This is The Reading Instruction Show. I'm your
host, Dr. Andy Johnson. Topic of today's podcast
is orthographic mapping. Let's see if we can
learn a thing or two. Now, orthographic mapping
is a term invented by Linnea Erie. So let's start
with her definition. Quote, orthographic mapping
occurs when in the course of Reading specific
words, readers form connections between written
unit, either single grapheme or larger spelling
patterns, and spoken units, either phonemes,
syllables, or morphemes. These connections are
retained in memory, along with meanings, and
enable readers to recognize words by sight. An
important consequence of orthographic mapping
is that the spellings of words enter memory and
influence learning, the processing of phonological
constituents in words, and phonological memory
unquote. 2014, page 5 and 6. Now this is written
with all the stunning clarity of a Rorschach
inkblot test. So let's do a little on Packer
18 here. Orthography has to do with symbols representing
sounds and the arrangement of letters. The written
language that you read is an orthographic system.
You're putting sound symbols together to create
words. Other written language systems use symbols
to represent things. These are called logographic.
A logo is a symbol representing a thing. So here
you're putting symbols together to create meaning.
Now mapping in a cognitive sense refers to how
things are stored or connected in long -term
memory. And orthographic mapping, as stated above,
and I'll try to make it a little clearer, orthographic
mapping, according to Airy, is the cognitive
process by which readers store written words
in long -term memory. Airy calls these stored
words sight words. And readers are said to be
able to effortlessly retrieve these and use them
to recognize words during reading. Orthographic
mapping makes letter -sound connections and bonds
these to the spelling, punctuation, and meaning
of words in long -term memory according to the
theory of Linnea Erie. And the last term is upward
lexical repurposing. Upward lexical repurposing.
is when important -sounding words are combined
to make non -things sound like important things.
And research is showing that upward lexical repurposing
significantly enhances one's ability to get grants,
book contracts, consulting jobs, and large speaking
fees. And orthographic mapping is an example
of this. So it all makes sense, yes? If knowledge
was stored in long -term memory in the form of
words, orthographic mapping might make a bit
of sense. But knowledge is stored in the form
of associative networks, not words. Things in
long -term memory are connected to and organized
around related things. Any mapping that takes
place is primarily semantic mapping. For example,
when you hear the word cat or see the word cat
in print, you automatically associate it with
cat things. Soft, purry, paws, kitty, pet. These
things are closely related to cat. The neural
pathways leading to these things are activated.
things come to mind. Now what is not activated
when you hear the word cat? You don't automatically
think of short a words or cvc words or the at
phonograms. You don't think about letter sounds
or letter patterns. You think of things. Clearly
we have access to semantic information when we
see the word cat in print. Yes, there is orthographic
information on the page and some form of orthographic
mapping is stored in the head, but semantic information
takes precedent over orthographic information.
And if we just walked around recognizing individual
words floating in space, then the theory of orthographic
mapping would make a bit of sense. But semantic
connections between words in long -term memory
are much stronger than any orthographic connections.
And reading is primarily a meaning -making process,
not a word recognition process. So orthographic
mapping may be a thing, but semantic mapping
is much more of a thing. Now let's take a look
at orthographic facilitation. Orthographic facilitation
means seeing the spelling of words as you are
learning them. Now this is another example of
upward lexical repurposing. Airy said, orthographic
facilitation improves vocabulary, learning, and
spelling. In a 2017 study with 45 first grade
students, she compared their memory of two novel
sets of words. Now the first set, and I'm just
giving you a brief overview, the first set contained
just pictures of the novel word and along with
a spoken definition. The other set contained
pictures with the names of the word printed underneath.
followed by a spoken definition. After two weeks,
children were shown the pictures and asked to
remember the word associated with it and the
meaning of the word. And it turns out that when
the printed word was included in the original
exposure with the picture, children remembered
the pronunciation of it slightly better. Aerie
reasoned that since pronunciation was the most
difficult part of vocabulary learning, something
I questioned, she reasoned that orthographic
facilitation thereby enhanced vocabulary learning.
Now, again, in case you missed that, students
were able to remember the pronunciation of a
word when it was presented with letters, with
the word printed. And based on that, they were
able to remember the pronunciation. And based
on that, she says, ah, it facilitates vocabulary
learning. This is an example of a research -based
conclusion. You can technically say that orthographic
facilitation is a research -based strategy. There's
research to indicate it does something, but the
research is not very good. and the something
it does is not really indicative of something
else. Remember the pronunciation of a word has
very little to do with acquiring the word. Children
learn between 3 ,000 and 4 ,000 words a year.
By the end of elementary school they know approximately
25 ,000 words and by the end of high school approximately
50 ,000 to 80 ,000 words. And how much orthographic
facilitation was taking place here? Children
learned the vast majority of words with no orthographic
facilitation. They learned them by hearing them
used in conversation or by seeing the words in
print. In the study above, when children had
letter clues as they were learning the pronunciation
or sound of the word, they were better able to
remember the sound of the word when compared
to having no letter clues. Yes, absolutely. Seeing
sound symbols as you're learning the sound of
a new word provides another modality for remembering
the sound of the word. And if you have a visual
representation of that sound while you're learning
the pronunciation, chances are that you're better
able to remember the pronunciation. Most people
could have told you that up front. So, orthography
and vocabulary learning. This is a 2008 study,
Rosenthal and Airy, and there were two experiments
in this article. The first one was conducted
with 20 second grade students. They were given
two sets of low frequency CVC nouns, 12 words
total. One set was taught with the word given
orally and a picture, and again with the word
printed on the picture. The other set was given
the word orally, but picture, but no word on
it. Vocabulary learning was determined by assessing
students' ability to remember the pronunciation
of the words and their meaning. It was found
that these students could remember the pronunciation
and meaning of words better when it was accompanied
by seeing the spelling of the word. The second
experiment was similar but was conducted with
32 fifth grade students and 20 words. And after
one day, vocabulary learning was assessed with
an oral close task, remembering the word definitions
and meaning, and to see if they could spell the
words. Seeing the word while learning it improved
their memory of spelling, pronunciation, and
meaning of these 20 words. The results were followed
by four pages of general discussion in this research
article to draw logical conclusions based on
the data. And the authors concluded that, quote,
elementary school students learned and remembered
the pronunciation and meanings of new vocabulary
words better when they were exposed to written
forms of the word during study periods than when
they only heard and repeated the words, unquote.
And this is why you must evaluate A sample size
of 20 in one experiment asks students to remember
12 words, and 32 in the other group asks students
to remember 20 words. But one could hardly generalize
to elementary school students in general based
on this. But the larger point is that this is
a remembering experiment, not a vocabulary learning
experiment. Yes, if you provide an additional
variable, seeing the spelling of the word, this
will likely enhance students' ability to remember
the pronunciation and meaning of the word. But
it doesn't mean that orthography provided a mnemonic
device that tied the spelling of words to the
pronunciation and memory. It does not mean that
spelling became bonded to word pronunciations
and meaning as Airy tries to explain. It just
means that this group of students remembered
things better when you included spelling. And
I would posit that if you had students do a little
dance as they learned one set of words, the dance
set would show similar results. And this does
not mean that word learning is tied to dance.
It just means that when you present multiple
forms of data with a thing, or if you're more
engaged with the thing while learning, that thing
is more easily remembered. This has been The
Reading Instruction Show. I'm your host, Dr.
Andy Johnson.