In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of students with difficulties, particularly in spelling and written production, and this is a cause for concern.
The results show an improvement in the lexical orthographic skills of all students in an inclusive context.
The purpose of this research is to show that a spelling training program based on explicit instruction in the use of graphotactic (e.g. the grapheme eau cannot be at the beginning of a word) and morphological patterns (e.g. feminine adjectives describing a state and ending in /ite/ are always written ité) promotes both spelling and writing skills for all students. The implementation of this program contributes to meeting the objective of the Ministère de l’Éducation et de l’Enseignement supérieur to “reduce the gap in success rates between various groups of students by 50%”.
The results show an improvement in the lexical orthographic skills of all students in an inclusive context. Not only did all students learn how to use patterns to spell the words in the study, but they also learned to spell words that had not been taught.
This training program will soon be available for anyone who wishes to adopt this approach. In addition, a database of 14,800 words taken from schoolbooks, with a 1200-word acquisition scale for lexical orthography, is available online (ÉQOL). This database, which complements existing departmental tools, helps guide the choice of lexicon to be taught to students according to teaching, intervention or research objectives.
Main researcher
Brigitte Stanké, Université de Montréal
Deposit of the research report: March 2020