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Description:
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Given the importance of the role of spelling in literacy , it is important to have
knowledge of the linguistic features that allow students to be successful spellers . Having
phonological , morphological , and orthographic knowledge is essentially important to
spell conventionally . In the United States , the standard language is Academic English
(AE ) . African American Vernacular English (AAVE ) is considered a deviation from AE ,
with its own sound system . AAVE is the most widely used form of dialect in the United
States . Many students who speak AAVE may have difficulties in producing the correct
spelling of AE words . The overall purpose of this study was to provide sixth -grade
students , who are speakers of AAVE , with an eight -week intervention in the principles
of phonology , morphology , and orthography that would assist them in improving their
spelling performance .
Students had similar scores on all spelling and dialect pretest measures before the
intervention began . The research design was a pretest /posttest /posttest design using waitlist -
control . This study included 142 students divided into 14 class sections taught by two teachers . The two teachers provided the intervention to the students . The
experimental group consisted of seven classes , and the control group consisted of seven
classes . After the first implementation of the intervention , the study was replicated with
the control group of students .
MANOVA was utilized to determine the effect of the intervention . The
intervention produced large effects for the students who received the spelling instruction .
The results from the criterion -referenced spelling assessments and a sentence writing
task revealed that students who received explicit instruction from the intervention made
gains in their spelling performance from pretest /posttest 1 /posttest 2 and maintained
these gains after being tested eight weeks later .
Practical and theoretical recommendations are provided for teachers and
researchers . Suggested recommendations include : providing teacher training that will
enable teachers to be more linguistically aware of AAVE and its features , making
students aware of the difference in the AAVE and the AE sound system , and conducting
more research -based studies that will assist speakers of AAVE in literacy and spelling . |