Promoting Early Literacy via Practicing Invented Spelling: A Comparison of Different Mediation Routines

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Reading Research Quarterly, 48(3)pp. 221–236 | doi:10.1002/rrq.48 © 2013 International Reading Association

A B S T R A C T

The present study compared the effects of different mediation routines pro-vided to kindergartners from families of low socioeconomic status on the students’ invented spelling attempts and on their gains obtained on spelling and other early literacy skills (letter naming, sounds of letters, word segmen-tation, and word decoding). The effects of the spelling mediation routines were assessed beyond the contribution of the students’ self-regulation and baseline literacy levels. Participants (N = 197, mean age = 5.5 years) were randomly divided into four groups within each of 10 classrooms. Three groups underwent individual intervention sessions of inventing five words’ spellings twice weekly for 16 weeks. Group 1 experienced process–product mediation, providing information both on the process of inventing spelling (sound-to-grapheme mapping) and on the product (naming the letters and spelling the word). Group 2 experienced product mediation only. Group 3 experienced spelling with no mediation. Group 4 (no intervention) experienced the regu-lar kindergarten curriculum. Results indicate that the process–product medi-ation routine was most productive for all students, both in the short and long term, beyond their self-regulation and baseline early literacy levels. Students who started with higher self-regulation and poorer early literacy skills gained more from training. The results question the assumption, shared by previous studies, that promotion of invented spelling should be by providing students with one-step-up solutions to compare with those they produced, because the process–product mediation was most productive for students of a wide range of spelling levels.

For the last decade or more, in many preschools and kindergar-tens around the world, children have been encouraged to write. Nevertheless, only recently have a few studies appeared on how

to enhance spelling development at this young age and what young children might gain from learning to write. In literate societies, many children show an interest in written marks and attempt to produce their own writings long before they are formally taught to write or read. This naturally occurring phenomenon emerges between 3 and 4 years of age (Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1982; Neumann, Hood, & Neumann, 2009; Read, 1971, 1975; Tolchinsky, 2003).

The information about the written system that children use in their writing gradually changes with age. Initially, young children produce marks that capture the general features of writing, like seg-mentation into units and linearity (Levin & Bus, 2003; Tolchinsky, 2003). Next, the marks they use adopt the shapes of letters, but the printed letters are unrelated to the sounds of the target words (Gombert & Fayol, 1992; Levin, Share, & Shatil, 1996). Children begin to understand the written code when they start to represent the sounds within words by phonetically relevant letters. Initial sounds in words

Iris Levin

Dorit AramTel Aviv University, Israel

Promoting Early Literacy via Practicing Invented Spelling: A Comparison of Different Mediation Routines

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are represented phonetically with letters earlier than final or medial sounds (Bowman & Treiman, 2002; Cardoso-Martins, Resende, & Rodrigues, 2002; Levin et al., 1996). In some languages, such as English and Hebrew, the orthographic principles underlying graphophonemic mappings are particularly obscure with respect to vowels, and children therefore use medial vowels later than consonants in spelling (Levin et al., 1996; Tangel & Blachman, 1992).

In contrast with traditional practices that teach reading before spelling, Chomsky (1971) proposed that children should be taught first to spell and then to read. Indeed, studies have shown that learning to spell facili-tates phonemic awareness and learning to read (Ehri & Wilce, 1987). Teaching phonemic awareness through spelling was shown to be a major contributor to reading acquisition (Ehri et al., 2001). Currently, invented spell-ing activities have become a common practice in many classrooms around the world, from preschool onward (e.g., Aram, 2006). Proponents of invented spelling claim that by inventing word spellings, a child actively explores the written system (Bissex, 1980; Burns & Casbergue, 1992; Clay, 1975; Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1982). However, little is known about how different mediation routines promote invented spelling and related early literacy skills. Our study focused on this question.

Three experimental studies that examined the impact of invented spelling routines on kindergartners’ literacy acquisition inspired the current study (Martins & Silva, 2006; Ouellette & Sénéchal, 2008; Rieben, Ntamakiliro, Gonthier, & Fayol, 2005). Despite varia-tions in these studies’ experimental designs, implement-ed trainings, and participants’ language, they all reached the conclusion that certain practices are better than oth-ers for promoting kindergartners’ word spelling and that these routines also enhance other literacy skills. Two of these studies shared the assumption that teach-ing is most effective when it is developmentally appro-priate (Martins & Silva, 2006; Ouellette & Sénéchal, 2008). Such teaching starts by examining children’s strategy in solving a problem and confronting them with a slightly more developmentally advanced strategy. By comparing their solution with a slightly more advanced one, children become capable of progressing to the next developmental phase. This approach coin-cides with the principle of teaching within the zone of proximal development proposed by the Vygotsky school of thought (e.g., Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch & Kanner, 1992), which was supported by experimental research (Connor, Morrison, & Katch, 2004) and curriculum-based studies (Connor et al., 2009).

Through their study with Portuguese-speaking pre-schoolers, Martins and Silva (2006) developed a spelling training procedure based on Ferreiro and Teberosky’s (1982) model of spelling development that had been

supported for some Roman languages (Pontecorvo, 1996; Rego, 1999; Tolchinsky, 2003). Ferreiro and Teberosky claimed that children learn first to spell words by writing one letter per syllable, ignoring the sound value for which each letter stands. Later, children spell words with a few letters that mark the required sounds, with or without irrelevant letters. They fail to use all the required letters, not only because they have limited knowledge of the sounds that letters mark but also because of their difficulty in segmenting words into sounds. Finally, children learn to spell words using each letter for the required sound.

Martins and Silva (2006) divided the children into three stages according to their invented spellings at the pretest interval. Children classified at the first stage spelled words presyllabically; the number of letters they used was unrelated to the number of syllables in the word, and the letters they used were unrelated to the word’s sounds. Children at the second stage spelled words syl-labically without phonetization; they used one letter per syllable, but the letters were unrelated to the required sounds. Children at the third stage spelled words syllabically with phonetization; they used one letter per syllable, and some or all of the letters were related to the required sounds.

Training consisted of asking children to choose the better spelling of each word—between their own and that of a virtual child spelling at one stage higher (Mar-tins & Silva, 2006). The training was remarkably suc-cessful. Among the trained children, all presyllabic spellers exhibited syllabic spelling without phonetiza-tion in the posttest, and all syllabic spellers without phonetization exhibited syllabic spelling with phoneti-zation in the posttest. Differently put, all of the trained children grasped the principle underlying the higher stage spellings to which they had been exposed and applied that principle consistently across words. Among the control group that underwent no training, no child progressed on spelling.

Although these outcomes of training appear excep-tional, the findings strongly suggest that the training methodology was far from optimal. Exposing presyl-labic spellers to correct spellings could have led some or many children to understand not only that words with more syllables are written with more letters but also that different sounds are marked with different letters. Like-wise, exposing syllabic spellers without phonetization to correct spellings could have taught some or many chil-dren how to segment words into sounds and thereby how to spell many sounds with the required letters. Hence, it is quite probable that many of the trained chil-dren could have moved ahead more than one stage had they been exposed to more information about correct spelling. Nonetheless, these children’s limited improve-ments on spelling did coincide with their development


Promoting Early Literacy via Practicing Invented Spelling: A Comparison of Different Mediation Routines | 223

of phonemic awareness: The training groups that were more advanced on posttest spelling were also higher on posttest phonemic awareness.

Ouellette and Sénéchal (2008) trained English-speaking kindergartners to spell words at one higher level than their own invented spellings, according to a scale developed by Tangel and Blachman (1992) that had been supported for English and Hebrew (Levin et al., 1996; Treiman & Bourassa, 2000). On this scale, chil-dren first tend to spell words with random letters unre-lated to the words they are asked to spell. Then, they spell words with one letter, often the initial letter of the word, and continue with random letters. Next, they often use the initial and final letters in the word, along with random letters. All of the consonants are spelled next, and only later are medial vowels introduced.

In Ouellette and Sénéchal’s (2008) study, after the students spelled each word their own way, the experi-menter copied their spelling and introduced a single change typifying more advanced spellers. Often, the experimenter’s spelling replaced an incorrect letter with a required letter or added a missing letter. Random let-ters used by students continued appearing in the experi-menter’s spelling for at most four sessions out of nine and later were deleted. According to this procedure, many of the students were never presented with the cor-rect spellings. After receiving the experimenter’s feed-back, students were asked to spell the same word again. The f indings showed that the students’ spelling improved from pretest to posttest, more than did the spellings of the control groups that were trained on pho-nological awareness or on drawing pictures.

However, as admitted by the authors, the difference in improvement rates between groups was modest, indi-cating that the training was not sufficiently advanta-geous. Students who spelled words with random letters did not assume that these were the required letters, but time and again, they were exposed to the experimenter’s spellings that included them. Further, students who suc-ceeded in using one or more of the required letters in their spelling, and probably could gain from being pre-sented with the correct spelling of the entire word, were shown only partially correct spellings. Despite the mod-est improvement on spelling, it coincided with growth in some skills: phonological and orthographic aware-ness, reading of words used in the training, and pace of learning to recognize printed words. Yet, training did not promote reading of words that were not included in the training, suggesting that it did not improve students’ ability to use graphophonemic mappings to read.

Rieben et al. (2005) compared improvement on spell-ing in four matched groups of French-speaking kinder-gartners. In the first group, after the student invented the spelling of a word, it was spelled correctly by the experimenter, who verbally clarified the orthographic

rule underlying this spelling. Orthographic rules referred to inconsistent spelling of the same sound across words and to silent letters, major obstacles of spelling in French. However, the explanation of the correct spelling was incomplete: It ignored graphophonemic mappings underlying the alphabetic written code. Thus, a student who spelled a word with random letters, with or without a few letters marking required sounds in the word, was shown the correct spelling with no explanation about the graphophonemic mappings. In the other three groups, the students spelled words without feedback, copied words spelled by the experimenter, or drew pictures. The first group improved in spelling more than all the other groups, which did not differ from one another. Improvement in the first group was limited to ortho-graphic spelling and orthographic reading (e.g., using silent letters) but did not refer to graphophonemic spell-ing, thereby showing that gains were restricted to the type of explanation provided. This outcome suggests that the effect of the training program was limited because explanations focused on orthographic rules rather than the alphabetic code underlying spelling and reading.

To address the limitations of the previous training methodologies, the current study analyzed the contribu-tion of two different types of spelling mediation to four groups of kindergartners’ spelling and related literacy skills in Hebrew. In the process–product mediation group, after the student invented the spelling of a dic-tated word using magnetic letters, the experimenter explained the implicit and explicit processes involved in inventing spelling step by step and illustrated these steps. The processes included segmenting the word into sounds, connecting each sound with a letter name, selecting the appropriate magnetic letters, and naming and putting them in a row to create the word’s spelling. The mediation ended with the experimenter reaching the correct spelling and uttering the spelled word. Then, the letters were removed, and the student was asked to spell that word again. In the product mediation group, after the student invented the spelling of a dic-tated word, the experimenter selected the appropriate magnetic letters, named them, placed them in a row to create the word’s spelling, and declared the spelled word. Then, the letters were removed, and the student was asked to spell that word again. This mediation mimics what caregivers often do when asked by young children to spell words. The caregiver writes the letters and fre-quently also names them without providing the reason-ing underlying the letters’ choice (Aram & Levin, 2011).

These two mediation groups were compared with two control groups. In the no-mediation group, the stu-dent invented the spelling of each word twice without being exposed to any mediation. These students could improve in spelling because their frequent involvement



with invented spellings could raise their interest in print or even encourage them to ask adults about information on printed material. In the no-intervention group, the students were not involved in the intervention and con-tinued performing class activities. These students could improve in spelling because of the learning taking place in the classroom and at home.

We hypothesized that improvement from pretest to posttest among students on all literacy levels would be highest in the process–product mediation group, followed by the product mediation group, the no- mediation group, and the no-intervention group, in descending order. Fur-thermore, we expected that improvement in spelling would coincide with improvement in the other related literacy skills: word decoding, word segmentation, sounds of letters, and letter naming.

We questioned whether students on all literacy knowledge levels at pretest would improve to a similar extent from pretest to posttest. On the one hand, stu-dents with higher initial knowledge may possibly be expected to gain more from training because they are better learners or because their advanced knowledge allows them to better follow and assimilate the training. This expectation was supported by Robbins and Ehri (1994), who exposed kindergartners to new words via repeated storybook reading. The students who entered their intervention with a richer vocabulary learned more from exposure to the storybook than did their counterparts with a poorer vocabulary. Perhaps those with a richer vocabulary were better learners in general or learners of vocabulary in particular. Moreover, their vocabulary or text comprehension probably allowed them to understand the story better and hence to derive the meaning of new words from the linguistic context (Robbins & Ehri, 1994; Sternberg & Powell, 1983).

On the other hand, it seems reasonable to expect that students with lower initial knowledge may gain more from the intervention because the discrepancy be-tween their knowledge and that provided by training is greater. Furthermore, if many children with lower ini-tial knowledge are growing up in homes that are rela-tively less developmentally supportive, they may gain more from the training than those whose homes already have been more supportive. This expectation was borne out in previous studies (Ramani & Siegler, 2011; Siegler & Ramani, 2009), where preschoolers from low and middle-high socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds were trained on numerical knowledge. The researchers concluded that children with lower initial numerical knowledge learned more from training. Their findings were robust, as they could not be explained by unreli-able measures or regression to the mean.

The literature on improving literacy via invented spelling has ignored characteristics of the children’s learning process, despite the links found between such

learner characteristics and literacy in preschool and kindergarten across cultures and writing systems (Chung & McBride-Chang, 2011; McClelland, Acock, & Morrison, 2006; Wanless et al., 2011). We chose to examine the effect of students’ self-regulation on pro-moting literacy inasmuch as the process of inventing spelling demands a high level of self-regulation. Invent-ing spelling is a multilevel circular process that involves segmenting a word into sounds, addressing the initial sound, mapping it onto a letter name, recognizing a let-ter shape carrying that name, producing it, turning back to word segmentation, and so on. To accomplish such a process, students must be motivated to complete complex tasks in a systematic and organized way, to fol-low the rules of others and eventually internalize them, and to be resistant to internal and external distractions. A recent study revealed that children use self-regulating inner speech that monitors parts of the process while inventing spelling (Aram, Abiri, & Elad, 2013). We expected that students with highly self-regulated learn-ing would gain more from mediated spelling invention.

Our study focused on learning to spell via letter–sound mappings, the basic code underlying alphabetic writing systems. The writing system in Modern Hebrew is an abjad type of alphabetic system, where all letters stand for consonants but four letters can represent vow-els as well. These four letters mark vowels deficiently, as each marks more than one vocal sound and stands for vowels only in some word positions (Ravid, 2006, 2012). Early on, Hebrew-speaking children often use letters only for consonants in their invented spellings. Later, they also include some letters for vowels in some of the required positions in the word (Levin et al., 1996). Learning to spell vowels in Hebrew is a lengthy process, and even literate adults often fail in this task (Ravid, 2012; Ravid & Kubi, 2003).

Hebrew-speaking kindergartners, when asked to report the sounds of printed letters and instructed to provide the consonant sound, often respond with a CV sound comprising a consonant and a vowel (Levin, Shatil-Carmon, & Asif-Rave, 2006). This finding coin-cides with the tendency of Hebrew-speaking kinder-gartners to respond with the initial CV sound when asked to isolate the initial phoneme of spoken words with a CVC structure (Levin et al., 2006). Similarly, when asked to segment spoken words with a CVC struc-ture into two parts, kindergartners and second graders keep the body (CV) intact and respond either with two biphonemic units CV–CV or with the body–coda (CV–C), where the former is more prevalent among the kindergartners and the latter more prevalent among the second graders (Share & Blum, 2005).

The sound structure of the Hebrew language and orthography has been used to explain the aforementioned findings concerning the phonological performance of



Hebrew speakers. The difficulty among Hebrew-speaking children to isolate phonemic sounds (a difficulty shared with children speaking many other languages) probably ref lects the fact that Hebrew does not include words comprised of a single phoneme (Levin et al., 2006; Share & Blum, 2005). The relatively easy access to the CV sound probably reflects the relative prevalence of syllables with a CV structure in Hebrew, besides those with a CVC structure (Share & Blum, 2005). Hebrew orthography, and specifically that of the vowels, emphasizes the unity between C and V (in a CV sequence). In addition, the diacritics that serve as optional markings of vowels appear beneath the preceding consonant so a consonant and a following vowel comprise one vertical unit.

In sum, our study compared the promotion of spell-ing and related literacy skills in four groups of kinder-gartners from a low SES background. We chose to work with children recruited from low SES families because they are at greater risk of having difficulties with learn-ing to read and spell in school. The strongest improve-ment was expected in the process–product mediation group, followed in descending order by the product mediation, no-mediation, and no-intervention groups. Unlike previous research, students at all spelling levels in each group were exposed to the same intervention. We compared those who started with low or high knowledge to determine who gained more from train-ing. We also predicted that students with highly self-regulated learning would gain more from training than would their counterparts with lower self-regulation. Group effects were examined after controlling for the students’ baseline literacy and self-regulation levels by hierarchical regressions.

MethodParticipantsA total of 197 kindergartners, 88 boys and 109 girls, took part in the study. Their ages ranged from 5 years 1 month to 6 years 9 months, with a mean age of 5 years 6 months (SD = 4 months). They were recruited from five kindergartens, each including two classrooms and located in urban neighborhoods inhabited by low SES families. SES was determined by the Fostering Index assessed by the Israeli Ministry of Education, based on parental education, parental occupation, income, and so forth. Low-SES mothers in Israel are often married and live with their spouses. In our sample, 77% of the mothers were married, 14% divorced, and 4% single or widowed. Low-SES families in Israel typically have more children than higher SES families (Aram, Korat, & Levin, 2006). Our sample’s distribution by number of children per family was one (10%), two (38%), three (36%), four (11%), and five or more (5%). Distribution by

participating child’s birth order was first-born (37%), second-born (32%), third-born (24%), fourth-born (6%), or later (1%). In the homes, 76% of the families spoke Hebrew, 11% Russian or both Russian and Hebrew, 3% Bukharin and Hebrew (typifying immigrants from Uzbekistan), and 2% Amharic and Hebrew (typifying immigrants from Ethiopia).

The children were randomly divided in each kin-dergarten into four nearly equal groups, totaling 50 children in the process–product mediation, 48 in the product mediation group, 51 in the no-mediation group, and 48 in the no-intervention control group. No signifi-cant differences emerged between the four groups for either gender, c2(3) = 6.57, p = .09, or age, F(3,193) = 0.59, p = .62.

Initially, 207 children started the program, but 10 children (5%) were excluded from the final sample because they moved to different kindergartens during the school year, were absent for long periods through-out the intervention, or refused to participate in the study. This low percentage of dropout is considered acceptable.

DesignThe program included six phases:

1. Pretest assessments: Completed by each child over two sessions held within one week

2. First round of intervention: Eight weeks, including two individual sessions per week

3. Midterm assessments: Identical to the pretest4. Vacation: A one-month break5. Second round of intervention: Eight weeks,

including two individual sessions per week6. Posttest assessments: Identical to the pretest and

midterm

AssessmentInstruments included a teacher-reported demographic scale, a teacher rating of the student’s self-regulation, and five measures of the student’s early literacy skills.

Demographic QuestionnaireKindergarten teachers provided the student’s date of birth, sex, and birth order; the mother’s marital status; and the family’s number of children and language spo-ken at home.

Self-RegulationSelf-regulation was measured by the short version of a teachers’ questionnaire developed by Bronson, Tivnan, and Seppanen (1995) and factor analyzed by Ponitz, McClelland, Matthews, and Morrison (2009) in a study on



kindergartners. Teachers have been found to be reliable and valid informants on students’ self-regulation ( Wanless et al., 2011). Our items belonged to the first factor labeled “classroom behavioral regulation,” comprising six items such as “The child invests time in performing a task to complete it in the best way he or she can,” “The child completes learning tasks involving multiple steps in an organized way,” and “The child concentrates when working; he or she is not distracted by activities in the setting.” Teachers rated each item on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from never (1) to always (5). Cronbach’s a (reliability) assessed for our entire sample was .94.

Early Literacy SkillsThe five measures of the students’ literacy examined let-ter names, letters for sounds, segmentation, spelling, and decoding.

Letter NamesTo measure students’ knowledge of letter names, the stu-dents received a card presenting 22 letters printed in a ran-dom fixed order in four rows. These letters represent all Hebrew letters excluding five final letters (i.e., letters hav-ing a special shape at the final position of a word, acquired late). The students were instructed to point at the letters according to the direction of reading in Hebrew, from right to left and from top to bottom, and to name each (e.g., “Which letter is this?”). Students who missed a letter or skipped a row were assisted by the experimenter. The letter names score consisted of the number of letters named correctly out of 22. For the pretest, midterm, and posttest assessments, the Cronbach’s αs were .94, .95, and .95, respectively, and the Cohen’s Kappas for inter-judge reliabilities were .99, 1, and 1, respectively.

Letters for SoundsThe students were asked to name the letters that mark 16 CV sounds (e.g., “What is the name of the letter that makes the sound /so/?”). These comprised all 16 of the consonantal sounds that appear at the beginning of Hebrew words. The five major vocalic sounds were ran-domly attached to the consonantal sounds. The letters for sounds score consisted of the number of correct let-ter names out of 16. For the pretest, midterm, and post-test assessments, the Cronbach’s αs were .89, .92, and .91, respectively, and the Cohen’s Kappas for inter-judge reliabilities were .99, 1, and 1, respectively.

Word SegmentationThe experimenter orally uttered 12 words that equally represented the three phonological structures of CV–CVC, CV–CV–CVC, and CVC–CVC, and the students were asked to segment each word into its sounds. These words differed from those included in the spelling and decoding tests. Words with limited phonological

structures were selected because young children’s spelling errors often stem from their difficulties in segmenting words into sounds. The words included only CV and CVC syllables, which are prominent in Hebrew, and we repeat-ed the same structures to support students’ learning of segmentation.

Instruction started with the experimenter’s oral seg-mentation of three words, one for each phonological structure. For CV–CVC words like lexem (bread), the segmentation provided was le-xe-m. For CV–CV–CVC words such as shamenet (sour cream), the segmentation was sha-me-ne-t. For CVC–CVC words such as jarkan (greengrocer), the segmentation was ja-r-ka-n. Concom-itantly with the oral production of each sound from the word, the experimenter placed one colored cube on a board, thereby concretizing the number of segments per word. For each word, the student was required to repeat the segmentation (produce one sound per consonant) and perform the corresponding cube placement. Errors were corrected only once. Thus, the word segmentation score consisted of the number of words segmented according to instruction (i.e., representing the correct number of letters for that word) out of 12. For the pretest, midterm, and posttest, the Cronbach’s αs were .86, .89, and .88, respectively, and the Cohen’s Kappas for inter-judge reliabilities were .99, .99, and 1, respectively.

Word SpellingThe spelling test began by asking the student to spell his or her own name with 4.5 cm2 magnetic cards, each displaying a printed letter, as a warm-up exercise. Most students spelled their name correctly, and name spellings were not included in the data analysis. The students were asked to spell 12 dictated words using these magnetic cards. Each dictated word comprised three or four letters and was to be spelled in a maximum of six blank spaces located on the bottom row of a magnetized board. The board’s upper rows displayed a bank of 22 letters (representing all Hebrew letters except the five final letters) randomly presented across eight columns in six rows.

The 12 dictated words were mundane nouns consid-ered familiar to kindergartners as oral lexemes and were conventionally spelled words where letters stood only for consonantal sounds. These words differed from those that the students were asked to segment and decode, but equally represented the same three phono-logical structures: CV–CVC (e.g., sapar [hairdresser] spelled in the Hebrew alphabet as samex + pej + reish), CV–CV–CVC (e.g., xazeret [horseradish] spelled as xet + zajin + reish + taf), and CVC–CVC (e.g., mishkal [weight] spelled as mem + shin + kuf + lamed).

The word spelling score consisted of the number of letters that were either correct or homophonic, out of the possible total of 44. The decision to count homophonic



letters as correct was based on our goal to teach students the graphophonemic code of spelling rather than which letters are spelled in specific words. Moreover, spelling errors using homophonic letters appear even among high schoolers (Ravid, 2006, 2012). For the pretest, mid-term, and posttest, the Cronbach’s αs were .95, .96, and .97, respectively, and the Cohen’s Kappas for inter-judge reliabilities were .99, .98, and .99, respectively.

Word DecodingThe students were shown 12 words and asked to read them. These words differed from those that the students were asked to spell and segment, but equally represented the same three phonological structures. Very few students were able to decode even a single word correctly (see also Levin, Aram, Tolchinsky, & McBride-Chang, 2013), partly because no vocal sound was marked by a letter in the dic-tated word, as is often the case in Hebrew words. The students applied three main strategies—naming letters, producing separate sounds that matched the letters, or reading a word or nonword onto the letters—and varied in their level of applying them. The students named no let-ters or some letters correctly, produced no sounds or some sounds that matched the letters, and read a word or non-word that respected none, some, or all of the printed letters. Thus, the word decoding score consisted of the number of words decoded correctly out of 12.

We counted as correct decoding either responses that produced sounds that matched all the letters in the word (e.g., producing /sa-la-ka/ sounds for samex + lamed + kuf instead of reading selek [beetroot]) or that read a word or nonword that matched all the letters (e.g., reading the word maspera [hair salon] onto mem + samex + pei + reish instead of mesaper [storyteller], reading the nonword arnuku onto aleph + reish + nun + kuf instead of arnak [handbag]). For the pretest, mid-term, and posttest, the Cronbach’s αs were .94, .95, and .95, respectively, and the Cohen’s Kappas for inter-judge reliabilities were .80, .90, and .91, respectively.

The Intervention: Mediation RoutinesThe first eight-week round of intervention comprised 16 individual training sessions lasting about 10–15 min-utes each, and the second eight-week round comprised another 16 individual training sessions of the same length. Two experimenters were involved in each session: One administered the spelling dictation with the required mediation, and the other documented the student’s responses in writing as accurately as possible.

In each training session, the students were asked to spell five dictated words that included the three pho-nological structures: three CV–CVC words, one CV–CV–CVC word, and one CVC–CVC word. In both sessions in the same week, the students practiced five

different words, yielding a total of 80 words dictated in each eight-week round. To allow analysis of performance on trained versus untrained words, half of the words used in the word spelling test and half of the words used in the word decoding test were included in the training (six spelling and six decoding words used per round). Hence, the grand total of words was 148 (160 – 12).

The students were asked to spell the words with magnetic cards on the same board used during the word spelling test, which displayed a bank of 22 randomly presented letters on its upper rows. For each dictated word, the students selected letters and spelled the word in a maximum of six blank spaces located on the board’s bottom row. After spelling each word once, the students were treated differently in the three intervention groups (process–product mediation, product mediation, and no-mediation) as described next. Then, for students in all three groups, the letters were removed, and the stu-dents were asked to spell that word again. It should be noted that when asked to spell the same word again, some students merely repeated their first spelling, regardless of its accuracy, whereas others worked afresh on inventing the second spelling.

Process–Product Training ProcedureIn the process–product mediation group, the experi-menter explained the implicit and explicit processes involved in inventing spelling step by step and illustrat-ed these steps until reaching correct spelling: segment-ing the word into sounds, connecting each sound with a letter name, selecting the appropriate magnetic letters, naming and putting them in a row to create the word’s spelling, and uttering the spelled word. This mediation aimed to assist students in developing and monitoring the process involved in inventing spelling.

1. Experimenter (E): “Please use letters to spell the word gader [fence].”

2. The student completes his or her invented spelling of the word on the bottom row of the board and is then asked to move the letters back to the upper rows.

3. E: “Now I will spell the word gader. Before I spell the word gader, I segment it with my fingers.” She positions her closed fist in front of the child and lifts one finger each time she utters a sound so when she completes segmentation, the number of sounds is shown by the number of lifted fingers (three fingers for /ga-de-r/).

4. E: “For each sound, we need a letter.” To spell the word on the bottom row letter by letter, she utters a sound and the letter’s name for each letter one at a time while selecting this letter from the bank and placing it on the bottom row. E: “/ga/. Gimel.” She puts the gimel on the bottom row in the first



square to the right (Hebrew reads right to left). E: “/de/. Dalet.” She puts the dalet to the left of the gimel. E: “/r/. Reish.” She puts the reish to the left of the dalet. Then, she underlines the spelled word with her finger and utters, “Gader.”

5. She waits for about two seconds, allowing the student to look at the correctly spelled word, and then she returns the letters randomly to the upper rows of the board. She instructs the student to spell the word again by segmenting it: “Now, you segment the word gader into sounds again and match a letter to each sound.” The student is expected to place a closed fist on the table and segment the word into sounds while concomitantly lifting fingers. If the student errs, the experimenter repeats the correct segmentation and lifts the student’s fingers. No further assistance is provided.

6. E: “Now, spell gader. For each sound, place the correct letter.” When the student’s spelling is completed, the experimenter briefly expresses her approval (e.g., “Fine”) and goes on to the spelling of the next word.

Product Training ProcedureIn the product mediation group, the experimenter illustrates the spelling of a word by naming each letter and using it to create the correct spelling. This media-tion aimed to mimic caregivers’ typical actions that do not provide the reasoning underlying letter choice.

1. E: “Please use letters to spell the word gader.”2. The student completes his or her invented spelling of

the word on the bottom row of the board and is then asked to move the letters back to the upper rows.

3. E: “Now, I will spell gader. We spell gader with gimel.” She puts the gimel on the bottom row in the first square to the right. E: “Dalet.” She puts the dalet to the left of the gimel. E: “Reish.” She puts the reish to the left of the dalet. Then, she underlines the spelled word with her finger and utters, “Gader.”

4. She waits for about two seconds, allowing the student to look at the spelled word, and then she returns the letters randomly to the upper rows of the board. She instructs the student to spell the word again with no further explanation: “Now, you spell gader again.” When the student’s spelling is completed, the experimenter brief ly expresses her approval (e.g., “Fine”) and goes on to the spelling of the next word.

No-Mediation ProcedureIn the no-mediation group, the experimenter asks the student to spell each word twice without providing any feedback.

1. E: “Please spell gader.”2. When the student’s invented spelling is completed,

the experimenter briefly expresses her approval and asks the student to spell the word again: “Fine. Remove the letters. Now, spell gader again.”

3. When the second spelling is completed, the experimenter briefly expresses her approval (e.g., “Fine”) and goes on to the spelling of the next word.

ProcedureThe experimenters entered the kindergartens after obtaining consent from the Tel Aviv University Helsinki Committee, the Israel Ministry of Education, the 10 kindergarten teachers, and the children’s parents. While the students in the three intervention groups (process–product mediation, product mediation, and no-mediation) received training sessions, the students in the no-intervention group continued performing class activities. At each of the three assessment intervals (pretest, midterm, and posttest), data were collected in two individual 15-minute sessions. In the first session, the students were tested on letter names, letters for sounds, word spelling, and word decoding. In the second session, they were tested on word segmentation, word spelling, and word decoding.

Internal reliabilities were measured by Cronbach’s αs at the pretest, midterm, and posttest intervals. Inter-judge reliabilities were calculated by Cohen’s Kappas based on two judges’ independent coding of 40 ran-domly selected tests that equally represented the four intervention groups and the 10 classrooms. The judges were blind to the students’ performance on other tasks and to their group assignment. The Cohen’s Kappas were calculated for pretest, midterm, and posttest. Dif-ferent trained judges were involved in coding different tasks and different tests, determined by convenience.

The testing and the intervention sessions took place in a quiet room in the kindergarten. The student and two experimenters sat at three sides of a low table on low chairs. The experimenter to the right of the student con-ducted the interview, and the experimenter to the left documented the responses. In their free time, the kinder-garten teachers completed the demographic and self- regulation questionnaires for each participating student.

ResultsPredicting Students’ ProgressTable 1 presents the four groups’ means and standard deviations in percentages for scores on each of the five tasks—letter names, letters for sounds, word seg-mentation, word spelling, and word decoding—at



pretest, midterm, and posttest. Five one-way ANOVAs were carried out on the pretest scores of the five tasks. Results showed that no significant differences emerged on the pretest scores among the four groups on letter names, letters for sounds, word segmentation, word spelling, and word decoding, respectively: F(3,193) = 0.05, 0.70, 0.48, 0.14, and 0.08, all ps > .05.

Note that the pretest scores were collected in the second trimester of kindergarten, when all students were older than 5 years of age and in their last year

before entering first grade. Consequently, many of them, although definitely not all of them, were already aware of the alphabetic principle and had some mastery of literacy skills. On average, the students succeeded on slightly more than half of the items on letter names, let-ters for sounds, and word segmentation. They succeed-ed, on average, on slightly less than half of the letters on word spelling, even though both correct and homopho-nic letters were equally scored as correct. They coped particularly poorly on word decoding, succeeding on

TABLE 1Means and Standard Deviations (in percentages) of Scores on the Five Literacy Tasks by Group and Interval (N = 197)

Task

Interval

Pretest Mean (SD) Midterm Mean (SD) Posttest Mean (SD)

Letter names

Process–product mediation 65.09 (31.64) 74.73 (29.47) 81.00 (27.02)

Product mediation 66.57 (29.94) 70.64 (28.28) 75.47 (28.87)

No mediation 64.44 (30.89) 70.41 (30.18) 75.31 (27.89)

No intervention 66.29 (30.05) 69.22 (31.47) 76.70 (29.45)

Letters for sounds



No mediation 64.58 (27.52) 70.83 (28.58) 75.37 (24.86)

No intervention 57.68 (27.75) 64.45 (30.54) 68.88 (27.97)

Word segmentation



No mediation 67.78 (15.00) 74.78 (14.56) 75.67 (13.23)

No intervention 66.76 (11.64) 70.93 (14.31) 74.43 (14.53)

Word spelling



No mediation 50.19 (26.36) 56.23 (30.42) 60.60 (32.44)

No intervention 46.90 (25.21) 51.50 (26.99) 57.29 (29.19)

Word decoding



No mediation 22.22 (33.61) 33.01 (37.60) 38.07 (38.20)

No intervention 21.18 (31.84) 25.69 (35.76) 33.16 (39.26)

Note. Process–product mediation n = 50. Product mediation n = 48. No-mediation n = 51. No-intervention n = 48.



only about 20% of the words, although word decoding was considered correct when the student did not actu-ally decode the word but rather correctly applied graphophonemic mappings in attempted decoding. Further, the data in Table 1 suggest that on each task and in all groups, including the no-intervention group of students who attended their regular curriculum, the students progressed in their scores from pretest to mid-term and thereafter to posttest.

Student characteristics and group effects on progress from pretest to midterm and to posttest were assessed via two 2-step hierarchical regressions that were conducted for each of the five early literacy tasks. On each task, the first regression predicted short-term progress from pretest to midterm (see Table 2), and the second predicted long-term progress from pretest to posttest (see Table 3). Progress to midterm was calculated by midterm minus pretest scores, and progress to posttest by posttest minus pretest scores. In each regression, the first step examined the contribution of students’ characteristics: their self-regulation and pretest scores on each of the assessed literacy measures. We expected better progress among students with higher self-regulation than among those with lower self-regulation, and in line with the mixed findings from previous research, we questioned whether students with lower or higher early literacy pretest scores would gain more. Note that pretest scores referred to the predicted skill (e.g., when predicting gains on letter naming, the pretest scores taken into

account were on letter naming). The second step compared the groups’ progress (from pretest to midterm, or pretest to posttest) after controlling for self-regulation and pretest scores. Our interpretation of the hierarchical regressions will focus on the second step, where the contribution of each variable is uniquely assessed after controlling for the rest.

We performed a series of regressions comparing the gains of each group to the other groups from pretest to midterm and from pretest to posttest. The regressions predicting progress from pretest to midterm (see Table 2) and from pretest to posttest (see Table 3) yielded quite consistent results across tasks. From pretest to midterm, students with higher self-regulation gained more on the letter names, letters for sounds, word spelling, and word decoding tasks than did their lower self-regulating coun-terparts (see Table 2). Similarly, the more highly regulat-ing students gained more than their poorly regulating peers did on the aforementioned tasks from pretest to posttest (see Table 3). Only on word segmentation did self-regulation fail to contribute to students’ progress from pretest to midterm, but it contributed significantly from pretest to posttest.

On all five literacy tasks, students with lower initial literacy scores at pretest were able to learn significantly more than their peers with higher initial scores were, both in the short term (from pretest to midterm) and long term (from pretest to posttest).

TABLE 2Hierarchical Regression Analysis: Predicting Progress of Students’ Literacy Skills From Pretest to Midterm (N = 197)

Step Predictor

Letter namesLetters for

soundsWord

segmentation Word spelling Word decoding

β DR2 β DR2 β DR2 β DR2 β DR2

1 .15*** .11*** .19*** .07** .10***

Self-regulation .31*** .29*** .09 .30*** .30***

Literacy at pretest −.42*** −.36*** −.45*** −.15* −.25***

2 .02 .07** .04* .06** .02

Self-regulation .29*** .26*** .06 .26*** .28***

Literacy at pretest −.41*** −.33*** −.43*** −.13^^ −.25***

PPM vs. PM .16^ .29*** .19* .18* .07

PPM vs. NM .10 .23** .14^^ .25*** .02

PPM vs. NI .17* .23** .24** .28*** .12

Total R2 .17*** .17*** .23*** .13*** .12***

Note. NI = no intervention. NM = no mediation. PM = product mediation. PPM = process–product mediation. We also compared the progress of the no-intervention group to each of the other groups and the progress of the product mediation group to the no-mediation group on each of the literacy measures. None of these comparisons reached significance (except PM vs. NI on decoding, b = .18, p < .05).

^^p < .08. ^p < .06. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.



Beyond the contribution of the students’ self-regula-tion and literacy skills, comparisons between groups showed quite consistent effects in predicting progress from pretest to midterm (see Table 2) and from pretest to posttest (see Table 3). Students in the process–product mediation group gained significantly more (or nearly so) than all other groups did, both in the short term (from pretest to midterm) and long term (from pretest to post-test) on letter names, letters for sounds, word segmenta-tion, and word spelling (except in one case of letter naming). The other groups did not differ from one another on these four tasks. A somewhat different picture emerged on decoding: Students in the product mediation group gained significantly more than the no-intervention group did in the short and long term. Further, students in the process–product mediation group gained more than did those in the no-intervention group in the long term. Altogether, these findings pinpointed process–product mediation as particularly productive, both after a single phase and after two phases of intervention.

Performance on Trained Versus Untrained Words on Spelling and DecodingNote that six out of 12 words that the children tried to spell and six out of 12 words that they tried to decode in the tests (pretest, midterm, and posttest) were words

that appeared in the first and second rounds of the intervention sessions. The other six words in the spell-ing tests and the other six words in the decoding tests were new—that is, did not appear in the intervention sessions. To clarify, remember that different words were included in the first and second rounds of the spelling interventions, except for the trained words that appeared in both rounds.

Thus, we could compare students’ progress on spell-ing words and on decoding words from pretest to mid-term or to posttest on words that they were trained on with those they were not trained on. Training could affect progress because in the product–process media-tion intervention group, words’ spellings were followed by a more exhaustive mediation than the mediation in the product mediation group. Moreover, in the no- mediation group, words’ spellings were not followed by any mediation, and the no-intervention group was not involved in the spelling sessions of the intervention.

Three-way ANOVAs of a 2 × 3 × 4 design (Training [trained, untrained words] × Interval [pretest, midterm, posttest] × Group [process–product mediation, product mediation, no-mediation, no-intervention]) were car-ried out on word spelling and on word decoding. Only effects of training or of interaction of training with other factors will be presented.

Stronger gains for the trained words on the spelling/decoding tests would indicate that children mainly

TABLE 3Hierarchical Regression Analysis: Predicting Progress of Students’ Literacy Skills From Pretest to Posttest (N = 197)

Step Predictor

Letter namesLetters for

soundsWord

segmentation Word spelling Word decoding

β DR2 β DR2 β DR2 β DR2 β DR2

1 .19*** .17*** .24*** .13*** .14***

Self-regulation .23** .23** .16* .40*** .35***

Literacy at pretest −.50*** −.48*** −.52*** −.25*** −.30***

2 .03 .09*** .12*** .08*** .03^^

Self-regulation .22** .19* .12^ .36*** .32***

Literacy at pretest −.49*** −.45*** −.49*** −.22** −.28***

PPM vs. PM .19* .32*** .32*** .25** −.03

PPM vs. NM .14^^ .27*** .35*** .31*** .11

PPM vs. NI .12 .30*** .37*** .30*** .15^

Total R2 .22*** .26*** .36*** .22*** .17***

Note. NI = no intervention. NM = no mediation. PM = product mediation. PPM = process–product mediation. We also compared the progress of the no-intervention group to each of the other groups and the progress of the product mediation group to the no-mediation group on each of the literacy measures. None of these comparisons reached significance (except PM vs. NI on decoding, b = .18, p < .05).

^^p < .08. ^p < .06. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.



learned to spell/decode the specific words on which they were trained, but equal gains for the trained and un-trained words would indicate that children had learned the underlying principle of spelling/decoding—that is, graphophonemic mapping. Table 4 presents the four groups’ means and standard deviations in percentages for the word spelling and word decoding scores at the pretest, midterm, and posttest intervals for the two types of words. Findings showed that training had no significant effect on the gains in word spelling, neither as a main effect (F(1,193) = 1.97, ns, h2 = 0.01) nor as an interaction with Interval, with Group, or with Interval and Group, respectively, (F(1,193) = 1.32, 0.66, and 1.43; h2 = 0.01, 0.01, 0.02, all ps > .05). Thus, the students appeared to have learned the general code of how to spell words by graphophonemic mapping regardless of the specific spellings of words.

However, for word decoding, a significant effect of training, (F(1,193) = 6.65, p < .05, h2 = 0.03), and of interaction among training, interval, and group (F(6,386) = 3.19, p < .01, h2 = 0.047), did appear. On the midterm, performance in the four groups was neither consistently higher on trained nor untrained words, except in one case: It was significantly higher on trained than untrained words in the product mediation group. On the posttest, performance in the four groups was again neither consistently higher on trained nor untrained

words, except in one case: It was significantly higher on trained than untrained words only in the product–process mediation group. These unexpected findings suggest a minor effect of training on word decoding.

DiscussionThis study demonstrates that mediation of invented spellings can enhance major early literacy skills, includ-ing knowledge of letter names and sounds as well as the segmentation, spelling, and decoding of words. How-ever, the contribution of spelling mediation depends on the components incorporated in it. The current findings revealed that mediation including explanation and illustration of the multistep, circular processes of graph-eme to sound mapping, involved in inventing the spelling of a word along with the display of the correct spelling product, contributes to early literacy skills. This conclusion is based on the higher short- and long-term gains found in the process–product mediation group relative to the other three groups.

In contrast, the current study demonstrated a lack of significant short- or long-term gains for the product mediation group compared with the no-mediation or no-intervention groups, indicating that mediation exposing students to the correct product without

TABLE 4Means and Standard Deviations (in percentages) of Word Spelling and Word Decoding Tasks, by Interval, Group, and Word Training (N = 197)

Task

Trained words Untrained words

PretestMean (SD)

MidtermMean (SD)

PosttestMean (SD)

PretestMean (SD)

MidtermMean (SD)

PosttestMean (SD)

Word spelling

Process–product mediation

47.61 (27.96) 62.43 (32.41) 74.64 (29.43) 47.73 (26.68) 64.39 (30.84) 73.00 (31.46)

Product mediation 47.54 (28.85) 58.69 (31.12) 61.74 (34.39) 49.93 (28.21) 56.12 (33.10) 61.84 (34.19)

No mediation 49.71 (26.83) 56.29 (30.24) 60.34 (33.30) 50.67 (26.99) 56.16 (31.11) 61.68 (32.60)

No intervention 45.70 (26.50) 51.31 (27.51) 56.82 (30.70) 48.13 (25.01) 51.69 (27.74) 58.43 (28.78)

Word decoding

Process–product mediation

20.00 (33.67) 33.67 (38.46) 49.33 (41.78) 20.00 (32.47) 33.67 (40.61) 43.00 (41.53)

Product mediation 20.14 (30.93) 39.93 (38.40) 48.26 (41.43) 18.40 (29.62) 31.94 (36.84) 44.10 (40.61)

No mediation 23.86 (35.47) 34.64 (37.69) 37.91 (39.87) 20.59 (33.76) 31.37 (39.25) 38.24 (38.63)

No intervention 22.92 (34.14) 23.61 (35.03) 32.29 (38.96) 19.44 (31.57) 27.78 (37.71) 34.03 (41.25)

Note. Process–product mediation n = 50. Product mediation n = 48. No-mediation n = 51. No-intervention n = 48. Trained words were included in the spelling intervention, whereas untrained words were not. Graphophonemic spelling of words: Correct and homophonous letters scored 1, and missing or incorrect letters scored 0. Graphophonemic decoding of words: Words, pseudowords, or series of sounds that included the appropriate sound per letter scored 1, and missing or incorrect letters scored 0.



explicating the process—a common practice of caregivers (Aram & Levin, 2011)—fails to enhance early literacy skills. Furthermore, practicing invented spelling without any mediation is also ineffective, as shown by the lack of significant short- or long-term differences between students in the no-mediation and no-intervention groups. These conclusions corroborate those of Rieben et al. (2005), who showed that copying correct spellings or inventing spelling without mediation did not improve literacy more than did the control practice of drawing. Although invented spelling may engage students in understanding the relations of oral to written words and increase their interest in writing and motivation to write, our findings put under question whether affording students an opportunity to invent spelling without any teaching is a fruitful practice, as suggested by Bissex (1980), Burns and Casbergue (1992), Clay (1975), and Ferreiro and Teberosky (1982).

The present intervention seems to have addressed some of the limitations of previous work. Martins and Silva (2006) enhanced spelling only one step up, where-as the current study enabled multistep progress. Ouel-lette and Sénéchal (2008) improved spelling only of words included in the training, whereas the current study found gains on spelling of untrained words. Rieben et al. (2005) enhanced spelling of only ortho-graphic rules, whereas our participants in the process–product mediation group learned to spell words graphophonemically. Nevertheless, the words we used were limited to three phonological structures and to spellings marked only by consonants.

The major difference between training in the process–product mediation group and the most fruitful training practices in previous studies is that we used the same mediation for the entire process–product mediation group, ignoring students’ current spelling level, whereas previous researchers adapted their training to what they considered to be students’ zone of proximal development. Inasmuch as learning is a cumulative process, built layer upon layer, the principle that teaching should be adapted to students’ current k nowledge seems indisputable. However, t he application of this principle, in terms of offering stu-dents a solution that is only one step ahead, deserves reconsideration. It is possible that in many domains, students can gain more from being confronted with so-lutions that are several steps ahead of their own (see Levin & Aram, 2012). Moreover, students who exhibit the same level of knowledge do not necessarily have the same zone of proximal development, as they differ in their learning capacity (Feuerstein & Feuerstein, 1991). The conclusion to be drawn is that the zone of proximal development should be determined empirically, rather than settled on in advance according to a developmental scale.

In previous studies (Martins & Silva, 2006; Ouel-lette & Sénéchal, 2008), training enhanced students’ spellings, even though exposure to the more advanced spelling was not accompanied by any explicit explana-tion by the experimenter of the discrepancy between that spelling and the student’s own spelling. Results indicated that students themselves can discover the discrepancy on their own and construct the reason underlying it. However, a discovery procedure is not the natural way of teaching , which typically includes verbal clarification by a teacher. Training without explicit explanation, although found to be productive, may still be less effective than instruction with explanation (Penno, Wilkinson, & Moore, 2002).

The gains reached after our first round of interven-tion, exhibited on the midterm after 16 sessions, were consistent with the gains reached after our second round, at the posttest after a total of 32 sessions. Both in the short and long run, the process–product mediation group surpassed all three other groups, which did not differ from one another on four tasks: letter naming, let-ters for sounds, word segmentation, and word spelling. It is particularly important to note that two groups—product mediation and no-mediation—never differed significantly in performance level from each other. This is quite surprising because students in the product mediation group were shown the correct spelling of words and heard the names of the included letters, whereas the no-mediation group neither saw nor heard anything new, and they sufficed with merely spelling each word twice. This result implies that product mediation, despite the information given to the student, is basically not promising. Importantly, this procedure mimics what many caregivers do when asked by chil-dren to spell a word.

The effect of intervention on literacy skills appears to be relatively weak on naming letters. Despite the fact that all four groups, including the no-intervention group, improved on letter names from pretest to post-test, the groups did not differ on each phase (pretest, midterm, posttest) statistically on letter names (see Tables 2 and 3). We believe that this result stems from the fact that in most Israeli kindergartens, teaching lit-eracy is primarily focused on recognizing letters by their names (Sverdlov, Levin, & Aram, 2013)—so much so that this approach is heavily criticized by those who oppose teaching literacy in general at the expense of teaching discourse or of fostering socioemotional development.

With regard to word decoding, which was not directly targeted by our spelling intervention, the inter-vention contributed relatively modestly. The students in the process–product mediation group and in the product mediation group showed similar gains from pretest to midterm or from pretest to posttest (see Table 1). But this



gain was not significantly higher in the process–product mediation group than in all other groups. It reached sig-nificance only in the product mediation group versus the no-intervention group in the short and long run. All other groups did not differ in gains from each other, nei-ther in the short nor long run. We tend to attribute the lack of effect of the intervention on decoding to the dif-ficulty of this task. Note that after the full intervention terminated, the mean percentage of students’ correct decoding was only around 40%, thus lower than the lev-els exhibited for all the other skills prior to intervention. This may be so because decoding is generally difficult in Hebrew due to the frequently unmarked vocalic sounds.

Our expectation that students who were high on self-regulated learning would be able to gain more from the intervention than their poorly regulating counter-parts would was supported on nearly all literacy skills, at both the midterm and the posttest. This finding sub-stantiates our assumption that the multilevel, circular process of inventing spelling requires a high level of self-regulation. This process necessitates segmenting words into sounds, isolating the initial sound, connecting it with a letter name, recognizing the letter by its shape, handwriting or selecting this letter, turning back to word segmentation, and so on. It seems that those stu-dents who are motivated to systematically complete tasks, carefully attend to and internalize their media-tors’ rules, and resist distractions are those who may learn better from mediation. Studies have linked learner characteristics, including self-regulation, to literacy development in preschool and kindergarten across cul-tures and writing systems (Chung & McBride-Chang, 2011; McClelland et al., 2006; Wanless et al., 2011).

We also studied how students’ initial literacy knowl-edge affected the gains acquired via the training of spelling. Students with lower initial literacy knowledge, as displayed on the pretest, gained more from the spell-ing training. This finding emerged across literacy skills and should be viewed as robust because the scores were highly reliable and because it cannot be explained by regression to the mean, as it already appeared on the midterm before students reached their peak on the post-test. A similar trend was found by Ramani and Siegler (2011; Siegler & Ramani, 2009) in studies that trained preschoolers in number concepts. This is an education-ally desirable effect because students with poorer litera-cy and language levels in kindergarten are at risk of developing reading and spelling difficulties in school (Aram, 2005; Levin, Ravid, & Rapaport, 2001; Scarbor-ough, 1998; Schatschneider, Fletcher, Francis, Carlson, & Foorman, 2004; Shatil, Share, & Levin, 2000).

Students with lower initial literacy knowledge can gain more from the intervention probably because many of them come from families that provide little support for literacy growth in particular or for cognitive development

in general (Aram & Levin, 2001; Vernon-Feagans, Ham-mer, Miccio, & Manlove, 2001; Wasik & Hindman, 2010). Still, a word of caution is warranted. We do not claim that, as a rule, students with lower initial knowledge gain more from training procedures. Improvement likely depends on many parameters, including the students’ age, their knowledge level, and the characteristics of the training program.

This study is limited to the mediated training rou-tines that were examined. Future research should aim to uncover more about the contribution of other types of spelling mediations in kindergarten. For example, as mentioned previously, our intervention and assessments used only words spelled with letters that marked conso-nantal sounds and only words of certain syllabic struc-tures that we believed would be easy to segment. In Hebrew, however, there are words with letters that mark vocal sounds, but these letters are used deficiently, depending on their position in the word and on mor-phophonological considerations, and such words are hard to master (Ravid, 2006, 2012). In the same vein, there are words with different syllabic structures. It is im-portant to know how inclusion of a wider variety of words, which are harder to segment and to spell, would affect the training’s success. Furthermore, our training was adjusted to the Hebrew syllabic structure and writing system. Training of spelling in other languages and writ-ing systems must be adjusted to their characteristics.

The current study illustrates the productivity of involving young students in the process of inventing spelling for promoting their literacy, but only or pri-marily when their spelling is promoted by process–product mediation, which focuses both on the process (grapheme to sound mappings) and the product (the correctly spelled word). This study also demonstrates that researchers should be careful when they determine what should be considered a developmentally appropri-ate training or teaching program. The tendency to pro-vide students with a solution that is one step ahead of their own solution to a problem on which they are work-ing, although prevalent in the literature, is nevertheless too simple. It is an empirical question to determine what training is developmentally appropriate for students at different levels and different learning potentials, mea-sured inter alia by self-regulation.

NOTESWe would like to thank the Israeli Science Foundation for supporting the study. Warm thanks are extended to Shaul Levin for his constructive advice and devoted support and to Dee Ankonina for her editorial contribution.

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IRIS LEVIN and DORIT ARAM are professors in the School of Education at Tel Aviv University Israel; e-mail [email protected] and [email protected].


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Promoting Early Literacy via Practicing Invented Spelling: A Comparison of Different Mediation Routines