Investigating the Contribution of Spelling Practice to the Multisyllabic Word Reading Skills of Upper Elementary Students With Dyslexia

Abstract

While spelling instruction may enhance reading interventions, there is little experimental evidence to date that examines the benefit of integrating spelling activities above and beyond explicit word reading instruction and practice alone. The study sought to investigate whether a common approach to spelling practice, cover-copy-compare (CCC), uniquely contributed to multisyllabic word reading skills of third- to fifth-grade students with dyslexia (N = 32). In this brief experiment, students completed two controlled individual sessions (30-min each). Each session included two instructional components and one practice component. The practice component differed by study condition, with students randomized to either reading practice (Decoding condition) or spelling practice using a modified CCC activity (Decoding+Spelling condition). No between-group differences were observed on researcher-developed or standardized word reading and pseudoword reading measures; however, a small but statistically significant effect favored students in the Decoding condition on a standardized measure of word reading efficiency. Findings suggest students in both conditions improved their reading of multisyllabic words, and there did not appear to be a differential benefit of spelling practice via CCC compared with reading practice. We discuss implications for future research on the contribution of spelling practice to word-level reading interventions for students with dyslexia.

Keywords

dyslexia spelling decoding multisyllabic word reading cover-copy-compare

Proficient reading skills are associated with higher educational attainment and improved health outcomes (DeWalt & Hink, 2009). Unfortunately, students with word-level reading disability (i.e., dyslexia) often struggle to acquire reading proficiency. Over the last four decades, great strides have been made in intervention research for students with and at-risk for dyslexia in the primary grades, yet there remains little evidence related to interventions involving students in the upper elementary grades (Hall et al., 2022; Wanzek et al., 2018). It has been documented that students in the upper elementary grades benefit from interventions that encompass explicit multisyllabic word instruction and fluency-building practice (Toste et al., 2019; Vaughn et al., 2022). While it has been suggested that spelling instruction or practice may enhance such interventions, there is little experimental evidence to date that examines the benefit of integrating spelling activities above and beyond explicit word reading instruction and practice alone—especially as it relates to multisyllabic word reading skills. The present study reports findings from a brief experiment of the unique contribution of spelling practice on word reading skills for students with dyslexia in third through fifth grades.

The Connection Between Reading and Spelling

Word reading and spelling rely on a common foundation of orthographic and phonological knowledge and skills (Ehri, 2000; Perfetti, 1997), including knowledge of grapheme-phoneme (i.e., letter-sound) correspondence, letter combinations, and whole-word spellings, as well as the ability to segment spoken words by phonemes. Although reciprocally related, word reading and spelling are not identical processes as spelling words requires more precise representation of word spellings in memory than reading words (Ehri, 1997). As such, spelling typically presents a greater challenge for students (Bosman & Van Orden, 1997). For example, reading the word sigh requires retrieving phonological information from each grapheme (s-igh) to read (sigh), whereas spelling requires identification of the phonemes and correct sequencing of the letters (s-i-g-h) by retrieving a word-specific letter combination from memory for /ī/ (igh) over other graphemes that may represent /ī/ (e.g., i, i_e, ie) followed by verification of the correct spelling (sigh). Due to the precision required for spelling a word, many argue that improved spelling knowledge represents stronger orthographic representations of words in memory that results in more accurate and efficient word reading, which ultimately has cascading effects on students’ reading fluency and comprehension.

According to the Lexical Quality Hypothesis (LQH) (Perfetti, 2007; Perfetti & Hart, 2002), word reading efficiency (i.e., accurately reading words with little conscious effort) is made possible by well-established representations of words in terms of their orthographic, phonological, and semantic representations. Although reading can be accomplished with incomplete word representations (e.g., hilari*us for hilarious), fluent word recognition is strengthened when representations are precise and redundant in the lexicon. Thus, because spelling a word requires a more complete orthographic representation of a word in memory—or a greater degree of orthographic precision—than reading that same word, spelling instruction or practice may serve to improve students’ word-level reading skills by creating stronger and more precise orthographic representations of words that are more efficiently accessed when encountered in print (Perfetti, 1997).

Empirical evidence accumulated across several decades has supported the argument that instruction and practice in spelling improves word reading (Conrad, 2008; Graham et al., 2002; Weber & Henderson, 1989; Weiser & Mathes, 2011), reading fluency (Ouellette et al., 2017; Uhry & Shepherd, 1993), and reading comprehension (Graham & Santangelo, 2014; Uhry & Shepherd, 1993). Two recent meta-analyses of reading and spelling interventions provide further evidence that spelling may be essential to word reading skills for students with dyslexia. Hall et al. (2022) examined effects of reading interventions for elementary students with or at-risk for dyslexia. Of the total 70 studies included, 51 provided spelling instruction in addition to word reading instruction. The effects for these interventions were larger (g = 0.37) than those without a spelling instruction component (g = 0.23).

In their meta-analysis of 28 spelling interventions for learners with dyslexia, Galuschka et al. (2020), they reported an average significant, moderate effect on reading outcomes (g = 0.42). Ten of the studies reported phonics-based spelling interventions, which resulted in a statistically significant effect on reading outcomes (g = 0.62). Four of the studies involved orthographic interventions—defined as the systematic instruction of the application of graphotactic or orthographic-phonological spelling rules—and these interventions did not yield a significant effect (g = 0.19). Similarly, morphological spelling interventions that included morpheme and syllable analysis did not have a significant effect on reading (g = 0.19).

Due to the evidence suggesting the influence of spelling on reading outcomes, it is common to see recommendations to integrate a spelling component within word reading instruction and intervention (Conrad, 2008). Similarly, there is little research that has experimentally tested the unique contribution of spelling within word reading interventions; nearly all studies have included spelling instruction or activities within word reading instruction and compared outcomes with conditions in which word reading instruction was different or involved business-as-usual (i.e., control) instruction. There are two recent exceptions. Møller et al. (2022) examined the effects of a brief experimental intervention that integrated spelling practice into a systematic phonics approach to initial reading instruction for kindergarten students at-risk for reading disability. The researchers randomly assigned participants across four conditions: integrated spelling, letter-sound production, letter-sound recognition, and control condition. In each condition, instruction was delivered in four individual 20-min sessions over consecutive days. In the integrated spelling condition, participants segmented and spelled four to five words as many times possible within the allotted time frame. The instructor orally presented the word; the student was then asked to identify the sounds (i.e., segment) and choose the corresponding letter card to represent each sound thereby spelling the word. The authors found that the integrated spelling condition was associated with significantly larger effects in phonemic awareness (d = 0.56), spelling (d = 0.54), and word reading (d = 1.21) than the other conditions. The findings of this study highlight that integrated spelling may improve word reading for children at-risk of early reading difficulties.

Can Spelling Practice Enhance Word Reading Skills?

There is a lack of experimental evidence regarding the benefit of integrating spelling practice above and beyond explicit word reading instruction and practice alone, especially with students in upper elementary grades. This gap is significant because current instructional approaches for students with dyslexia often focus predominately on decoding practice, which, while effective, may not fully support the development of rapid word identification needed for accurate and efficient word reading. Without this critical evidence, the field lacks clear guidance on whether adding spelling practice as a component within word reading interventions could provide unique benefits—particularly for reading multisyllabic words.

Multisyllabic Word Reading Skills

Students with dyslexia in the upper elementary grades often require specific decoding instruction beyond monosyllabic words, as they are likely to frequently encounter these words in the texts they read. Multisyllabic words bring unique challenges as they require students to decide where to place syllable boundaries, how to stress and reduce vowels, and how to handle the uncertainty of vowel pronunciations (Steacy et al., 2017; Venezky, 1999). These complexities pose challenges to the development of advanced word reading skills and become reliant on the word-specific relationships between orthography and phonology. Spelling practice, which can strengthen orthographic representations, offers a promising but under-researched avenue for addressing these challenges. The potential for spelling practice to accelerate multisyllabic word reading has important practical implications for upper elementary word reading interventions. If effective, it could inform instructional approaches to enhance the reading outcomes of students with dyslexia.

Cover-Copy-Compare as an Approach to Spelling Practice

Spelling interventions that feature components of direct instruction have been shown to be effective for improving spelling among students with learning disabilities (Graham & Santangelo, 2014). One prominent approach that embeds the use of immediate error correction is the cover-copy-compare (CCC) method (Murphy et al., 1990; Williams et al., 2017). Error correction is more beneficial when it is provided immediately, especially when the learning task is a discrete one (Wisniewski et al., 2020). CCC can be applied to various skills in addition to spelling (e.g., mathematics facts and computation skills, and vocabulary knowledge), and provides a way for students to practice skills independently while still receiving feedback on the accuracy of their responses. When CCC is applied to spelling, students look at a target word and its spelling (some procedures have had students study the word, spell it to themselves, or write the word while it is in view), cover the target word, spell the target word from memory, and then uncover the word and compare it with the word spelled. If the word is correctly spelled, they repeat the process with a different target word. If the word was not correctly spelled, the student repeats the process until their spelling matches that of the target word.

Prior studies of CCC have reported that this activity improves academic performance for students with and without disabilities (Joseph et al., 2012), and that students are able to generalize spelling practiced during CCC when writing sentences and reading words (Cates et al., 2007; Cuvo et al., 1995). Over the years, researchers have modified this practice to add phonological sound-out procedures (Drivas & Drevon, 2018; Mann et al., 2010), multiple repetitions (Erion et al., 2009), self-management procedures (Nies & Belfiore, 2006), and added instructional components (e.g., defining the word; Jaspers et al., 2012). To date, no studies have examined the potential impact of this particular spelling approach on the multisyllabic word reading outcomes of upper elementary students with dyslexia.

Study Purpose

Whether spelling practice adds value to word reading intervention for students with dyslexia has important implications for allocating time within an intervention session. Spelling a word almost always takes longer than reading it, and spelling can take much longer when graphomotor difficulties that commonly co-occur with dyslexia are present (Alamargot et al., 2020; Sumner et al., 2013). To optimize intensive, supplemental intervention, particularly in schools with limited resources, there is a need to focus on instructional components that will derive the greatest impact on student outcomes. Although it is unlikely that spelling activities would be detrimental, it is important to understand the benefit of these more time-intensive components to guide instructional decision-making. To address this, there is a need to experimentally test various approaches to spelling practice to understand the isolated effects of spelling on word reading skills, particularly for students with persistent word-level reading difficulties who are faced with the challenge of reading more complex words in the upper elementary grades.

Thus, the purpose of the study was to investigate whether the CCC approach to spelling practice benefits students’ multisyllabic word reading, beyond multisyllabic word reading instruction and practice alone, for third to fifth grade students with dyslexia. Our approach was consistent with other short-term experimental spelling studies that focus on two or three brief instructional sessions to control and test specific learning conditions (e.g., Colenbrander et al., 2022; Conrad et al., 2019; Møller et al., 2022; Ouellette et al., 2017). In the present study, students completed two highly controlled individual sessions. Each session included two instructional components and one practice component. The practice component differed by condition; students in one condition received additional word reading practice (Decoding condition), whereas students in the alternate condition engaged in spelling practice using a modified CCC activity (Decoding+Spelling condition). We investigated the following research questions:

Research Question 1: Does the addition of spelling practice to multisyllabic word reading instruction improve students’ ability to read real and pseudowords compared with additional reading practice?

Research Question 2: Does the addition of spelling practice to multisyllabic word reading instruction improve students’ ability to read words explicitly taught, and similarly spelled words not taught, compared with additional reading practice?

Method

Setting and Participants

Participants were recruited from a private elementary school for students with dyslexia located in the southwestern United States. Students were required to have a psycho-educational evaluation with a formal diagnosis of specific learning disability (SLD) in reading or dyslexia to attend the school. The school population was 98.04% White at the time of this study. Third, fourth, and fifth grade students were selected to participate through a two-step screening process. First, based on school-administered universal screening data, school staff nominated the lowest performing students from third through fifth grades in word reading. All nominated students (n = 56) were then administered the Test of Word Reading Efficiency, 2nd edition (TOWRE-2; Torgesen et al., 2012) by the research team. Parental consent was sought for students with grade-based standard scores below the 25^th percentile on either subtest of the TOWRE-2. Of the 52 students that met eligibility criteria, 33 provided parental consent and student assent to participate and were enrolled in the study.

Students were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions: Decoding or Decoding+Spelling. One student from the Decoding condition was not available for posttesting due to repeated absences, and their data were excluded from analyses. Overall and differential attrition were not substantial according to the What Works Clearinghouse (2020) guidelines. The final study sample of 32 students was 50% female (n = 16) and included 13 third graders, six fourth graders, and 13 fifth graders.

Experimental Conditions

Students participated in a brief experiment that comprised two 30-min sessions, delivered individually with a trained tutor, on 2 consecutive school days. Each session followed scripted protocols, which included two common instructional components (i.e., same instruction delivered across experimental conditions), and one condition-specific practice component (i.e., practice opportunity differed between the Decoding and Decoding+Spelling conditions). Figure 1 provides an overview of these components. Instructional materials are available upon request.

Figure 1.

Overview of Experimental Session Components.

Four research assistants (RAs) were hired and trained by the research team to administer student assessments and deliver instructional sessions. Three of the RAs identified as female, and three identified as White. All RAs had previously completed a master’s degree and were currently enrolled in a PhD program in special education, focused on academic interventions for students with learning disabilities. They were all certified teachers and had at least five tutors who were certified teachers with experience delivering academic instruction in public and private school settings.

Common Instructional Components

Students in both conditions received word reading instruction in two parts across both sessions. Part 1 focused on suffixes. The tutor presented a page with the four targeted suffixes displayed at the top (-tion, -tive, -able, -ance). They pointed to the first suffix, read it aloud, and asked the student to repeat (“This says -able. What does this say?”). This process was repeated for all four suffixes. The tutor and student then read the four suffixes chorally. The rest of the page included multiple rows where the same four suffixes were repeated in random order. The student was instructed to point and say each of the suffixes, moving down the columns. If the student made an error or hesitated for more than 3 sec, the tutor provided immediate corrective feedback (“This word part is -able. What is it?”).

Part 2 focused on reading multisyllabic words that contained the targeted suffixes. Students practiced reading a set of 20 words, each ending with one of the four suffixes reviewed in Part 1. Each word was printed on a card; the tutor shuffled and placed the stack of cards face down on the table. The student turned over the top card and read it aloud. If the word was read incorrectly, the tutor provided explicit feedback and prompted students to break the word down into smaller word parts and/or isolating the suffix (“Let’s break it down into smaller parts. Uncover and say each word part. If I say the parts together, this word is _________. What word?”). As they read, students sorted the cards into two stacks: words mastered and words needing additional practice. The student repeated this process until all 20-word cards had been attempted; they then revisited the stack of cards with words requiring additional practice and repeated the process with these cards only. After Part 2, students continued with practice specific to the condition in which they were assigned.

Condition-Specific Practice Component

Following the common and constant multisyllabic word reading instruction, students engaged in practice specific to the condition to which they were assigned. Regardless of assigned condition, all students practiced 20 multisyllabic words.

Decoding Condition

Students in the Decoding condition engaged in timed reading practice. The student was provided a randomly ordered list of the same 20 multisyllabic words targeted in Part 2. The student was instructed to read the words aloud, quickly and carefully. The tutor timed the reading and provided immediate corrective feedback whether the student made an error or hesitated for more than 3 sec (“This word is _________. What word?”). After reading the list, the student had the opportunity to complete a second reading and attempt to beat their first time. The tutor continued to provide corrective feedback, as necessary.

Decoding+Spelling Condition

The Decoding+Spelling condition included spelling practice, with the multisyllabic words targeted in Part 2, using a modified CCC activity (Joseph et al., 2012; Skinner et al., 1997). The student was given a worksheet with 20 words listed vertically on the left side of the page. They were then asked to read and spell the first word aloud (e.g., “deniable, d-e-n-i-a-b-l-e”). The tutor folded over the left-side of the page at a vertical crease to hide the original word (“cover”), and the student wrote the word from memory in the first response blank (“copy”). The worksheet was then unfolded and the student checked their spelling (“compare”). If the student spelled the word correctly, they moved onto the next word on the list and repeated the procedure. If the student spelled the word incorrectly, they repeated the procedure by studying the word again, covering, copying, and checking the spelling. This continued until the student spelled all 20 words or they ran out of time in the session.

Measures

Standardized Assessment

As previously indicated, the TOWRE-2 was administered at pretest as part of the screening process. Students were also administered the TOWRE-2 alternate form at posttest. The TOWRE-2 includes two subtests wherein students read from a list of words that increase in difficulty while the examiner records the number of words read correctly in 45 sec. The Sight Word Efficiency (SWE) subtest contains real words, and the Phonemic Decoding Efficiency (PDE) subtest contains phonetically regular pseudowords. Test-retest reliability ranges from .83 to .96, and alternative-form reliability exceeds .90 for both subtests. The TOWRE-2 subtests were included as an index of generalized word reading.

Experimental Reading Lists

Students completed two untimed measures of word reading at pretest and posttest; these were proximal measures that directly aligned with the multisyllabic words introduced in the experimental sessions.

The Word Reading List measured students’ accuracy in reading 60 real multisyllabic words. All the words were multisyllabic and included one of the suffixes targeted during instruction, with 15 words for each suffix (-tion, -tive, -able, -ance). Of these words, 20 (five words randomly selected from each suffix set) had been taught during the experimental sessions with both conditions and 40 were untaught but included suffixes targeted during instruction.

The Pseudoword Reading List measured students’ accuracy reading 60 nonwords. These multisyllabic words were spelled similarly to the words in the Word Reading List, and included 15 words per taught suffix (-tion, -tive, -able, -ance). Students were not exposed to any of these nonwords during the experimental sessions.

To develop the Word Reading List, of which a subset were taught in the experimental sessions, we used the Coxhead Academic Word List (Coxhead, 2000), which includes words that are common to academic texts but do not occur in the 2000 most common words in English. We selected words that ended in one of the four target suffixes (-tion, -tive, -able, -ance). These four suffixes were selected because they commonly occur in multisyllabic words that students encounter in academic texts in later elementary grades and beyond (Lane et al., 2019). From the 127 identified words, 14 were considered high frequency for upper elementary students (e.g., definition, estimation) based on the Coxhead List and removed to reduce the likelihood that students would already be familiar with them. We selected 15 words from each suffix set by first alphabetizing the words with each suffix, then generated a random number for each word and shuffled the list multiple times. The first 15 words from each suffix set were selected for inclusion in the final measure (n = 60). We then randomly selected five words from each suffix set to identify the 20 words taught in the experimental sessions. The remaining 40 words appeared only on word reading measure.

The 60 words for the Pseudoword Reading List were derived from the final selection of real multisyllabic words. Specifically, a nonword was created to be similar in spelling to the original word while maintaining the same suffix (e.g., “bymance” was derived from “finance”). There were 15 nonwords in each suffix set. The pseudoword list was piloted by four members of the research team; each met with two children between the ages of 8 and 11 years. Piloting the instrument with children of the same age range as target participants helps identify any unclear instructions, difficult or inappropriate word selections, and potential issues with administration or scoring. The purpose of piloting is to refine the instrument before full implementation, improving its clarity, usability, and effectiveness in measuring the intended skills.

Procedures

Pretest sessions were conducted during the week prior to the student’s two experimental sessions, whereas posttest sessions were administered on the school day immediately following each student’s last session. The two 30-min individual instruction sessions with each student in both conditions were implemented in quiet locations of the school (e.g., unoccupied classrooms, offices). The RA who worked with students in the instructional sessions was different from the RA who administered the pre- and posttest measures. All assessment and instructional sessions were audio-recorded for reliability purposes. The TOWRE-2, Word Reading List, and Pseudoword Reading List were initially scored by the RA who administered them. All measures were double scored by a second RA, and a senior member of the research team resolved any discrepancies that emerged. Similar, we engaged in a double data entry process wherein two independent entries of the same data were compared to identify and correct any discrepancies.

Prior to the start of the study, the four RAs received approximately 6.5 hr of training. First, they were provided with 3 hr of assessment training and were then required to demonstrate proficiency (≥ 90% performance on procedural adherence checklist) in a mock test administration session with the principal investigator (PI) prior to working with students. RAs received an additional 3.5 hr of training on delivery of the two experimental sessions, which included systematic instruction of each component and mock implementation with team members. Prior to the start of the study, each RA met with the PI to deliver a mock session and demonstrate adherence to the scripted protocol for common instructional components and condition-specific practice components. During implementation of the study, the PI listened at random to audio-recorded for each RA to ensure ongoing adherence to the scripted protocol for the two 30-min instructional sessions.

Data Analyses

To address our first research question and examine effects related to the experimental condition, we fit the following regression model in Stata 16 (StataCorp, 2019):

Y = β 0 + β 1 T 1 + β 2 (p r e)

where Y represents the outcome of interest, β0 represents the intercept, β1 represents the estimated slope for students assigned to Condition 1 (Decoding) compared with Condition 2 (Decoding+Spelling), and β2j controls for pretest scores. Pretest scores were grand-mean centered so that the intercept represented the average post-test standard score for students in Condition 1. We fitted the model for each outcome of interest, resulting in four models: Word Reading List, Pseudoword Reading List, TOWRE-2 SWE, and PDE. Effect sizes were calculated as the standardized mean difference of pretest-adjusted posttest scores.

The second research question focused only on the 60 words included on the Word Reading List. As previously described, 20 words were explicitly taught to students, and the remaining 40 words were untaught. We calculated the proportions of words learned for the sets of taught and untaught words. Words were deemed “learned” if the student read them incorrectly at pretest but correctly at posttest. Independent sample t-tests were used to compare the average proportion of words learned between conditions, and Hedge’s g effect sizes were calculated. That difference score was then divided by the number of words attempted to calculate a proportion of words learned for each student.

Results

Descriptive statistics for pre- and posttest measures are presented in Table 1. There were no significant pretreatment differences between conditions on these measures.

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics for Pre- and Posttest Measures.

	Decoding (n = 16)				Decoding+Spelling (n = 16)
	Pretest		Posttest		Pretest		Posttest
Measure	M	SD	M	SD	M	SD	M	SD
Reading Lists
WRL	9.50	9.80	20.44	12.33	9.20^a	9.50	15.60^a	12.74
PRL	3.44	5.86	6.07^a	7.71	4.07^a	6.55	9.06^a	9.28
TOWRE-2
SWE	75.06	10.27	75.75	11.19	74.19	12.02	71.88	8.85
PDE	78.25	9.48	76.19	10.03	74.25	7.49	79.63	8.82

Note. ^an = 15; WRL = Word Reading List; PRL = Pseudoword Reading List; TOWRE-2 = Test of Word Reading Efficiency–2; SWE = Sight Word Efficiency; PDE = Phonemic Decoding Efficiency.

To address our first research question, we compared the word reading performance of students in the Decoding condition to students in the Decoding+Spelling condition. As reported in Table 1, students in both conditions improved their performance on the Word Reading List and Pseudoword Reading List from pretest to posttest. There were no statistically significant group differences on the Word Reading List (β = –4.53, p = .12, ES = –.18) or Pseudoword Reading List (β = –3.58, p = .14, ES = –.21), although effect sizes favored the Decoding condition. Because the TOWRE-2 is a standardized measure containing words that were not targeted in the intervention, we did not necessarily expect it to be sensitive in detecting pre- to post-test differences during this brief experimental study. However, there was a statistically significant effect on the TOWRE-2 SWE subtest (β = –3.15, p = .04, ES = –.16), indicating a small but statistically significant posttest difference favoring students in the Decoding condition. As indicated in Table 1, this difference was due to the fact that the mean score for the Decoding condition was stable from pretest to posttest but declined for the Decoding+Spelling condition. Groups did not differ on the TOWRE-2 PDE subtest (β = 0.20, p = .92, ES = 0.01). Results of the regression analyses are reported in Table 2.

Table 2.

Estimated Treatment Effects.

Outcome Variables	Coefficient	SE	t	p	Beta	95% CI
Word Reading List
Pretest	1.02	.15	6.81	<.00	.77	[0.71, 1.33]
D+S vs. D	–4.53	2.81	–1.61	.12	–.18	[–10.28, 1.22]
Constant	20.28	1.96	10.37	<.00
Pseudoword Reading List
Pretest	.93	.19	4.78	<.00	.66	[0.54, 1.32]
D+S vs. D	–3.58	2.33	–1.54	.14	–.21	[–8.35, 1.19]
Constant	9.34	1.62	5.78	<.00
TOWRE-2 SWE
Pretest	.82	.07	12.09	<.00	.90	[0.68, 0.96]
D+S vs. D	–3.15	1.48	–2.14	.04	–.16	[–6.18, –0.12]
Constant	75.39	1.04	72.73	<.00
TOWRE-2 PDE
Pretest	.91	.12	7.79	<.00	.83	[0.66, 1.16]
D+S vs. D	.20	1.99	.10	.92	.01	[–3.87, 4.27]
Constant	77.81	1.38	56.18	<.00

Note. Significant effects are bolded. D = Decoding condition; D+S = Decoding+Spelling condition; TOWRE-2 = Test of Word Reading Efficiency–2; SWE = Sight Word Efficiency; PDE = Phonemic Decoding Efficiency.

To address our second research question, we examined differences between conditions in the proportion of taught and untaught words “learned” by students. Although there were no statistically significant differences between conditions, effect sizes favored the Decoding condition for words taught and practiced during the sessions, t(30) = –.97, p = .34, g = –.33, as well as untaught words, t(30) = –.95, p = .35, g = –.35, from the Word Reading List. Results of these comparisons are reported in Table 3.

Table 3.

Differences Between Condition in Proportion of Words Learned on the Word Reading List.

	D	D+S	t	p	Hedge’s g	95% CI
Words	M (SD)	M (SD)	t	p	Hedge’s g	95% CI
Taught words (20)	.20 (.18)	.15 (.15)	–.97	.34	–.35	[–1.03, 0.36]
Untaught words (40)	.09 (.07)	.07 (.08)	–.95	.35	–.33	[–1.02, 0.36]

Note. For words learned, the mean can be interpreted as the average percentage (%) increase in words read incorrectly at pretest and then correctly at posttest. D = Decoding condition; D+S = Decoding+Spelling condition.

Discussion

To date, there are few experimental studies that permit conclusions regarding the unique benefit of spelling practice, over word reading instruction and practice, for improving the word reading skills of students with reading disabilities—particularly for students in the upper elementary grades. Spelling practice can be more time-intensive than word reading practice, therefore, there is a need to understand the benefits of this component relative to decoding practice alone to inform instructional decision-making and best allocate valuable intervention time. By holding word reading instruction constant across the two conditions, we investigated whether spelling practice (i.e., Decoding+Spelling condition) was associated with improved word reading as compared with using that time for word reading practice (i.e., Decoding condition) for students in third through fifth grades with dyslexia.

Experimental Effects on Word Reading Skills

When we contrasted the effects of the two conditions, no differences were observed in students’ word reading on researcher-developed or standardized word reading and pseudoword reading measures, with one exception: A small but statistically significant effect favored students in the Decoding condition on a standardized measure of word reading efficiency. We reiterate that the mean TOWRE-2 SWE standard scores remained similar from pre- to post-test for the Decoding condition while they decreased from pre- to post-test for the Decoding+Spelling condition. As such, it is possible that this significant finding is an artifact of testing, rather than a true difference between conditions.

As a more sensitive index of experimental effects, we compared conditions in terms of the proportion of words learned (i.e., words read incorrectly at pretest, but correctly at posttest). That is, did students in one condition learn a greater proportion of words? We separately considered this question for words that were explicitly taught and those that were untaught. Students in both conditions improved in the proportion of both taught and untaught words learned between pre- and post-test. No statistically significant differences were found, although effect sizes favored the Decoding condition for both taught and untaught words. Overall, our findings suggest that students in both conditions improved their reading of multisyllabic words targeted in instruction, and there did not appear to be a differential benefit of spelling practice via CCC compared with using that time for reading practice with the target words.

Considerations Regarding the Added Benefit of Spelling Practice

The findings of this study align with prior research suggesting that repeated word reading practice may be sufficient to develop orthographic-phonological connections for word reading (Ehri, 2005; Share, 1995). However, the limited impact of spelling practice observed in this study contrasts with other studies and meta-analyses that highlight the potential benefits of spelling instruction in improving literacy outcomes (e.g., Galuschka et al., 2020; Graham & Santangelo, 2014). Notably, much of the existing research on spelling’s role in word reading has focused on typically developing readers, leaving the role of spelling practice for students with dyslexia, an understudied area of inquiry. Graham and Santangelo’s (2014) meta-analysis, for example, underscores the general benefits of spelling instruction but includes relatively few studies explicitly targeting students with dyslexia. This gap in the research underscores the importance of exploring how specific instructional components, like spelling practice, influence the orthographic learning and word reading skills of students with dyslexia.

Cognitive Demands of Spelling Practice

One possible explanation for the observed slight advantage of the Decoding condition in this short-term experimental study is the cognitive demands associated with spelling and the spelling related practice approach. Spelling tasks, such as those used in the CCC method, require students to simultaneously engage in multiple cognitive processes. These processes involve retrieving the orthographic representation, applying orthographic rules, and producing written output. This increased cognitive workload can limit the immediate benefits of spelling practice in the short-term, as cognitive resources may be distributed across competing demands (Bosman & Van Orden, 1997). This explanation may be particularly relevant for students with dyslexia, who often experience deficits in working memory and phonological processing (Castles & Friedmann 2014; Catts et al., 2017). Limited working memory capacity can hinder their ability to manage the multiple demands of spelling tasks while also processing the multisyllabic word structures introduced during the intervention. Phonological processing deficits further exacerbate this challenge, as these students may struggle to effectively segment and manipulate the sounds within complex words (Snowling, 2000). Together, these cognitive challenges may reduce the efficiency of spelling practice during brief instructional periods, as compared with decoding practice, which places a comparatively lower demand on cognitive resources.

In contrast, word reading practice primarily focuses on phonological recoding and orthographic recognition, which may allow students to concentrate their cognitive efforts on reading-specific skills. This reduced cognitive demand, may facilitate faster learning and consolidation of word reading strategies during short-term learning experiments as seen in prior studies that demonstrate the efficacy of repeated decoding for improving word reading fluency (Share, 1995).

Spelling Approaches to Support Word Reading

Although findings indicated a slight advantage to the Decoding condition, it is clear that students also benefit from spelling practice. However, it may be that there is more benefit in allocating instructional time to increased opportunities to read words for older students with this particular skill profile (e.g., significant word-level reading challenges). While these findings contribute to our knowledge and provide direction for ongoing research, they must be interpreted within the context of this study.

As reading and spelling inarguably share a foundation of common skills, it makes sense that spelling practice promotes orthographic-phonological connections that mutually support word reading skills. Indeed, researchers have found that brief spelling practice leads to improved word reading outcomes (Møller et al., 2022; Ouellette et al., 2017; Rossi et al., 2019), and CCC has been found to improve spelling performance for students with disabilities (Wanzek et al., 2006; Williams et al., 2017). However, it is possible that not all spelling approaches equally build or reinforce the orthographic-phonological connections needed to read words. CCC was designed as a practice strategy that students can self-manage. Spelling practice may require more explicit instruction and feedback for students to attend to graphophonemic segments and connect orthographic patterns to pronunciations, particularly for students with dyslexia. Students with dyslexia struggle with spelling, which is most likely related to difficulties with phonological processing that are central to most conceptualizations of dyslexia (Snowling, 2000). It is suggested that these difficulties lead to a reduced capacity for orthographic-phonological mapping (i.e., well-established spelling-pronunciation links that allow words to be read with high efficiency). It is possible that a phonemic approach to spelling instruction and practice, which explicitly prompts in attention to grain sizes that range from the phoneme to syllable level (Ziegler & Goswami, 2005), may better to bind the phonology to orthography. This type of approach to spelling practice may be more beneficial to students with dyslexia in developing orthographic representations and building word-specific memory due to the binding of the words phonological form to its precise orthographic form via spelling (see Reed, 2012). For example, in a phonemic approach, an instructor would say (i.e., dictate) the target word to activate the phonological form of the word. The student would then spell the word and would be provided with immediate feedback from the instructor. This process could be further scaffolded by attending to single phonemes, onset-rimes, or syllables. This type of approach with immediate error-correction may better draw students’ attention to the graphophonemic portions, orthographic patterns, or morphemes in words compared with CCC.

This more explicit approach to spelling practice may also have benefits for upper elementary students who have difficulty reading multisyllabic words (Chetail et al., 2015; Muncer et al., 2014), like the words used in this study. When encountering an unfamiliar multisyllabic word, one must decode the letter string using phonological knowledge of orthographic units, but also assign the appropriate lexical stress that relies on integration of more complex morphological knowledge (Mundy & Carroll, 2012; Nagy et al., 2006; Ševa et al., 2009). In contrast to the self-managed approach involved in CCC, students may benefit more from more explicit instruction that calls students’ attention to letter units and spelling patterns within multisyllabic words that may improve how accurately and efficiently they read them in subsequent encounters.

Evaluating the Comparative Benefits of Spelling and Word Reading Practice

Regardless of the approach used to teach or practice spelling, there remains the possibility that spelling practice may not be superior to word reading practice in learning to read words. We reiterate that our study compared spelling and word reading practice in their benefits on students’ word reading skills, not spelling knowledge. Students in both conditions improved their ability to read the words targeted in decoding instruction. It may be that sufficient opportunities to practice reading words is enough to establish orthographic representations necessary to read words efficiently, without having to engage in a decoding strategy. Spelling instruction and practice is likely to strengthen one’s ability to spell words correctly, but it may not necessarily improve word reading over and above repeated opportunities to read words with feedback from a teacher or tutor. As discussed earlier, the ability to spell a word correctly involves more extensive and precise memory for the word’s graphophonemic and morphological patterns than the ability to read it. A complete and precise memory store of word spellings is not imperative to words with high levels of efficiency (i.e., “automaticity”; reading words without conscious effort) that is a hallmark of present conceptualizations of orthographic learning (Nation & Castles, 2017). This is evidenced by the fact that most proficient adult readers are prone to spelling mistakes and may need to apply relatively considerable cognitive and meta-cognitive effort to spell certain words correctly (e.g., commonly misspelled words such as receive, nauseous, accommodate, their, acquire, and congratulations), but are able to read the same words effortlessly when encountered in print. In our study, the word reading practice experienced by students in the Decoding condition may have provided at least a comparable level of exposure to foster orthographic-phonological connections as spelling practice for improving their ability to read the targeted words. Considerable questions remain, however, and additional studies are needed to determine the extent to which spelling practice benefits word reading compared with word reading practice for students with dyslexia, and what type of spelling instruction and practice is most beneficial. It is possible that such benefits are idiosyncratic.

An additional point of consideration is that our experiment held time constant across the two conditions, reflecting practice situations in which there is a finite (and often limited) period of time during a school day to implement an intervention. Because spelling a word almost always takes longer than reading it, the inclusion of spelling activities can inherently reduce the number of times a student can be exposed to a word in print, thus potentially resulting in fewer opportunities to respond compared with practice that only includes word reading. If spelling activities are included but intervention time is not flexible, it seems that one would have to accept a tradeoff of fewer word exposures for what, in theory, may bolster word learning. An appropriate subsequent experiment might hold word reading exposures constant across conditions and test whether the addition of spelling practice in a longer session improves word reading more than word reading practice alone.

Limitations and Future Directions

Several aspects (and limitations) of our study design should be considered when interpreting the findings. First, the very brief nature of our experiment was designed to test the relative benefit of spelling practice as a part of decoding instruction on a specific set of words, and was not intended to lead to generalized improvements in reading multisyllabic words. Nevertheless, its brevity may not have provided sufficient time for the spelling activities to result in the orthographic-phonological links we hypothesized would result in stronger word reading. Spelling words correctly is always more difficult than reading them, even for proficient readers, because the lack of a printed referent requires the recall of word-specific spellings from memory. Although beginning spellers can spell simple words accurately by relying on individual letters to spell words sound-by-sound, accurate spelling of longer and less phonetically regular words requires recalling larger letter combinations and word parts (Sharp et al., 2008). Moreover, while letter- and letter cluster-sound associations may improve bottom-up processes for reading words accurately and efficiently (i.e., easing recall of sub-word orthographic units), spelling skills may enhance top-down processes for reading words by strengthening students’ orthographic knowledge, thus resulting in more efficient orthographic-phonological links. In short, our spelling practice may have been too brief and not explicit enough to foster the orthographic-phonological mappings we hypothesized.

Second, although great care was taken to select the 60 words included on the Word Reading List and match them to 60 words on the Pseudoword Reading List, it is possible that certain spelling patterns recurred and influenced students’ readings. There is evidence that certain characteristics, such as words with more morphemes, may influence the accurate pronunciation of multisyllabic words by students with reading difficulties (see Kearns et al., 2016).

Third, this study allowed us to conduct a tightly controlled experiment of the benefit of spelling practice compared with word reading practice; however, the small-scale nature of the study did not allow for testing possible moderating variables, such as students’ existing morphological knowledge. Furthermore, while we engaged in rigorous training procedures and ongoing review of audio-recordings sessions to verify adherence, we did not systematically collect fidelity of implementation data. Finally, the study was conducted in a private school for students with dyslexia, and 98% of the students were White. Additional studies are needed with more diverse samples.

Furthermore experimental studies are needed to better understand the unique benefit of spelling practice, and CCC procedures specifically, for students in the upper elementary grades when dyslexia is most commonly identified and intensive interventions are most commonly implemented. Intervention time in schools is often limited; thus, there is a need to consider which intervention components optimize impacts for students. The delivery of effective instruction is especially important in the upper elementary years as students who have not attained proficiency by fourth grade rarely catch up across their school years (Brasseur-Hock et al., 2011; Francis et al., 1996; Moats, 1999; Vaughn et al., 2003). Students with reading difficulties spend less time reading outside of school than their peers (Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997), further reducing their overall exposure to words in text. They require substantially more exposures to words and practice with corrective feedback. The question remains: When allocating time during an intervention, what components lead to the greatest gains for students with dyslexia while remaining the most time-efficient? The question has significant implications because spelling activities take considerably more time within an intervention session. The findings from the study indicate that using intervention time for spelling practice using CCC does not result in stronger multisyllabic word reading compared with word reading practice for upper elementary students with dyslexia. More research on how to optimize reading interventions, including the role that spelling instruction and practice should play, is needed.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Jessica R. Toste

Nathan H. Clemens

Marissa J. Filderman

Brennan W. Chandler

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