Orthographic Learning During Oral and Silent Reading

Abstract

This study examined orthographic learning in oral and silent reading conditions. Dutch third graders read, either aloud or silently, short texts containing novel target (pseudo) words. The acquisition of new word-specific orthographic knowledge was assessed several days later by comparing target spellings with homophonic spellings in tasks requiring orthographic choice, spelling, and naming. It was predicted that orthographic learning would be evident in both oral and silent conditions but stronger in the oral condition. As expected, orthographic learning was evident in both oral and silent conditions. This finding suggests that support for the self-teaching hypothesis of orthographic learning obtained in studies of unassisted oral reading can be generalized to the more common form of independent reading: silent reading. In addition, the results on the naming task provided some evidence for stronger orthographic learning during oral reading, but the two spelling tasks did not.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Afke Dijkstra, Mirte de Bokx, Karen Taal, and Deborah van de Wetering for their assistance with the collection of the data and Vanessa Martens for her help with the naming task.

Notes

¹This result should, perhaps, be treated with caution. It seems possible that this reading condition by word type interaction is caused by one possibly anomalous result: the lower reading speed in the two-exposure homophone spelling condition of oral reading. All the other values in Table 2 are comparable.