A study to compare the effectiveness of an inductive versus a deductive strategy in teaching spelling lessons from a linguistically based spelling program

The aim of this study was to determine the relative effectiveness of an inductive versus a deductive strategy in teaching spelling lessons from a linguistically based spelling program. The intention was to compare the two strategies to see whether one strategy of teaching was superior to another with given pupils. Fifty-eight fourth grade and forty-eight fifth grade pupils were selected to participate in the study. The pupils were students in four language arts classes in a single elementary school. The classes were randomly assigned by grade to inductive or deductive strategy groups. Four special instructors, one per class, were employed and trained to teach spelling generalizations daily for a period of two weeks. Deductive groups were taught rules and inductive groups were led to discover rules for themselves. Common lists of words were used to teach the generalizations for each grade level. Three pre- and post-test scores were analyzed for each pupil: (1) a spelling test constructed by the researcher consisting of a random sample of the words taught in connection with the generalizations; (2) the spelling portions of the Metropolitan Achievement Tests, Forms F and G respectively; and (3) a spelling generalization test derived from the test constructed by the researcher where only the graphemes corresponding to the phonemes in the generalizations taught were scored regardless of the spelling of the rest of the word. The three independent variables involved in the study were: (1) strategy, inductive or deductive; (2) grade, four or five; and (3) sex, male or female. Nine null hypotheses were tested. Hypotheses I, IV, and VII predicted a relationship between spelling gain scores and the strategy employed. Hypotheses II, V, and VIII predicted a relationship between spelling gain scores and grade level. Hypotheses III, VI, and IX predicted a relationship between spelling gain scores and sex. [...]Education, College o