Visuele beelding as spellingonderrigstrategie vir Afrikaanssprekende, graad 3-leerders, met spellingprobleme

[摘要] English: Article 1: Good, effective spelling is regarded as the 'passport' to educational opportunities, and academic performance is measured against it. Bad spelling not only lowers the effectiveness of written work, but is often a life-long embarrassment to a person. In the light of the foregoing one would expect educators in schools to receive the required guidance on choice and application of strategies for teaching spelling. However, the opposite is true, because educators have to rely largely on own experience. As a result the choice of teaching strategies is often made in a random and unscientific manner.In the literature two teaching strategies in particular evoke response from researchers, namely the phonetic (auditory imaging) as against the non-phonetic (visual imaging) approach to teaching spelling. In the context of primary schools in the Free State, a phonetic approach to teaching spelling is mainly used, while the latest research results indicate that learners with spelling problems experience more problems than successful spellers if this approach is used. The high percentage of primary school learners who spell badly is also an indication that the phonetic approach to teaching spelling does not result in mastery success in a significant group of learners. In contrast researchers reported that good spellers are those who can retain an exact visual impression of a word, can associate the word with the visual image of it, and can recall a clear visual or kinaesthetic image of the word in written form.Although no generally accepted definition for visual imaging is mentioned in the literature, many researchers agree that imaging is a dynamic cognitive process that can probably contribute significantly to effective learning and teaching events in the classroom situation.As a consequence of the foregoing, it was endeavoured in this study to investigate the value and effectiveness of visual imaging as strategy for teaching spelling. The focus was specifically on the nature, structure and use of visual imaging as strategy for teaching spelling, different theories on imaging was described, and the possible relation between visual imaging and other aspects such as visual memory and visualisation were also highlighted and discussed. From the literature study it also appeared that research results show that visual imaging was indeed a strong factor in addressing spelling handicaps in learners with spelling problems.However, it is important to keep in mind that not all individuals have the same visual imaging potential or use it equally effectively. It is therefore very important that spelling mastery by means of visual imaging should not be left only to incidental learning, but should be accompanied by intentional awareness and application of these techniques when teaching spelling.In practice there are differences of opinion regarding the most effective strategy for teaching spelling, particularly when preference modalities are taken into account. Some educators' point of departure is to capitalise on the strong areas, while others are in favour of supporting the weak areas. In spite of the above-mentioned differences, research results in this literature study indicate that preference modalities do not play an essential role in mastering spelling.Article 2: Some researchers postulate that in spite of the attention that is paid in the literature to strategies for teaching spelling, very little experimental research is undertaken to verify such strategies. As a result both choice and application of teaching strategies are unscientific.In spite of the important role that visual imaging plays in various cognitive tasks, limited research results are available regarding the use of visual imaging and spelling performance. Relating to the above, the purpose of this empirical study was to determine whether it is possible to neutralise or improve spelling handicaps in Afrikaans-speaking grade 3 learners by exposing such learners to a visual imaging programme.In this empirical study the researcher succeeded in showing that visual imaging can play an extremely important role in improving the spelling of learners with spelling problems. The average after-scores of experimental persons in the experimental group were significant higher than the scores of those in the control group who had not been exposed to the visual imaging programme.In practice there are contradictory viewpoints regarding the use of visual or auditory techniques in teaching spelling. Those opposed to visual teaching methods for spelling postulate, among others, that learners with auditory preference modalities will not benefit from a visual approach to teaching spelling. In this empirical study the possible relation between preference modalities and spelling performance was also investigated. Experimental persons in this study were learners with either visual or auditory preference modalities, and were exposed to the same visual imaging programme for remedial teaching. The average after-scores of learners with visual and auditory preference modalities respectively did not differ significantly. It would therefore appear that learners with different preference modalities (visual/auditory) benefited equally from the visual imaging programme. From this it can be deduced that preference modalities did not play a role in mastery of spelling by experimental persons in this study.

[发布机构] University of the Free State

[效力级别] xOrthography and spelling