Making Words: Enhancing the Invented Spelling-Decoding Connection.

Patricia Cunningham is a Professor of Education at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and James Cunningham is an Associate Professor of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Both conduct research and write on a variety of topics in literacy education. Since the pioneering work of Read (1971, 1975) and Beers and Henderson (1977), young children's invented spell ings (incorrect attempts to spell words while writing) have been recognized as powerful indicators of their developing phonemic awareness and knowledge of sound-letter rela tionships (Adams, 1990; Henderson, 1990). In recent years, a number of studies have doc umented a strong general relationship between spelling ability and the ability to identify words in reading. Zuteil and Rasinski (1989) discovered that spelling variables are highly related to children's oral reading accuracy, rate, and phrasing. Similarly, Gill (1989) de termined that the spelling and word recogni tion abilities of first, second, and third graders are closely related processes. Hall (1991) demonstrated that second-grade students' abil ity to spell words correctly is a near-perfect predictor that they will also be able to read those words.