Approach to Spelling

Birch, B. (2011). (2nd Ed.) English L2 Reading: Getting to the Bottom. New York, NY: Routledge, ch. 6

Salient Points:

Pg. 88--"To use the strategy of probabilistic reasoning in reading, readers need to learn the probabilities that certain graphemes will represent certain phonemes." This quote applies to phonics in kindergarten.

There are also raw probabilities of graphemes, and they are "information from statistical analyses of a written text and its pronunciation" (pg. 89).

Pg. 89 Chart--The language processing strategies for consonants are as follows:

Phonological processing strategies feed into probabilistic reasoning and adjusting probabilities, which feed into orthographic processing strategies, which feed into lexical processing strategies. The latter two are used in processing the text.

The knowledge Base for Language is knowledge that a grapheme is associated with a phoneme, which in the case of consonants means:

b=/b/ (almost always)

bb=/b/ (always)

c followed by a, o, or u =/k/ (usually)

Spelling versus reading rates: the reading rule is quite regular, but the spelling rule may be more difficult to apply. The reading rules are matching incoming graphemes to abstract mental units to access words and meanings.

Probabilistic reasoning with vowels is less useful than with consonants, because vowels are less predictable. Transparent languages have an easy transfer of orthographies than opaque languages. Still, English has strange graphemes. Students need to read in and outside of school for the transfer to happen. They need direct instruction in phonics and accurate listening discrimination activities. Secondarily they need pronunciation activities. They also need visuals of recoding of graphemes to phonemes.

Implications:

We as teachers still need to teach phonics. We need to instruct our students on recoding graphemes into phonemes and show spelling patterns. They can use these patterns, or raw probabilities to predict the spelling of words in writing and decode/recode in reading.

We must also take into account the different writing (and spelling) systems of our students. This means: (Pg. 100-101)

• Learners from a logographic writing system will have to start at the beginning. These learners will require a lot of direct instruction and activities to develop their writing and reading abilities.

• However, readers from an alphabetic writing system, even a Roman alphabetic writing system, may not be used to the strange graphemes in English. These readers will also require some direct instruction in the strange graphemes of English.

• Readers from transparent languages will probably have an easier time than readers from opaque languages, because it is a one-to-one grapheme to phoneme process.