The Efficacy of Implicit Versus Explicit Spelling Instruction. A Study of EFL in the Upper Secondary School Classroom

Abstract

English serves as an indispensable gateway for a multitude of professional opportunities and higher education courses. The ability to speak and comprehend English is often perceived as paramount; however, the skills of reading and writing in English are equally critical. A recent syllabus revision in Sweden has increased the demand for new methods for teaching these written aspects of language. This study focuses on the teaching of spelling in EFL education, and the method of an intervention study was used to compare the efficacy of implicit and explicit teaching of spelling with learners from Swedish upper secondary school. Half of the participants received explicit teaching in the form of a lecture on selected spelling rules in English while the other half received implicit teaching in the form of reading a text in which words that were connected to the selected spelling rules appeared. The results showed an increase in spelling ability in the explicit group and no overall change in the implicit group. The results of the latter group were however still better than the former group indicating that explicit teaching could be more effective for weaker spellers. How much the students of both groups improved varied by which extramural activities they spend time on, education level of their parents, first language, and gender. It is, however, not possible to draw hard conclusions based on these relations, due to a limited number of participants, leading to some categories only including 1 or 2 students.