Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to examine the
effects of explicitly teaching a triad of spelling
strategies in comparison to traditional methods, to 26
Grade 8 students. The three explicitly taught
strategies were error correction (with cloze
procedure), imagery and analogy. The traditional
instruction method included activities modelled after
Grade 8 basal spellers. Students were seen in groups
of thirteen for five weekly sessions of forty minutes.
All students were pretested, posttested weekly,
posttested immediately following the training sessions
and posttested one mont? following the training. The
pretest, weekly posttests and immediate posttest were
dictated words spelling tests of both the training and
transfer words. The one month delayed posttest was a
dictated contextual sentence spelling test.
Performance scores on the pretest and posttest measures
were compared to determine if any differences existed
between the two groups using the Dunnett procedure.
Results indicated that no significant differences were
found between the strategy instruction and the
traditional instruction groups for the training
words. However, a significant difference
favouring the strategy instruction group existed on
transfer words at the immediate posttest. On a
secondary analysis of the data this significant
difference existed at the delayed posttest. When
learning growth was measured from pretest to delayed
posttest, the strategy instruction group significantly
outperformed the traditional instruction group with
respect to correctly spelling transfer items.
