The effects of different early word spelling practices on reading and spelling were studied in 145 five-year-old children. Three experimental treatments were designed to mimic different teaching activities by having children practice invented spelling (IS group), copied spelling (CS group), or invented spelling with feedback on correct orthography (ISFB group), whereas a control group only made drawings (D group). The main results indicate that (a) children in the ISFB group obtained significantly higher scores in the orthographic aspects of spelling and word reading than children in the IS and CS groups, (b) the superiority of the ISFB group did not extend to phonological aspects of reading and spelling, and (c) the performance of the IS and CS groups was not significantly better than that of the D group. These results suggest that neither invented spelling alone nor copied spelling alone is as effective as the practice of invented spelling combined with exposure to correct spelling.
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Rieben et al. (2005) studied this question.
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