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BUILDING SPELLING ABILITY OF THE FOURTH GRADE STUDENTS OF SDN 48 DUAMPANUA THROUGH ALPHABET ISLAND STRATEGY

A. Background Spelling is a complex written language skill that draws upon a number of language abilities and knowledge. Phonological skills appear to be critical, in addition to orthographic knowledge, memory for word images, awareness of morphological structures and semantic relationships, as well as knowledge of spelling rules. Spelling has traditionally been viewed as an integral part of the reading process as suggested by moderate to high correlations between scores on reading and spelling tests.1 Whilst reading and spelling skills do interrelate, research findings suggest that there may be separate mechanisms for each activity and that spelling involves two processing systems, they are phonological and lexical. Moreover, researchers contend that the mastery of spelling presents a greater challenge for learners than learning to read .Westwood cites spelling differs from reading in that it requires accurate retrieval and reproduction of

U Frith. Unexpected Spelling Problems, Cognitive Processes in Spelling . (London: Academic Press, 1980) p. 495-515.

sequences of letters which cannot be guessed from the text (textual cues) or from sentence construction (syntactical cues).2 The ability to spell is a critical skill in the educational process. Hubbert, Weber and McLaughlin note than difficulty in spelling has dire consequences for students both socially and academically. The incapacity to manipulate ones environment through writing also places limits on age-appropriate participation and future success. 3As children embark upon adolescence and early adulthood, a necessity for accuracy and fluency in writing arises. This correlation between spelling and school success has served as a catalyst for a large number of spelling intervention studies. Research has suggested that procedures for spelling are not equally effective or efficient across students with regard to acquisition and maintenance of basic skills in spelling. In spelling comprehension the students have trouble to understand it. Spelling comprehension is supposed the simple case, but it can be enough confusing. Because if the students do not know the spelling of a word they will get difficulty to write the word properly. Some kinds of the words are difficult to be understood, as has been explained above. This case has made misspelling in writing and considered as a cause why the students interest is
2

P Westwood. Spelling: Approaches to Teaching and Assessment . (Victoria: The Australian Council for Educational Research. 1980) p. 12
3

McLaughlin, at all. The use of racetracks procedures to improve the academic behaviors of students in special and remedial education: Suggestions for school personnel . (Columbus: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 2011) p. 1

still lack in writing. In this case writer wants written English to be interesting for the students, and becomes the fun activity in English. Through spelling comprehension the students are expected able to improve their writing skill. Understand spelling effectively can be by knowing and memorizing the letters of a word, but that thing is very difficult, because on other hand the students must know about meaning of a word, the students must know letters of a word in spelling. Therefore, the students can overcome this problem by understanding what spelling is and practice it. Furthermore, students with learning English as a second learners often struggle far more than that of native speakers peers in regards to spelling acquisition and fluency. It is important to provide formal instruction on both strategies and the spelling of words. Spelling outcomes are consistently improved following spelling interventions that included explicit instruction with multiple practice opportunities and immediate corrective feedback after the word is misspelled. Spelling often becomes an obstacle in writing for the students, because when they do not know exactly spelling of a word, they will get doubt to write it. There are kinds of spelling which make the students have confusing in spelling of writing, such as double letter, capital letter, hyphen, double final consonant, affix, and homophone.

Many strategies, which involve explicit instruction, have been used to teach spelling and are proving to be successful. One of them is by using Alphabet Island. This package of teaching series by interested media and the way to teach with fun and impressive for students especially for children. They can easily memorize the alphabet because of the systematic learning applied. Therefore, this research will concern of the spelling ability improvement trough alphabet island with research entitled: Building Spelling ability of the Fourth Grade Students of SDN 48 Duampanua through Alphabet Island Strategy.

B. Problem statement

Referring to the background above, the researcher would like to formulate the problem statement as: Is Alphabet Island able to make students better in spelling ability?

C. Objective of the Research

Based on the formulation of the problems, the objectives of this research is to find out whether or not students will be better in spelling ability through Alphabet Island.

D. Significance of the Research

The significance of the research is divided into two benefits for a theory and application, where can be extended as follow: 1. Theoretical aspect: Its expected as a brand new theory in teaching spelling based on Alphabet Island. 2. Practical aspect: a) For students It makes the students can be better in spelling and on the other way make them more interest and enjoy improving their spelling ability. b) For teacher Teacher or lecturer have another view of teaching style/ strategy based on Alphabet Island. Besides, the students will feel at ease and enjoy to learn English reading.

E. Review of Related Literature 1. Previous related findings There are two researches which are related with this research as follow:

Graham and Free conducted a study entitled Strategy Training and Teacher- vs. Student-Controlled Study Conditions: Effects on LD Students' Spelling Performance. Learning Disability, Quarterly that examined learning disabled students spelling performance in response to strategy training and variation in study conditions. After training in the five steps study strategy, subjects studied spelling words under one of three conditions: directed study, student-controlled and teacher mentioned. Students assigned to a control group were given the choice to study the words in any manner they chose. Results indicated that students who were taught the five steps study strategy recalled the correct spelling of more words than controls who devised their own study method. However, the spelling performance of students who received strategy training was not differently affected by variations in the study conditions. Results were interpreted to suggest that learning disabled students spelling difficulties are associated with problems in self-regulation of organized, strategic behavior.4 Staden on her researcher entitled Improving the Spelling Ability of Grade 3 Learners through Visual Imaging Teaching Strategies discusses two key cognitive theories underlying spelling acquisition, the

S. Graham & M. Free. Strategy Training and Teacher- vs. Student-Controlled Study Conditions: Effects on LD Students' Spelling Performance. Learning Disability, Quarterly . (US: Academic Research international, 1986) p. 15-22

developmental stage theory and the overlapping waves theory. Within the developmental stage framework, learning to spell is viewed as a process of moving from spelling that represents sound to spelling that represents meaning, following a sequence of qualitatively distinct stages in a linear fashion. In contrast, proponents of the overlapping waves theory emphasize the use of different instructional approaches at any given time. The result find out that indicates that there was no significant difference between the average post-scores of learners with visual and auditory preferential learning styles respectively. Since the calculated T-value with regard to the pre-scores was 15, the null hypothesis could not be rejected (15 > 7). The conclusion that could be drawn is that there was no significant statistical difference between the post-scores of learners with visual and auditory preferences, it seemed that learners with different preferential learning styles benefited equally from the visual imagery program.5

2. Some Pertinent Idea a. The Concept of Spelling Spelling is the writing of one or more words with letters and diacritics. In addition, the term often, but not always, means an accepted
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Annalene van Staden. Improving the Spelling Ability of Grade 3 Learners through Visual Imaging Teaching Strategies. (Amsterdam: Stellenbosch University, 2011). p. 13-24

standard spelling or the process of naming the letters. In the sense of a standard, spelling is one of the elements of orthography and a prescriptive element of alphabetic languages.6 Spelling is a complex written language skill that draws upon a number of language abilities and knowledge. Phonological skills appear to be critical, in addition to orthographic knowledge, memory for word images (mental orthographic images), awareness of morphological structures and semantic relationships where knowledge of word parts and related words, as well as knowledge of spelling rules. Spelling has traditionally been viewed as an integral part of the reading process as suggested by moderate to high correlations between scores on reading and spelling tests.7 Based on the definition above, researcher concludes that spelling is a complex independent standing of a word in an order alphabetically that draws upon a number of language abilities and knowledge. Spellings attempt to transcribe the sounds of the language into alphabetic letters, but phonetic spellings are exceptions in many languages for various reasons. Pronunciation changes over time in all languages, and spelling reforms are irregular in most languages and rare in some. In
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http://www.facebook.com/pages/Spelling/108696629154866#, accessed on 24th June 2013 Staden., Op.Cit., p. 13-14

addition, words from other languages may be adopted without being adapted to the spelling system, non-standard spellings are often adopted after extensive common usage, and different meanings of a word or homophones may be deliberately spelled in different ways to differentiate them visually. Whereas uniformity in the spelling of words is one of the features of a standard language in modern times, and official languages usually prescribe standard spelling, minority languages and regional languages often lack this trait. Here, standard language refers to a language variety used by a group of people in their public discourse. Alternatively, varieties become standard by undergoing a process of standardization, during which it is organized for description in grammars and dictionaries and encoded in such reference works. Typically, varieties that become standardized are the local dialects spoken in the centers of economy and government, where a need arises for a variety that will serve more than local needs. A standard language can be either pluricentric. 8 Furthermore, it is a relatively recent development in various major languages in national contexts, linked to the compiling of dictionaries, the finding of national academies and other institutions of language maintenance, including compulsory mass education. Moreover, English
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http://www.facebook.com/pages/Standard-language/116059655073518#, accessed on 24th May 2013

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particularly has absorbed into common usage and dictionary acceptance huge numbers of words from foreign languages, particularly French. These may now have a spelling as in the original form or may be somewhat altered in the transition into English. In many respects, a general principle could be stated that retaining the original spelling is important since it reflects the origin of a word and hence adds an extra nuance to its meaning. Whilst reading and spelling skills do interrelate, research findings suggest that there may be separate mechanisms for each activity and that spelling involves two processing systems phonological and lexical. Moreover, researchers contend that the mastery of spelling presents a greater challenge for learners than learning to read. According to Westwood that spelling differs from reading in that it requires accurate retrieval and reproduction of sequences of letters which cannot be guessed from the text (textual cues) or from sentence construction (syntactical cues).9

b. Stage of Spelling

Staden., Op.Cit., p. 14

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Adam cites according to stage theory, children begin spelling with minimal knowledge of the alphabet. The mastery of the letters of the alphabet provides a strong findation for learning to read and spell. As children learn the alphabet, they learn how to represent some sounds of words with letters but not all of them.10 Some authors argue that spelling development is more complex than stage theory suggests and that children, from the beginning of their contact with print, rely on multiple strategies and many types of knowledge when they spell.11 As their spelling skills progress, children learn about patterns of letters in words or orthographic knowledge. They begin to use morphological knowledge or knowledge about the structure of words (e.g., dirt/dirty; farm/farmer are related) and strategies such as visual checking.12 However, Treiman finds that grade one children are not yet aware of morphology and consistently misspelled inflected words such as helped as helpt.13 Sprenger-Charolles and Casalis also note that the development of correct spelling for one word may occur at a different rate than the correct spelling of another word. They find that this development
10

Joy Ronda. The concurrent development of spelling skills in two languages . (Canada: International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, 2011) p. 107
11

Id., L.C. Ehri. Sources of Difficulty in Learning to Spell and Read. (Greenwich: CT JAI, 1986). p. 121 Ronda., Op.Cit., p. 107

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depended on factors such as environmental exposure and the difficulty of the type or sequence of letters use in a word.14 Phonological awareness also plays an important role in spelling development. Despite the irregularities of the pronunciation of some phonemes (units of sound), children appear to quickly learn and use their phonological knowledge to assist in their spelling of words. Many beginning spellers use a letter-name strategy (b for bee) to spell a word. By grade one, most students can break a word into its onset and rime or syllables but may experience some problems breaking words into their individual phonemes.15Although first and second language spelling may develop in a similar pattern, it appears that certain error types may be due to differences in the nature of the orthography. Muats in her article How Children Learn to Spell has divided several stages of children development in spelling.16 1) Visual Memory and Spelling Memory While visual memory, "orthographic" memory is vital for learning to spell, it doesn't work alone. Spelling memory for letter sequences is enhanced by a child's awareness of phonemes, or speech

14 15

Id., R. Treiman. Beginning to Spell. (England: Cambridge University Press, 1993). p. 78 http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/how-children-learn-spell, accessed on 25th June 2013

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sounds. At more advanced levels, spelling memory draws on a child's knowledge of word structure, words' meaningful parts, and a word's relationship to other words, and so on. Word knowledge builds systematically on other word knowledge. 2) Pre-communicative Writing Stage Most young children who are exposed to print in their homes spontaneously begin to experiment with writing. Although they may know the names of some letters, recognize letter forms, and realize that letters represent speech sounds, they may not understand what a word is or realize that print represents words and that spaces represent boundaries between them. Reading at this stage is "logographic," meaning that a child guesses at whole words based on their visual features 3) Semi-phonetic Stage After children have experimented with imitative writing and developed an awareness of alphabet letter names, a shift occurs. They begin to realize that letters represent speech sounds. For example, a child may use a few letters, usually consonants, to represent words, syllables, initial letters, or pieces of words. Often these consonants correspond to an alphabet letter name. At this stage, children may use

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their knowledge of letter names and partial phonetic cues to read, but their ability to identify and segment word sounds is still limited. 4) Phonetic Spelling Stage As children gain more knowledge of print and develop an awareness of speech sounds, sound-letter correspondences, and letter names, they often employ a "one letter spells one sound" strategy. This typically occurs in kindergarten and early first grade. At this point, children "spell" by matching sounds to letters and consistently representing all of a word's sounds. To do this they rely on how words feel in their mouths. 5) Transitional Spelling Stage After children gain more experience with print, receive systematic instruction, and improve their reading ability, they begin to understand that most sounds are represented by letter combinations. They see that syllables are spelled in predictable ways and meaningful parts of words, such as grammatical endings and Latin and Greek roots and affixes, are preserved in English. 6) Integration Stage As students move from phonetic (sound) to syllabic (syllable) and morphemic (meaning) spelling, which typically occurs after the

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fourth grade, instruction should yield several things: Students should begin to consistently spell meaningful parts such as roots, prefixes, and suffixes. They should know that homophones, learned in meaningful phrases, demonstrate an important principle of English spelling that the meaning of a word can determine how it is spelled. 7) Middle Grades Stages As they learn more words and store more examples of common spelling patterns in their memory, they rely increasingly on analogy strategies to spell. They learn new words because they are associated in memory with words that share their patterns. This is why it's important to emphasize sound and spelling patterns: Although students must memorize many specific words, the more they are aware of the familiar letter sequences and repeated patterns in the writing system, the easier they can recall them.

c. Spelling Errors in English In English, as opposed to Indonesian, the spelling patterns of normal and disabled readers have been widely investigated, spelling errors of individuals with dyslexia are similar to those of younger children. Nelson analyzes the spelling errors of dyslexic and normal

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spelling-level-matched children and classified their errors into three categories: order errors, phonetically inaccurate errors, and

orthographically illegal errors. In both groups, more phonetically inaccurate misspellings are made than either of the other two error types. Also, there is no significant difference between the groups in the frequency of the three error types, which indicates that the quality of the dyslexic childrens spelling is essentially normal.17 Furthermore, Moats analyzes the spelling errors of adolescent dyslexic students. She divides the errors into three categories:18 1) Orthographic errors Using the wrong symbol but that represented the speech sounds in some plausible manner (e.g. homophones), 2) Phonological errors Error in omissions, substitutions, additions, or errors in the way speech sounds were represented, 3) Morphological error

17

Salim Abu-Rabia & Rana Sammour. Spelling Errors Analysis of Regular and Dyslexic Bilingual Arabic-English Students. Open Journal of Modern Linguistics ISSN/EISSN: 21642818 21642834. Retrieved by: http://www.scirp.org/journal/ojml. (Israel: Scientific Research Publishing, 2013). p. 60
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http://dx.doi:10.1007/BF00423928, accessed on 24th June 2013.

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Errors that occurred on inflected morphemes. The poorer spellers make more errors than the better spellers on certain phonological and morphological constructions. Specifically, the poorer spellers make a disproportionately large numbers of errors in their representation of liquid and nasal consonants, especially after vowels, and in their spellings of the inflections -ed and -s. Snowling, Goulandris, and Defty cites the development of literacy skills among dyslexic children compare to reading age controls and chronological age controls. Their spelling errors are analyzed and classified into three categories:19 a) Phonetic errors These errors are caused by the inappropriate application of letter-sound correspondence rules (e.g. cigarette-sigaret). b) Semi Phonetic errors These errors contain a single phonemic error and could be created by omission of a single phoneme, addition of a phoneme and substitution of one phoneme with a similar one. c) Dysphonetic errors

19

http://dx.doi:10.1037/0022-0663.88.4.653, accessed on 24th June 2013

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All other errors that does not represent the sound structure of the word correctly (e.g. million-miyel). The researchers find dysphonetic errors to be prominent among dyslexic children, suggesting that they have problems with the use of phonological spelling strategies, and they attribute this to a phonological delay.

d. Strategies for Spelling Improvement Learning proper spelling by rote is a traditional element of elementary education. The ubiquity of the phonics method of teaching reading, which emphasizes the importance of "sounding out" spelling in learning to read, also puts a premium on the prescriptive learning of spelling. For these reasons, divergence from standard spelling is often perceived as an indicator of low intelligence, illiteracy, or lower class standing. 20 Following Strategies are used for improvement of spelling:21 1) Phonemes grapheme relationship First strategy used is alphabets and their sounds. Subjects are taught to sound the alphabets and how to relate these sounds with their

20

http://www.wikipedia.com/spelling, accessed on 24th May 2013.

21

Mehwish Rashid, Muhammad Imran Yousuf & Muhammad Imran. Strategies for Spelling Improvements. Journal: Academic Research International ISSN/EISSN: 22239944 22239553 Year: 2012 Volume: 3 Issue: 1. (Pakistan: SAVAP International, 2012). p. 65-66

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symbols. In auditory perception of letter sounds, knowledge of phonics and structural analysis is given to develop their skills in applying the phonic generalization. 2) Missing letters Different words with missing letters are written on the paper. It is asked to recognize the correct word, to see the missing word and then to fill the blanks by recognizing its sound. 3) Letter clues The entire word is covered up and then gradually exposing each successive letter until the subjects could guess the correct word. For example garden, beautiful, mother, uncle, sparrow, carrot etc. 4) Spell the word by pictures Pictures are pasted on charts and Subjects are asked to spell the name of that thing by using learned skills of how to spell. 5) Mixed up letters Words with no sequence are given to Subjects and are asked to write these words in order. For example fish as fshi, kite as ekti, flag as glaf etc. 6) Highlight words

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Highlight words strategy is used by highlighting the difficult part of the word. Then Subjects are asked to make a mental picture of that word, read the word aloud and spell it aloud. For example, SepArate then were asked to think how the difficult part looks or sounds. So, while writing, separate they might be thinking sep A rate and thinking of that bold, red A. 7) Tactile exercises The tactile exercise is provided by sand tray, felt or wooden letters. The revisualization of specific letters is strengthening by having the child trace the letter in various media, such as clay, salt and sand. 8) Syllables The syllables of the words are taught to the subjects for example Indonesia as indo-ne-sia. They have to say the word syllable by syllable, spell the word orally and then trace the word in air or over the word itself with the finger. 9) Counseling and motivation Counseling and motivation is very important for students. While using all above mentioned strategies, continuous counseling and motivation is provided. Sincerity and motivation of teachers is also recognized before subjects.