Is spelling acquired or learned?: a re-analysis of Rice (1897) and Cornman (1902)

• Autores: Stephen Krashen, Howard White
• Localización: ITL International Journal of Applied Linguistics, ISSN 0019-0810, ISSN-e 1783-1490, Nº. 91-92, 1991, págs. 1-48
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In this paper, we present a re-analysis, or "secondary analysis" of research results originally published over 80 years ago. A second look at this data is justified because the issues that it addresses are still far from settled: Is spelling learned implicitly or explicitly? In other terms: Is spelling "caught" or "taught"? (Peters, 1985), or is spelling "acquired" or "learned"? (Krashen, 1982).

    The two research reports we will re-analyzed provide a good opportunity for shelding some additional light on this question. The authors addressed a central issue, and, in our view, attempted to deal with this issue appropriately. As we shall see, subsequent studies have not improved on their methods. Also, in both cases, the authors presented a considerable amount of their data, data that to our knowledge has never been submitted to statistical analysis.

    In our re-analysis, we applied common statistical tests to both Rice's and Cornman's data. Our analysis, for the most part, confirms both Rice's and Cornman's claims that formal instruction in spelling has limited effects. There are, however, some surprises, some instances in which statistical analysis reveals somewhat different results from those claimed by Rice and Cornman.

    In the final section of this report, we attempt to account for the results of our re-analysis in terms of two central hypotheses, claiming that both implicit and explicit learning of spelling take place, but that the former is much more powerful. We also attempt to relate our hypotheses to more current studies of spelling.