JAASEP SPRING/SUMMER 2009 Part 8 of 9
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What is dysorthographia?
The term dysorthographia begins with dys announces that the symptom, condition or state of being is dysfunctional or faulty. Orthography refers to correct or standard spelling in general (Richards, Platt, & Weber, 1985). When the dys is added to orthography, dysorthographia becomes a term referring to a specific learning disability (SLD) associated with poor performance in spelling (Pierangelo & Giuliani, 2006). It can be a developmental disorder which means it is of constitutional origin or it is an acquired disorder due to an external insult to the brain, characterized by a durable defect of assimilation of morphological and/or phonological rules resulting in the deterioration of the spontaneous written expression or under dictation. Bosse (2008) has identified a dysorthographic child as one who is unable to remember lexical spelling as a result of the core deficit in phonological processing. However, this Teaching Spelling to Singaporean Chinese Children with Dysorthographia in English Language:
(Spring 2009) phonological processing deficit cannot fully explain why there are children, who are able to read words using an analytic procedure, still unable to memorize their spelling.
Abstract
Singaporean Chinese children diagnosed with dysorthographia in English language undergo an intensive spelling intervention program that teaches them to use either of the two spelling methods: lexical and/or phonological spelling strategies. Nevertheless, many of them continue to perform poorly in their spelling. A pretest-posttest experimental design was used to determine whether 20 children ages 9 to 10 years old diagnosed with dysorthographia who were taught both lexical and phonological spelling strategies would improve in spelling more than a matched control group of 20 children, also diagnosed with dysorthographia who were taught lexical spelling strategies alone. Both groups of children received five lessons per week over seven weeks. The results showed that while both groups improved in spelling performance significantly from pretest to posttest, the experimental group which was taught both lexical and phonological spelling strategies improved significantly more than the control group which was taught lexical spelling strategies alone.