribution was substantially stronger than the learning effect observed for

reading. Also, consistent with our prediction, spelling recognition (orthographic choice)

revealed only a small non-significant advantage for the spelling condition.

These data were submitted to a multivariate analysis of variance. Although these

interactions did not reach significance in the initial analyses for either the whole word,

F(1, 88)5 1.28, ns, or the target letter measures, F(1, 88)5 1.49, ns, after we partialledout condition duration (i.e. the non-equivalent times recorded for the two conditions), the

interaction for the whole-word spelling measure attained significance, F(2, 86)5 5.30,po.05, and fell marginally short of significance, F(2, 87)5 2.95, p5 .058, (two-tailed),in the case of the combined target letters. These outcomes suggest, as anticipated, that the

unique processing demands of spelling (retrieval and motor-kinesthetic processing) create

added benefits for measures of spelling production compared with spelling recognition.

The influence of exposure/learning time on orthographic learning

As discussed above, the act of spelling, in many ways, appears to be more demanding

than reading requiring several component activities that are not involved in reading

including picking up the pencil and gaining the right grip, getting oriented on the paper,

retrieving phonemes, selecting the orthographically correct graphemes and forming the

letters one after another while maintaining good spacing and horizontal alignment.

Among young children for whom writing is not yet as automatic as it is among skilled

writers, these are non-trivial demands that take up more time than reading alone even

letter-by-letter sounding out. The non-trivial demands of this process were borne out by

the fact that three children actually dropped their pencils onto the floor during spelling. It

came as no surprise that even after stretching reading condition times by adding a

comprehension question focused on the target word, the spelling condition still took



significantly more time (27.5 versus 23.4 seconds), t(44)5 6.04, po.05. Our concern wasthat the longer time-on-task in the spelling condition may explain away the differences

between the two experimental conditions. Analysis of covariance, however, showed that

the same pattern of findings emerged after partialling out the time variable. The

significant advantage in the spelling condition for whole word spelling and target letter

spelling remained significant, F(44)5 9.61, po.005, and F(44)5 5.66, po.05,respectively, while the non-significant differences for the first letter, for the second

target letter and for orthographic choice, all Fs(44)o1.0, remained non-significant.In short, the stronger orthographic learning outcomes in spelling compared with

reading do not appear to be attributable to overall differences in processing times.

Discussion

The self-teaching hypothesis was founded on the idea that the process of recoding a

printed word to sound obliges the reader to attend to orthographic detail and to word-

specific print-to-sound mapping in a way that facilitates the establishment of the well-

specified and well-unitised representations that are crucial for rapid automatised word

recognition. The present study was motivated by similar considerations regarding the

process of spelling, namely, that the process of producing a spelling might also serve a

self-teaching function because it too requires the writer to attend to orthographic detail

(letter identity and order) and sub-lexical print-to-sound relationships in a systematic

manner. Our findings confirmed these expectations significant orthographic learning

was obtained in both spelling and reading.

However, we predicted not only significant orthographic learning for spelling but also

that spelling would actually produce superior learning outcomes compared with reading

owing to the additional demands placed on the writer specifically the more taxing

retrieval and motor-kinesthetic processes involved in spelling. In broad-brush terms, our

results were consistent with this prediction performance levels for spelling at the post-

test exceeded levels for spelling in all six measures and, in three cases, these differences

attained significance (composite recognition/production measure, whole word spelling

and combined target letter spelling). As already noted, it was only on measures requiring

spelling production that these differences were statistically reliable exactly as predicted

by our hypothesis that spelling would be especially beneficial for production as compared

with recognition. Once differences in overall processing time were partialled out, the

interaction between spelling production and spelling recognition (orthographic choice)

was significant in the case of whole word spelling and on the border of significance (using

the more conservative two-tailed test) when target letter spelling was considered. This

result is unsurprising because in the spelling condition at the learning phase and post-test,

the same method (activity) was used.

We also hypothesised that spelling would lead to extra advantages for orthographic

detail appearing later in a spelling. We reasoned that although the initial encounter

decoding a novel word (especially in oral reading) is likely to invoke an exhaustive letter-

to-sound translation procedure, it seems reasonable to assume that on subsequent

occasions this process may be partly curtailed, particularly if the target is embedded in

meaningful text. Spelling, in contrast, does not admit of any abbreviated processing.

Every production obliges the writer to process each and every letter of the string, giving

full and equal consideration to each letter.



Consistent with these expectations, the advantage for spelling compared with reading

on the second target letter (9.5%) was almost twice the advantage for the first letter

(5.0%). This interaction, however, did not attain statistical significance. Nonetheless, we

think it premature to reject the hypothesis of position-sensitive orthographic learning for

two reasons. First, the position of our first and second letters did not maximise the

distance between the two letters. Although 10 of the 12 first letters were indeed initial

letters, a majority of post-initial letters were not word-final letters. In fact, in only four

instances was the non-initial letter the word-final letter. In three cases, the post-initial

letter was actually in the first half of the word. In the remaining cases, the target letter was

either second last or third last. The second factor, which we think makes it premature to

dismiss the position-sensitive hypothesis, is that our test words were all rather short

averaging only 4.7 (consonantal) letters. A systematic comparison between word-initial

and word-final graphemes in words of varying length would provide a more incisive test

of this hypothesis. More generally, however, there may be important differences between

orthographies in orthographic redundancy. In consonantal alphabets (or abjads) such as

Hebrew, there is relatively little redundancy (Share & Levin, 1999), necessitating a

relatively comprehensive processing of the letter string. In plene alphabets such as

English, which consist of fully-fledged letters representing both consonants and vowels,

there exists a much larger degree of redundancy (see Adams, 1990), which affords greater

leeway for foreshortening the decoding process, thereby creating the possibility of

stronger position-sensitive learning effects for reading compared with spelling.

The precise nature of the processes critical for the establishment of orthographic

representations remains to be investigated. There is clearly much in common between

reading and spelling (Ehri, 1980; Gough, Juel & Griffith, 1992; Holmes & Carruthers,

1998; Perfetti, 1997) but there are also unique processes. Word identification via both

decoding and spelling obliges the reader to examine each of (nearly all) the letters in a

letter string. Selective non-exhaustive processing of letter information may well enable

the novice reader (or even pre-reader, see Treiman & Kessler, 2003) to make initial

partial or skeletal representations between print and speech (see, e.g., Ehri, 1995; Rack,

Hulme, Snowling & Wightman, 1994; Share, 1995; Stuart & Coltheart, 1988) but will

ultimately fail the reader in the long run owing to the fact that many words, particularly

shorter monosyllables, are often distinguished only by a single letter (house/horse) or

even only by letter ordering (salt/slat). However, mere visual inspection of the items in a

letter array seems unlikely to explain orthographic learning. In an experiment in which

children were shown non-alphabetic (hence non-recodable) strings of common keyboard

characters (e.g. #@*?) and required to attend to each of the constituent elements as well

as to the string as a whole (by means of a dual-task procedure requiring both symbol

search (YES/NO decision) and string length report (how many characters appear in this

string?), Share (1999, experiment 4) found extremely low levels of visual/orthographic

learning compared with orthographic learning of alphabetic (i.e. recodable) words of

similar length. It appears that something about the process of print-to-sound translation

may be a critical ingredient in the decoding process (Share, 1999, experiments 2 and 3;

see also Kyte & Johnson, 2006). Both these studies found that viewing a novel letter

string while articulating an unrelated syllable resulted in significantly poorer orthographic

learning compared with viewing the same string while articulating the relevant (i.e.

correct) pronunciation. Both decoding and spelling share print-to-sound conversion

(although in opposite directions), which can be conceived as a process of seeing the

logic of a words spelling and, in another sense too, coming to hear the pronunciation in a



new way (Olson, 1994; Share, 1995). This, perhaps, is the fundamental difference

between mere visual/logographic or pre-alphabetic reading and so-called orthographic

recognition (Ehri, 1995; Frith, 1985).

Although both spelling and decoding share a mode of processing especially conducive

to orthographic learning, there are unique elements in spelling that led us to hypothesise

additional benefits for spelling production. In the case of novel words, aspects of spelling

production include identification of the successive phonemes in the spoken form,

selection of the corresponding grapheme and the motor-kinesthetic component (as well as

the visual-spatial component). The evidence reviewed in the introduction regarding the

unique role for motor-kinesthetic information in both letter learning and spelling, at least

among struggling readers (Fernald, 1943; Hulme, 1983; Hulme et al., 1987), may provide

an additional layer or network of connections in the traditional orthography

phonologymeaning triangle, thereby creating additional redundancies because the

motor-kinesthetic activity constitutes another layer of mnemonic information concerning

the orthographic form of a word.

Pinpointing those elements in the multidimensional spelling process that contribute

most to orthographic learning is the obvious next step in this line of research. Is the

phoneme-by-phoneme segmentation of the spoken form the critical element in

establishing new word-level spellingsound mappings, the comparatively onerous

retrieval processes involved in selecting the appropriate grapheme corresponding to a

given phoneme, or possibly the motor-kinesthetic dimension that has been emphasised in

the remedial reading literature? Or is it a combination of some or all of these ingredients

that holds the key? Future work would do well to tease out these various components.

More generally, the present research confirms the important reciprocal ties between reading

and spelling by pointing to yet another way in which spelling and reading collaborate.

Notes

1. The self-teaching hypothesis does not imply that the process of phonological recoding is necessarily a

purely overt letter-by-letter sounding out and blending process. In orthographies with digraphs or even larger

orthographic units (see Ziegler & Goswami, 2005), multi-letter sequences may be processed as integral units

in the process of sequentially decoding larger sub-lexical supra-graphemic units. Furthermore, this assembly

process may be either overt or covert (i.e. internalised).

2. The only real-life situation which comes to mind is the case of oral spelling of proper names. In most

everyday literacy contexts, especially in school, the learner would normally be writing/spelling words he or

she has previously read.

3. In the case of the glottal stop, however, in addition to the two standard letters (ALEF and AYIN), it has

become increasingly common for Hebrew speakers to write a third letter the letter HEY, which in certain

contexts (mostly word-final) has the same phonemic value. Because there were only nine instances of the

HEY in the entire sample representing fewer than 2% of the ALEF/AYIN/HEY productions, it was decided

to leave the designated chance levels unchanged (i.e. 25% and 50%).

4. Although an unconventional way of examining statistical reliability, it is worth noting that six consecutive

differences favouring spelling is well beyond chance according to the binomial distribution (265 .016).

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Appendix. Target words (in alternative

homophonic spelling) appearing

in test sentences

Received 8 May 2007; revised version received 19 August 2007.

Address for correspondence: David Share, Department of Learning Disabilities,University of Haifa Mount Carmel, 31905, Haifa, Israel.

E-mail: [email protected]

The symbol x represents the laryngeal fricative heard at the end ofthe word Bach.

