Enhancing literacy acquisition through spelling exercises: Comparing tasks for first graders

Learning to spell is a difficult but essential task for children learning to read. Several spelling tasks involving different cognitive demands are used in classroom. To provide better guidance for teaching practices, a critical question is whether spelling performance of beginner readers is task dependent. The present study focuses on the performance of French first graders on two spelling tasks: picture to spelling and dictation to spelling. We hypothesize that spelling will be easier from a phonological entry (dictation) than from a semantic entry (picture). Sixty-three students spelled words in both tasks. Bayesian analyses showed moderate to strong evidence for the null hypothesis, suggesting that the dictation to spelling task is equivalent for first graders as the picture to spelling task. Exploratory analyses also suggest that first graders mobilize both the non-lexical and lexical routes for the two tasks. These results provide clues for spelling instruction in the first grades.