Spelling Facilitates Good ESL Reading Comprehension
Research Evaluation:
Spelling Facilitates Good ESL Reading Comprehension
The article Spelling Facilitates Good ESL Reading Comprehension by Gail August (2011) detailed the findings of a study, which examined the relationship between English second language reading comprehension and spelling. It also explored how this relationship differed from that between reading and vocabulary. In particular, the study examined whether specific spelling knowledge had a stronger relation to reading performance for a passage than did general spelling knowledge.
This study was brought about by the results of previous studies, which showed that many college students have poor reading skills, which in turn caused students to become unsuccessful in their courses (August,2 011). It is assumed that the many processes involved in reading comprehension can occur only if there’s fluency where fluency “is based upon the understanding and efficient processing of the individual words within the text” (August, 2011, p. 14). It also refers to the ability to accurately and easily read, which is dependent on the reader’s ability to access a word’s meaning. In the same manner, the working memory’s limitations affect the relationship between the speed and fluency of word reading. Studies showed that good reading comprehension was related to the efficiency of processing words and that students who lacked fluency were also likely to have reading comprehension problems (August, 2011).
There’s also a well established relationship between reading comprehension and word knowledge where studies showed students with stronger vocabularies to demonstrate better reading comprehension than those with weaker vocabularies (August, 2011).Words are added to a reader’s lexicon as words are repeatedly encountered and this process of lexical storage and retrieval is facilitated by spelling. This is affirmed by Ehri and Snowling who claimed that there’s a close association between spelling and the ability to read words automatically or fluently.
The current study involved ESL students, aged 21 to 48, who were native Spanish speakers and whose ESL levels ranged from intermediate to advanced. They were given spelling, vocabulary, and reading tests to determine the relationship of spelling knowledge to vocabulary knowledge and to reading comprehension.
The fourth edition of the Stanford Diagnostic Test, Brown Level Form J, was used. It was a standardized and timed reading test that assessed the participants’ reading performance. They were also given a vocabulary test afterwards and two weeks later, they were given two more sets of spelling tests, which the researchers developed and which contained words from the initial reading and vocabulary tests.
In analyzing the results, the researchers standardized the scores based on the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test’s normalization tables where the scores that were over 2.5 were removed from the analysis. Bivariate correlations were performed using the four sets of tests provided, and the Bonferroni approach was used as a control for Type 1 error. A p of less than .008 was also used.
The results showed that a reader who knew how to spell words in a reading text was more likely to understand the text’s meaning and to respond correctly to questions about it. However, no significant relationship between spelling knowledge and vocabulary skills was found. In other words, the study suggested that there was a relationship between spelling knowledge and reading proficiency but that spelling knowledge did not determine a reader’s vocabulary ability.
Although it was found that spelling was important in the reading process and that the spelling knowledge of words in a given text highly influenced reading comprehension, this study was not able to establish a relationship between good reading and general spelling ability. As such, the study suggested that including spelling information in vocabulary acquisition would be more effective and that it would help for teachers to emphasize on spelling, particularly the spelling patterns of irregularly spelled words, and the orthographic conventions of the English language, in the ESL curriculum. This would help students obtain accurate orthographic representations of the words they learn and will help them improve their spelling skills, in turn helping them improve their reading comprehension skills.
References
August, G. (2011). Spelling facilitates good ESL reading comprehension. Journal of
Developmental Education, 35 (1), 14-24.
