Improving the spelling of students 10 to 13 years old: Teaching through the use of guided dictation
Learning to spell continues to be a difficult task for many students, and strongly shapes both their school experience and their success. In this context, it becomes crucial to study the effectiveness of methods intended to help students learn to spell. This study tested the effectiveness of teaching via guided dictations based on a medium that gives clues on the words to be written down, including the number of letters. This instructional approach is compared with traditional, non-guided dictation. The results suggest that, for students at a medium-low level of spelling ability, teaching using guided dictation is more effective than using traditional dictation. Students with very weak spelling ability progress in a similar fashion irrespective of the type of teaching employed, and students who are already proficient in spelling do not appear to exhibit any particular progress.