Abstract
The study investigates the importance of having a set reading instruction method for the development of spelling skills among Czech children ranging in age across the four beginning grades of primary school. 238 children learning to read and spell by using an analytical -synthetic method and 251 children learning to read and spell by using a so called genetic method participated in this study. The outcomes of word spelling tests were assessed for the different grade and age levels: first, second- third and fourth.
Distributional patterns of spelling skills performance for both instruction method subgroups were created in each of the grade groups. Comparisons of spelling tasks outputs between both methods were conducted using a non-parametric Mann-Whitney test.
Results indicate that genetic method children are more effective in acquiring phoneme-grapheme correspondences throughout the first grade, and thus show more accurate word spelling in the first grade spelling task. This faster start be genetic method children soon disperses however, and it is not reflected in better spelling performance throughout the second to third and fourth grade.