Spellings of Words Study Guide
Study Guide: Spellings of words: A neglected facilitator of vocabulary learning by Ehri & Rosenthal (2007)
Name: Megan Williams
Please consider the following questions BEFORE you read the article.
1. What does it mean to know a word? When you know a word, what do you know of that word?
Response: When you know a word you can sound it out and read the word. You can say words before you can read the word, but you do not really know the word. A child could say, “No”, but may have no clue what that looks like on a piece of paper. I do not feel that a child really knows a word until they can recognize it on paper. When you know a word, you may know what it means, how it is spelled, or be able to read the word because of memorization. I feel that you truly know the word when you can read it and know what it means.
2. We live in a print society, in which we are bombarded with a variety of text online or in print. Depending on complexity of the text content, we encounter words that may not be very familiar to us. Think of a time when you had a similar experience. Think of a word that you came across while you were reading a particular text online or in print.
Response: Often times when I am reading articles that are assigned in class I feel ‘stupid’ because I do not understand a lot of the language used in the text. Because I do not understand words within in the text, I cannot really understand the article itself. For example, in my CI 3530 class we are assigned to read articles and teach what we read to the class. Most of the time I have no clue what I am teaching the class, because I do not even know what the author was trying to say. For example, in an article we had to teach to the class, a sentence read, ”Inquire multicultuarlly as they engage in broad thematic studies related to any field of study” (Chapter 10). This sentence was under the heading: Desired Student Outcomes. I have no clue what that sentence meant. If I do not know, how am I supposed to help my students understand?
3. What strategies did you use to figure out its meaning? Did you decode the word? Did you use the surrounding context to cling a meaning to it? Or did you look it up in a dictionary?
Response: Well, I first asked some of my classmates what they thought the meaning was. I then defined some of the words I was not sure about: thematic studies. I was unclear as to what kind of study they were referring to. I was not able to decode the word, but I did try to use context clues to find the meaning. I knew the word ‘broad’ appeared right before thematic studies, so I figured thematic meant wide or big. I then looked it up online to see exactly what kind of study it was.
4. Do you think you learned the word’s meaning? Can you identify its meaning if you were presented its spelling?
Response: I did. I found out that when children learn to see links among different areas of study, their understanding of a topic is greatly expanded and enhanced, which is what thematic studies do. I understood that what the author meant was to engage the children in a variety of topics to expand and enhance their knowledge. In this case, it was to expand and enhance their knowledge multicultuarlly. Well, when I saw the word thematic, I thought about thermometer, which has a wide range of temperatures on it. That may sound silly, but that it is how I related it. The root word ‘thema’ may have an underlying meaning that would help students figure out the definition.
The article you are going to read deals with similar issues and sheds light on the connection between different representations of word knowledge.
Answer the following questions AS you read the article.
1. What was the hypothesis tested by the researchers?
Response: The hypothesis tested for the second graders was that students will learn the pronunciations and meanings of new words better when they see spellings of the words during study periods that when they do not. Our explanation was that grapheme-phoneme connections should be activated by spellings and as a result should secure the pronunciations and meanings of words in memory earlier during learning.
The hypothesis tested for the fifth graders was that spellings will help fifth graders learn the pronunciations and meanings of new vocabulary words better than no spellings, and also students will stronger orthographic knowledge will benefit more from spellings than students with weaker orthographic knowledge.
2. Who were the subjects?
Response: In the first experiment, the participants were 20 second graders, mean age 7 years, 7 months, enrolled in an urban school with a large majority population. On average, students were reading at the second grade level as indicated by scores on the Woodcock Reading Mastery test. However, their vocabulary level was below average on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. The second experiment was fifth graders from the same lower SES school as the second graders. Students were divided into two groups that differed in their orthographic knowledge: 14 higher level readers and 18 lower level readers. The groups also differed in spelling ability.
3. What were the experimental conditions?
Response: Each student was taught the pronunciations and meanings of two sets of six concrete nouns. Spellings were shown as students learned one set. Spellings were not shown as students learned the other set. During learning the words were defined and also embedded in different sentences to clarify meanings and connections to other words. In the spelling present treatment condition, the following steps were employed to teach vocabulary words. The first step was the initial study trial. For each word, a card had a drawing of the object named by the noun and a spelling printed beneath the picture. The experimenter pronounced the word and its definition and the student repeated them. The remaining trials tested students’ recall of the words’ pronunciations and meanings. All six words were tested. Pronunciation trials were interleaved with definition recall trials. On pronunciation recall trials the student saw the drawing with no spelling. Then the experimenter would give the correct answer, embedding into the students’ memory. On definition recall trials, the student heard each word pronounced, saw its spelling, and tried to recall its meaning. The experimenter then did the same thing listed above, by giving the correct answer. In the spelling absent control condition, the procedures were the same except that the spellings of words were never shown. The students pronounced the word several times, more times than the student in the spelling present condition. The same procedures were followed for the fifth grade students with a few exceptions. The words were low-frequency nouns that were longer, consisting of two and three syllables. Ten words were taught in each condition.
4. What did the treatment involve?
Response: In the spelling present treatment condition, the following steps were employed to teach vocabulary: The first step was the initial study trial. For each word, a card had a drawing of the object named by the noun and a spelling printed beneath the picture. The experimenter pronounced the word and its definition and the student repeated them. The remaining trials tested students’ recall of the words’ pronunciations and meanings. All six words were tested. In the spelling absent control condition, the procedures were the same except that the spellings of words were never shown. The students pronounced the word several times, more times than the student in the spelling present condition.
5. Which group (spelling-present vs. spelling-absent) gained more in vocabulary learning? How were the groups’ recall of pronunciations affected by the treatment?
Response: Results showed that it was easier for the second graders to recall meanings than pronunciations of the words. Recall was superior when spellings were seen than when they were not seen. The group that gained more vocabulary was the spelling-present group. In recalling pronunciations, the benefit of seeing spellings grew larger over trials. The day after each set of words was taught, posttests were given to assess delayed memory for the pronunciations, spellings, and meanings of words. From this study we concluded that second graders learned the pronunciations and meanings of vocabulary words better when they were exposed to spellings of the words than when they only practiced speaking the words. The explanation in the article was that when spellings were seen, heard, and repeated by the child, grapho-phonemic connections were spontaneously activated to secure the pronunciations in memory.
For the fifth graders, recall of pronunciations was better when words were learned with spelling aids than without spelling aids. This was true for both groups. The size of the advantage of spellings was much larger for higher than for lower readers, and remarkably it grew larger and larger over the first three trials for the higher readers. Students remembered definitions more easily than pronunciations of the words. Spellings helped readers with the harder part of vocabulary learning, remembering pronunciations of words.
6. Why do you think that fifth graders who were high on a word reading task benefited more from the spelling aids than their peers with less orthographic experience and knowledge, even though the two groups did not differ on receptive vocabulary knowledge?
Response: The advantage provided by the spellings became apparent on the first recall trial for the higher readers but not until the second trial for the lower readers. The size of the advantage of spellings was much larger for higher than for lower readers, and remarkably it grew larger and larger over the first three trials for the higher readers. One reason for the difference might be that the higher readers had better knowledge not only of grapho-phonemic units but also a large syllabic spelling units than lower readers, and this gave the higher readers an advantage in forming connections to store multisyllabic words in memory. This supports the Matthew effect of the rich getting richer.
7. What general conclusions were derived from the study findings by the authors? What implications were offered for vocabulary learning and instruction?
Response: Their explanation was that when students are exposed to spellings of new vocabulary words, grapho-phonemic connections are activated. There are several implications for their findings. Teachers need to become aware of the importance of spellings for vocabulary learning so they do not slight them in their teaching. Teachers should take time to display the spellings of the words. From their observations the authors found that teachers do not necessarily do this but rather limit their instruction to spoken words and oral discussions of meanings. Also when kids read silently, they tend to skip over words they do not know. This does not help them learn vocabulary. Students should stop at words they do not know figure out the meaning, pronounce it, and decode it.
8. What questions do you have from the article? List them here.
Response: Have they repeated this study many times with other schools including: Low-class, middle-class, and high class? Is that a big factor?
3 Comments »
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heatheryar Said:
on October 5, 2009 at 3:33 pm
I liked how you used examples to show how you found the meanings of words that you did not know. I feel stupid with some of the things that we are assigned to read as well. I like using classmates to help decode what we are going over.
Melissa Heller Said:
on October 5, 2009 at 10:51 pm
Hi Megan~
When you say “I do not feel that a child really knows a word until they can recognize it on paper” – do you think this applies to adults as well (who cannot read or write)? Or what about ELL’s that grasp the language but not the written word? Interesting stuff!
Omer Said:
on November 17, 2009 at 2:59 am
Great discussion!
~Omer