Using metacognition to explore spelling strategies

Using metacognition to explore spelling strategies

HELEN PENTECOST AND JOHN DICKIE

This article is based on a study (Pentecost, 2010) that investigated the metacognitive understandings of successful achievers and lower achievers in spelling to explore differences in their use of strategies. It sought an insider perspective through students’ own voices to reveal whether they had a problem-solving approach as they attempted to write words of their own choice within the context of meaningful, continuous writing in classroom literacy programmes. While the main study included teacher interviews, the focus of this article is to describe the strategies and knowledge used by the two groups of students and to consider the implications for teaching practice.

Research that contributes to our understandings of spelling often presents it as a decontextualised activity, and from an adult’s perspective (Carroll, 2006; Nicholson, 2007); this article, however, considers spelling in the context of children’s classroom writing and offers children’s own explanations of their strategies.

Children are taught to spell simple words from the beginning of primary schooling. Parents value correct spelling as a component of being literate and help their children learn lists of words for the spelling test at the end of the week. However, many of these memorised words are soon forgotten. Invernizzi and Hayes (2004) describe the “ubiquitous” spelling test where “most students do quite well on Friday only to misspell many of the same words on Monday” (p. 221).

English orthography is complex, as the language has borrowed words from many other languages, resulting in irregular spellings and pronunciations. An ideal orthography in an alphabetic writing system would have a completely consistent relationship between letters and sounds. The complexity of English is described by Caravolas (2004), who explains that writing systems such as Finnish and Turkish approach this ideal, with consistent or transparent orthographies, while others, such as French and English, are at the other end of the continuum, with inconsistent or deep orthographies. The effect is that learning to spell in English is a complex and long-term process (Caravolas, 2004).

If children are to acquire accurate spelling, it is not sufficient for teachers to provide lists of words to be memorised. Referring to children learning words and then misspelling them the following week, Invernizzi and Hayes (2004, p. 221) state:

It is precisely this phenomenon that argues most convincingly against spelling skill as an outcome of rote memorization and suggests, instead, that learning to spell requires the understanding of the phoneme-grapheme regularities, vowel patterns, and morphological conventions that make up a spelling system.

They explain that although “learning to spell does entail learning specific words, general knowledge is what is needed when … they try to write words they don’t know how to spell” (pp. 222–223). They describe consonant blends and short vowels as examples of general knowledge of the orthographic system. Without this knowledge students have to rely on rote memorisation, and word spellings are often forgotten. If teachers are to provide good spelling and reading instruction, they must possess the required linguistic knowledge to teach students how language works. Carroll (2006) argues that there is confusion and lack of understanding among primary teachers “around several aspects of the phonemic complexity of our language” (p. 48), and this may lead to students receiving conflicting and confusing messages. An analytic approach to instruction includes syllabification, segmentation of words into phonemes and identifying morphemes (Nicholson, 2007).

To explore children’s understandings of the complex orthography of English, we need to consider the extent of their control over their processing strategies as they attempt to encode words. Just as it is useful to analyse children’s partially correct attempts at reading, it is useful to analyse children’s spelling attempts as a way to inform future teaching: “Invented spellings provide a diagnostic clue to a student’s current understanding of how written words work” (Invernizzi & Hayes, 2004, p. 217). That this is largely overlooked may be because of teachers’ lack of understanding about English orthography and the “systematic way in which children acquire it” (p. 217). Invernizzi and Hayes argue for teachers to do qualitative analysis of spelling errors to identify which features have been mastered and which need to be learnt next.

A metacognitive approach

A qualitative analysis investigating children’s processing strategies for spelling needs to consider their developing metacognitive understandings. Metacognition can be described as “a person’s awareness of how they think and learn; the process of thinking about one’s own learning” (Ministry of Education, 2010a, p. 23). A metacognitive, problem-solving approach is appropriate in learning to spell as relying solely on a visual strategy to learn new words is a limited approach. Writers need to understand that spelling is not a memory activity, but a thinking activity (Phenix & Scott-Dunne, 1991).

Metacognitive awareness assists students to self-monitor their learning, to think and talk about their learning processes and talk about what they know. Through being more strategic, students can say when, how and why they use a particular strategy (Bruning, Schraw, & Ronning, 1999). These processes of combining strategies are what Brann (2004) describes as “coordinating the systems” (p. 5). A good speller is not a person who is able to memorise the most words but one who is able to “figure out the logic of words” and is able to “construct them as needed” (Phenix & Scott-Dunne, 1991, p. 18) through a problem-solving approach, within the context of writing. Students’ developing metacognition is expressed through a metalanguage (the specialised use of language to discuss language). Ruttle (2004), however, cautions that although developing students’ metacognitive skills “can give us a clearer window” (p. 71) into their understanding, we cannot be certain that teachers and students ascribe the same meaning to the metalanguage because some children process the messages differently from the way in which their teachers intend. Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987) distinguish between knowledge telling and knowledge transforming. In the context of composing written texts, the former involves writing where the student may do little planning or reflection, while knowledge transforming involves the writer in a more complex process of reworking knowledge, problem solving and constant reflection.

The study

The research questions for the study were:

1.What are the knowledge and strategies used by Year 4 students who are achieving below the expected level when spelling words in their writing?

2.What are the knowledge and strategies used by Year 4 students who are achieving at the expected level when spelling words in their writing?

3.How do the strategies compare between the two groups of students?

Methodology

The 12 participants comprised two Year 4 boys and two Year 4 girls from three schools. All had attended New Zealand schools for at least 3 years’ continuous education and spoke English as their first language, and none had hearing loss or visual difficulties which could have impeded their spelling. Half were assessed by their schools as achieving within the Level 2 range and half below Level 2 on the asTTle assessment (Ministry of Education, 2009) for “best fit” in writing and spelling scores. Although the sample was small, there was a considerable amount of qualitative data generated.

Data were collected through an asTTle writing test with a group of four students in each school, followed by two semistructured interviews. For the test, the students were given a writing topic, 5 minutes to plan their writing, then 40 minutes to write the story. They were then interviewed in pairs on two further occasions, the first interview being on the same day that the writing sample was completed. The advantage of pairs was to help children feel comfortable as they were with a fellow student, and with two in the group the separate voices could be identified in the transcript. The writing sample was used as a vehicle for students to answer the questions about how they spelt the words they needed. On another day, the students were interviewed again in pairs. Other samples of their writing in class, along with the writing sample conducted at the first meeting, were available as an aid to prompt discussion.

The interviews were audio recorded and transcribed. As these participants were young and they could have had difficulty reading the transcript, the researcher summarised the main points at the end of each interview session and also sought clarification during the interviews.

The transcripts were analysed and information of significance was collated along with similarities, differences, patterns, themes and trends between students. The students’ writing samples were analysed to add to the data about the students’ spelling use. Statistics were produced on the number of words students spelt correctly and the number of words written in the writing sample. These statistics were used for comparison between the students and triangulated with the information students offered in their comments.

Results and discussion

Strategies used by students achieving below the expected level

For students in this study, the three main learning opportunities for spelling included word study in class, learning words on individualised lists and classroom writing lessons leading to personal writing. While the average achievers made effective connections between these contexts, the lower achievers showed little evidence of making the connections for spelling. There was a clear distinction between the strategies used by the two groups as they attempted to encode unfamiliar words. The lower achieving spellers demonstrated limited ability to process information as they struggled with the complexity of English orthography. Their approach was consistent with Bereiter and Scardamalia’s (1987) description of knowledge telling, as it relied on their visual memory for words, and they were less able to tackle words with a problem-solving approach of selecting and combining strategies (Clay, 1991). In contrast, the average spellers’ approach was more consistent with knowledge transforming (Bereiter & Scardamalia) as they used a problem-solving approach and made deliberate choices over combining strategies to encode difficult words.

Visual strategies used

The writing samples of the lower achievers were considerably shorter and contained fewer correctly written words than those of the average spellers. They relied strongly on a visual strategy to recall words from memory. The Literacy Learning Progressions (Ministry of Education, 2010a) indicate that students of this age are expected to spell personal and high-frequency words using their visual memory, stating that, after 3 years at school, students will be able to spell many words from lists 1–4 and some words from list 5 and list 6 of the essential word lists in the Spell-Write resource (Croft & Mapa, 1998). While the most frequently used words included those in the essential lists, many related to students’ own experiences. Correctly written words were usually of one syllable, with few multisyllabic words being correctly spelt.

Although the visual strategy as described by these students is useful for writing many personal and high-frequency words, it soon becomes inadequate as a main strategy as students need to write more complex words.

There were a few correct words within individual repertoires that were not among the most commonly used words. For example, Elizabeth (all participants were given pseudonyms) spelt the word luge correctly and related its use to a happy experience, having often been on a luge on family outings. Matthew recalled the word game from his “Google search” at home for car games, army games or pirate games. His frequent use of the word enabled it to be stored in his long-term memory and visually retrieved. He also recalled on and off from labels on a heater, which he sees often.

The partial recall of words through visual strategies was also demonstrated. Anthony explained his attempts to write dowen/down and mror/more, recalling that when he downloaded a DVD from a computer the computer asked: “Do you want more?” Although the visual strategy as described by these students is useful for writing many personal and high-frequency words, it soon becomes inadequate as a main strategy as students need to write more complex words.

Phonographic strategies used

A problem for these students was their limited awareness of phonemes (the smallest segments of sound that make up spoken words). Without this basic knowledge, their metacognitive strategies were limited. The phonographic strategies described here draw on students’ phonological awareness (awareness of the sounds of words, including knowledge of phonemes, syllables and onset and rime) as well as orthographic knowledge. Phoneme–grapheme relationships are the relationships between spoken sound units and the written symbols that represent them (Ministry of Education, 2010b).

While most students were able to give the beginning, middle and end letter of a consonant–vowel–consonant word (tending to give the letter, not the sound) and could usually give the number of syllables in a word, they had limited understanding of individual phonemes in words. Without this crucial knowledge they are unlikely to be able to use sound analysis to transfer their learning by generalising their knowledge to make new words or manipulating information towards a self-extending system.

Limited phonemic awareness was clear when students gave different approximations for the same word within one piece of writing. An example of this was Anthony’s approximations—vrey/very, verry/very, flat/felt, faut/felt, falt/felt, whent/went and wnet/went. When asked about these attempts for went, his frustration with his learning process was evident. He explained: “I had it in my spelling [to learn]. I practise them all the time and I spell it.” He believed he should be able to commit the word to memory and visually recall it accurately when needed, but this visual method of learning phonetically spelt words had not worked for him. He needed to be taught how to segment the word into its constituent phonemes in order to write the word correctly (Nicholson, 2007). However, the explanation of Joshua, another boy from the lower achieving spellers, demonstrated that he could do this. When Joshua was asked to describe his strategy for spelling nest, his first explanation was simply, “I guessed it”, but when prompted for further information, he explained that he articulated the word and listened for sounds: “I just sounded it out, nest.” When the researcher asked him, “When you said nest slowly, how did that help?” he replied, “It helps me to find out what letters are in there, and what order they go in.”

A restriction for these students was that words recalled visually were not often generalised to new knowledge through word analogies. The students had not yet developed skill in transferring knowledge and explaining the process (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987). Matthew knew play and way but could not give any other words with a similar pattern. William was able to make an analogy from his knowledge of night and light. He said, “I figured out might” but he did not then link this to frightened, which he wrote as frineted. When the researcher explained how knowledge of night and light could help him to spell frightened, he was surprised but pleased. For students to be proficient spellers they need to acquire this type of general knowledge of the orthographic system in addition to learning specific words (Invernizzi & Hayes, 2004).

The students demonstrated some evidence of metacognitive awareness when they combined visual and phonographic strategies. For example, Anthony wrote zoom from his knowledge of zoo, explaining that he had been to the zoo and seen the sign, and he knew to add m to the end of zoo. Samantha wanted to write get. She explained how she used her visual knowledge saying, “I knew how to spell got, and when I sounded it out, I put e where the o was, and I knew how to spell it.” Although these weaker students had useful spelling strategies, they did not use them consistently. When they displayed useful but isolated knowledge, the challenge for teachers was to capitalise on this for new problem solving.

Morphological strategies used

A third strategy, using morphology, often develops in students later than the previous two strategies as they learn more about the structure of written English. Morphology is defined as “the study of the forms of words and how they are constructed in terms of parts that have meaning” (Ministry of Education, 2010a, p. 23). Whereas phonemes are the smallest segments in language sounds, morphemes are the sounds or combinations of sounds that are minimal units of meaning. For example, the word dogs has two morphemes (dog and the plural s). Young children use morphological rules soon after their speech moves beyond the single word level; for example, when they add –s for plurals and –ed for past tense (Bruning et al., 1999).

A major point of difference between the two groups was that the lower achieving group produced only a few examples of combining morphology with visual strategies, such as adding i n g to create the words playing and getting. One student could write haven’t and didn’t, and explained that /int/ was written as n’t.

Strategies used by students achieving at the expected level

This group’s longer samples and greater variety of vocabulary afforded more opportunities to attempt new spellings, and more of their words were spelt correctly. They were able to draw on general knowledge of spelling, and their strategies indicated a higher level of knowledge transforming (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987). This was seen as they attempted difficult words with a problem-solving approach, making deliberate choices from a range of strategies. Their examples illustrate how their strategies went beyond rote memorisation for the weekly test described by Invernizzi and Hayes (2004).

Visual strategies used

Words written correctly in their samples included a number of complex words, many of which were personal to them. They reported that some of the visually recalled words were ones they had used themselves many times, or frequently seen written. Some high-interest words were remembered from books. The word stomach requires more than a phonographic strategy because of its irregular spelling, but Daniel drew on his visual memory to spell the word correctly, explaining how he remembered it after reading it in a diagram in his library book. Two other students made close attempts at writing the word hospital, citing familiarity with the place and having seen the word frequently on signs when they visited the hospital.

These average students demonstrated greater metacognitive awareness than the lower achieving spellers through their ability to combine spelling strategies in attempting new words. Ethan explained: “If you know another word that is pretty much like it, you might get it right because you sound it and get the ending bits and the front bits.”

Phonographic strategies used

Like the less able spellers, these students were able to break difficult words into syllables. Their advantage was that a greater knowledge of phonemes enabled them to make more accurate attempts at spelling. They explained that when attempting words, they “sounded them out”, and this often included the use of syllabification. When Daniel wrote exibition/exhibition, he said, “I sounded it out. I went ex/i/bi/shin.” He called this method “breaking up the letters”. These students also used terminology such as “breaking up words”, “splitting apart” and “putting groups of letters together”.

These students could transfer knowledge to new situations. They generated new words by making analogies to words with similar orthographic patterns. For example, Daniel saw analogies between the words every and forever, and shade and shape. Madison was able to change crash to crack.

These average students demonstrated greater metacognitive awareness than the lower achieving spellers through their ability to combine spelling strategies in attempting new words. Ethan explained: “If you know another word that is pretty much like it, you might get it right because you sound it and get the ending bits and the front bits.”

Ethan indicated he was able to transfer what he had learnt to new contexts. He talked about how learning of spelling needs to be reinforced and links made so that it can be applied in future writing, saying, “If we are learning one thing and tomorrow we do something quite like it, it helps me to spell some words that I don’t know.”

Many of these students’ word attempts were phonetically accurate, reflecting the successful use of sound analysis. Examples included pleas/please, spoted/spotted, dokter/doctor, exibition/exhibition, extremly/extremely, tacken/taken, raceing/racing, alean/alien, lisined/listened and rist/wrist. Close approximations such as these provide opportunities for teachers to explore patterns of orthography with students. Essential teacher knowledge required to teach spelling is knowledge of spelling rules (Nicholson, 2007), and attempts such as these are valuable when students demonstrate a logical degree of accuracy in their approximations. When questioned on their phonological knowledge of words, most of this group correctly gave the beginning, middle and end letter of a consonant–vowel–consonant word (tending to give the letter, not the sound) and also the number of syllables in a word.

Morphological strategies used

Students achieving at the expected level demonstrated more extensive morphological knowledge than the lower achievers. Chloe gave her own interpretation of the spelling rule for verb tenses. She wrote swimming and then explained: “If you want going, doing, throwing, if you want /ing/ on the end you put i n g. E d is for a word that’s past and the i n g is going to happen.” When asked, “What about s?” she responded “It’s right now.” Emily was able to explain that when she writes a word such as cry, there is a rule that you must change the y to i and add e d to make it past tense. Sometimes, when words are difficult, they can be remembered with a memory aid. Emily was able to draw on a useful mnemonic strategy taught to her by a teacher which helped her remember a tricky word. She used it to spell people, saying: “People eat oranges, people like eggs.”

Being automatic with processing is essential to good strategy use, and these students showed greater automaticity than the less able spellers. Ethan’s explanation of “Sounding out, guessing, and what you know, and mixing these together” is an example of building an “inner control” (Clay, 1991, p. 327). Similarly, Olivia’s comment about approximating difficult words illustrates her active theorising about the organisation of written language, and how she uses risk taking in a positive way to take charge of her learning:

We should try and spell it before we actually know how to spell it. Even if you don’t know it you can try because you will get some of it, you will know the bit you need to be able to learn.

Summary of findings

The lower achieving students used mainly visual strategies for known words and phonographic strategies to solve unknown words. There was little evidence of morphological knowledge, and very little use of combining the strategies. While they had figured out some of the logic of spelling, their explanations and writing examples indicate that they are not yet operating at the level of knowledge transforming (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987). They were not independently making the links between strategies to generalise from their prior knowledge.

Evidence of their limited metacognitive strategies was seen in their reluctance to attempt challenging words they may have preferred to use. For example, William had used the word jumped in his enthusiastic pre-writing discussion, but in his writing sample he replaced jumped with the easier word got, explaining: “There’s too many letters in jumped.” As a way of reducing spelling errors, less able students may limit their writing in quality and quantity and thus have less practice in the use of more advanced writing skills than more able students (Allcock, 2006). Encouraging students to approximate unknown words allows them to demonstrate their phonographic and morphological spelling strategies, thus providing useful information about their cognitive processes and a window into their understanding (Ruttle, 2004). Their main description of learning spelling was their list of words taken home on Mondays to be learnt and then tested at school on Fridays. Although they were assisted by parents and grandparents, evidence of these students’ word knowledge in writing indicates that the time spent practising may not be helping them to learn useful strategies for spelling.

The average-achieving spellers demonstrated greater metacognitive awareness through their more efficient use of strategies, viewing new words as problems that can be solved through a visual or phonographic strategy and combining this with a morphological strategy. In addition to the words they memorised, they were able to apply general knowledge of the orthographic system (Invernizzi & Hayes, 2004). There was a clear distinction between the lower achieving and average-achieving students in their ability to transfer class word study to its application in continuous writing. The better spellers had greater metacognitive awareness, which enabled them to self-monitor their own spelling attempts, and to think and talk about their learning processes (Bruning et al., 1999), and their explanations demonstrate a better control of the metalanguage required to express their understandings (Ruttle, 2004).

Conclusion and implications for practice

Results from this study indicate that to rely on rote learning of unrelated word lists is not sufficient for students to acquire adequate skill in spelling. A change is required to a more analytic approach that fosters metacognitive awareness. Spelling, like much other learning, needs to be approached as a problem-solving task (Phenix & Scott-Dunne, 1991). The implication for practice is that teachers must have an understanding of metacognition and knowledge transforming (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987) and how to develop these thinking skills in their students. To achieve this, teachers need to listen to students’ own explanations of their strategies for spelling, which provide crucial information about their inner processing as they write challenging words. Teachers can build on the knowledge they already have of students’ active control of their thinking processes, gained through analysis of cues and strategies on running records. A similar approach for spelling would allow teachers to seek students’ own explanations of their thinking processes and allow teachers to reinforce good combinations of strategies.

Taking a metacognitive approach to learning, with the progressive demands of curriculum learning areas, includes teaching students how to actively monitor their own cognitive processes and adapt their problem-solving strategies to new contexts. Teachers can achieve this in spelling through demonstrating how to transfer learning when attempting new words. This could include modelling the process to students through thinking aloud. The metacognitive approach also includes explicit teacher guidance to help students make meaningful connections between the various classroom contexts where they are learning spelling (i.e., word study, personal spelling lists and classroom writing lessons).

For this analytic approach to teaching spelling to be successful, teachers may need to develop their own knowledge of the orthographic system and of morphology. They need to understand and use the correct terminology. Connected with this is the need for teachers to develop with students a shared metalanguage for spelling, to foster common understandings as they develop students’ metacognitive strategies. To foster students’ metacognitive strategies for spelling, the following recommendations are made to teachers:

•Place less emphasis on rote learning of spelling lists and more emphasis on developing students’ metacognitive skills with a problem-solving approach to spelling. Encourage students to reflect constantly and to explain how and why they select and use particular strategies as they write challenging words.

•Encourage a combination of spelling strategies. Make explicit links between students’ prior knowledge and their use of visual, graphophonic and morphological strategies for spelling.

•Analyse students’ approximations in their draft writing to search for the current use of strategies and the next steps required in strategy use. Give positive reinforcement for parts of words that they have written correctly.

•Develop students’ knowledge of the orthographic system. Make clear links to patterns and discuss them during writing and reading lessons. Students learn to spell across curriculum learning areas.

•Develop students’ knowledge of morphology through exploring the structure of words (for example, by discussing roots, affixes and compound words).

•Develop students’ phonological knowledge including phoneme–grapheme relationships and syllabification in the contexts of writing and reading.

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