The Effects of Blending and Spelling Training on the Decoding Skills of Young Poor Readers

Abstract

Editor's Comment: The staff of the Journal of Learning Disabilities receives a number of research reports that we and the consulting editors believe would be of interest to some of the readers. Because of space constraints it is not possible to publish all of these manuscripts. Consequently, we ask some authors to provide us with a brief discussion of their study and findings to publish as a Research Brief. Readers who wish a copy of the entire report should write directly to the author(s).---JLW Blending and spelling training were compared in this experiment to determine which intervention would improve the decoding skills of two first-grade boys with learning disabilities who were in the phonetic cue stage of reading. Additionally, the two boys received pre- and posttest administrations of a phonemic segmentation task. Although neither intervention proved superior, the children met the learning criterion for both interventions and demonstrated both maintenance and generalization of their skills. They also improved their phonemic skills, even though independent training in this area was not provided. It appeared that the equivalence of the interventions may have been due to the intensive instructional setting and use of systematic error analysis procedures.