Orthographic word knowledge growth in school-age children

Natural reading experiences provide an opportunity for the development of orthographic word knowledge as well as other forms of partial word knowledge. The purpose of this study was to compare the orthographic word knowledge growth of school-age children with relatively low language skills (LL group) to that of age- and gender-matched peers with high language skills (HL group).

Thirty-two children, 16 per group, read stories containing rare words 3 times, 2-3 days apart. Posttesting, completed at the end of each session, required participants to indicate recognition of the rare words encountered in the stories while not indicating recognition of orthographically similar nonwords.

Over time, both groups showed significant growth in recognition of the orthographic forms of the rare words. However, the groups differed in the extent to which they indicated that the orthographically similar nonwords were words, with the LL group indicating that significantly more of the nonwords were words.

Results provide some preliminary evidence that children with relatively weaker language skills are able to develop orthographic knowledge of unfamiliar words through reading experiences, but their orthographic representations may not be as well defined as those of children with stronger language skills.