Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of a brief experimental intervention that integrated spelling practice into a systematic phonics approach to initial reading instruction for at-risk children. The effects of this intervention were studied by means of a randomized controlled trial design that compared the experimental condition to two trained control conditions and a further business-as-usual condition. The two trained control conditions were phonics-based interventions without spelling but with additional time spent on letter-sound practice. One emphasized letter-sound production, the other letter-sound recognition. Participants were 65 kindergartners with limited letter knowledge and no reading skills. Each participant was randomly assigned to one of the four conditions. Children were taught individually in four 20-min sessions in all three trained conditions. Analyses of the gains in abilities from pre- to posttest revealed that the integrated spelling condition was associated with significantly larger gains in phoneme awareness, spelling, and reading than were either the trained letter-sound recognition condition (d = 0.38–0.86) or the business-as-usual condition (d = 0.54–1.21). The results also favored the integrated spelling condition over the trained letter-sound production condition. Regarding the two trained control conditions, the letter-sound production condition was associated with slightly better reading and spelling outcomes than the letter-sound recognition condition. These findings indicate that integrated spelling may improve systematic phonics for children at risk of early reading difficulties, and that activities that encourage letter-sound production may be more beneficial than those which only require letter-sound recognition.

摘要

本研究的目的是检验一项简短的实验干预的效果，该干预将拼写练习整合到系统语音方法中，以对有风险的儿童进行初步阅读指导。这种干预的效果是通过随机对照试验设计来研究的，该设计将实验条件与两个训练有素的控制条件和进一步的一切照旧条件进行了比较。两个训练有素的控制条件是基于语音的干预，没有拼写，但在字母发音练习上花费了额外的时间。一种强调字母发音的产生，另一种强调字母发音的识别。参与者是 65 名字母知识有限且没有阅读能力的幼儿园儿童。每个参与者被随机分配到四个条件之一。在所有三个受过训练的条件下，孩子们在四个 20 分钟的课程中被单独教授。对从前测到后测的能力增益的分析表明，与受过训练的字母-声音识别条件相比，综合拼写条件与音素意识、拼写和阅读的增益显着更大相关。d  = 0.38–0.86) 或一切照旧 ( d  = 0.54–1.21)。结果也有利于综合拼写条件而不是受过训练的字母发音条件。关于两个受过训练的控制条件，字母发音条件与字母发音识别条件相比，阅读和拼写结果略好。这些发现表明，综合拼写可以改善有早期阅读困难风险的儿童的系统语音，并且鼓励字母发音的活动可能比只需要识别字母发音的活动更有益。