Spelling rule usage among students with learning disabilities and normally achieving students

Spelling performance of students with learning disabilities (LD) was compared with that of same-age normally achieving subjects and younger normally achieving subjects. Subjects with learning disabilities were divided into two groups: poor readers/poor spellers and good readers/poor spellers. A spelling battery was administered that included one task of phoneme-grapheme correspondence rule usage and four tasks of suffix rule usage. The groups with learning disabilities performed significantly below the same-age normally achieving group on all tasks. No significant differences among the two groups with learning disabilities and their achievement-level peers emerged in primary analyses. However, secondary analyses revealed differences in mastery of the past tense spelling rule ed, and in some subskills related to the spelling of words with suffixes. The cognitive-linguistic significance of these results is discussed.