The Strategic Spelling Skills of Students with Learning Disabilities: The Results of Two Studies

Journal of Instructional Psychology, March, 2000 by Craig Darch, Soobang Kim, Susan Johnson, Hollis James

These results demonstrate the superiority of a rule-based spelling instructional program (Spelling Mastery Program) when compared to the effectiveness of a instructional program that relies on the use of motivational spelling activities and intensive practice writing words and sentences without systematic introduction of spelling rules with carefully sequenced practice. The students taught with the rule-based program became more proficient spelling words-representing each of the three word types.

The results of both experiments provide information regarding students' use of appropriate spelling strategies as well as curriculum designed to teach spelling. The purpose of both experiments was to examine the strategies students use to spell words and the programs designed to teach them. The results of each study provide support for the other. Students with learning disabilities do not use appropriate strategies when spelling words, so they need curricula which provides an intense, systematic method for teaching specific spelling strategies.

Conclusions and Implications

The purpose of the first study was to determine the types of strategies that students with learning disabilities use when they are trying to spell words that they find difficult. As these results show, students with learning disabilities are not effective in using appropriate, rule-based spelling strategies. When these students discussed the methods that they used to spell words, they rarely discussed rule-based strategies, and instead discussed using strategies that were either characterized as brute force, individualized, or multiple approaches, all of which are considered to be ineffective spelling strategies.

The purpose of the second study reported in this paper was to determine which of two highly dissimilar programs for teaching spelling was the most effective in teaching elementary aged students with learning disabilities how to spell three classifications of words. Table 4 provides comparison of the rule-based approach (Spelling Mastery) with a traditional approach (Laidlaw Spelling Program). The results of the intervention study reported here suggest that rule-based programs that are skill-directed intensive, with specified corrections and practice are most effective for children with learning disabilities.

Each experiment has important implications regarding students with learning disabilities and instructional programs designed to teach spelling. Moreover, the findings of the first experiment, which suggests that students with disabilities do not use appropriate strategy (i.e., rule-based strategy), offer support to the second study which favors using rule-based programs to teach students with learning disabilities. These results suggest that students with learning disabilities who frequently experience problems with spelling, benefit from programs that incorporate rule-based strategies that are intensive and skill-directed, and provide specified correction and practice procedures. School administrators and teachers can use the results when planning instruction for students with learning disabilities. Students with learning disabilities often experience difficulty in spelling and often times use inappropriate strategies when engaging in spelling tasks. These studies suggest that rule-based curricula provide teachers with strategies to teach students who experience difficulty in spelling.