The role of self-teaching in learning orthographic and semantic aspects of new words

Ricketts, Jessie, Bishop, Dorothy V. M., Pimperton, Hannah and Nation, Katie (2011) The role of self-teaching in learning orthographic and semantic aspects of new words. Scientific Studies of Reading, 15 (1), 47-70. (doi:10.1080/10888438.2011.536129).

Record type: Article

Abstract

This study explores how children learn the meaning (semantics) and spelling patterns(orthography) of novel words encountered in story context. English-speaking
children (N = 88) aged 7 to 8 years read 8 stories and each story contained 1 novel word repeated 4 times. Semantic cues were provided by the story context such that
children could infer the meaning of the word (specific context) or the category that the word belonged to (general context). Following story reading, posttests indicated
that children showed reliable semantic and orthographic learning. Decoding was the strongest predictor of orthographic learning, indicating that self-teaching via
phonological recoding was important for this aspect of word learning. In contrast, oral vocabulary emerged as the strongest predictor of semantic learning.

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