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Cited by 95Reading and Literacy DevelopmentSecond Language Acquisition and LearningLanguage Development and Disorders

The Role of Self-Teaching in Learning Orthographic and Semantic Aspects of New Words

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Ricketts, Jessie, Bishop, Dorothy V. M., Pimperton, Hannah, Nation, Kate·2011·Scientific Studies of Reading
DOI 10.1080/10888438.2011.536129
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Abstract

This study explores how children learn the meaning (semantics) and spelling patterns (orthography) of novel words encountered in story context. English-speaking children (N = 88) aged 7 to 8 years read 8 stories and each story contained 1 novel word repeated 4 times. Semantic cues were provided by the story context such that children could infer the meaning of the word (specific context) or the category that the word belonged to (general context). Following story reading, posttests indicated that children showed reliable semantic and orthographic learning. Decoding was the strongest predictor of orthographic learning, indicating that self-teaching via phonological recoding was important for this aspect of word learning. In contrast, oral vocabulary emerged as the strongest predictor of semantic learning.

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  • Conceptual overlap between the cloze reading comprehension task and lexical inferencing is unlikely to fully explain the association between reading comprehension and contextual inferencing.

    “However, as previous research has found an association between open-ended reading comprehension questions and lexical inferencing (Cain et al., 2003;Ricketts et al., 2011), conceptual overlap between the tasks is unlikely to fully explain the association.”

    From Use of morphological and contextual cues in children’s lexical inferencing in L1 and L2 (2021) · cites this paper as Ricketts et al., 2011

    The Background Measures section says children answered questions about passages they had read, and Predicting Orthographic and Semantic Aspects of Word Learning reports a significant positive correlation between reading comprehension and learning new-word meanings from context. Our copy does not specify that the comprehension questions were open-ended; it assessed semantic learning with a nonword–picture matching task rather than a direct lexical-inferencing response. The claim about task overlap is the citing authors’ inference, not a finding attributed to this paper. (LLM, conf=0.83)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • Earlier research has shown an association between contextual inferencing and reading comprehension.

    “This is in line with earlier research showing an association between contextual inferencing and reading comprehension (e.g., Cain et al., 2003;Ricketts et al., 2011).”

    From Use of morphological and contextual cues in children’s lexical inferencing in L1 and L2 (2021) · cites this paper as Ricketts et al., 2011

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References 60 · Cited by 95

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Authors
Ricketts, J., Bishop, D. V. M., Pimperton, H., & Nation, K.
Affiliations
  • University of London (GB)
  • University of Oxford (GB)
Corresponding author
Ricketts, Jessie
ORCID
Venue
Scientific Studies of Reading
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Published
2011-01-07
Volume
15
Issue
1
Pages
47-70
ISSN
  • 1088-8438 (ISSN-L)
  • 1532-799X
DOI
10.1080/10888438.2011.536129
OpenAlex
W2058863282
Cited by
95
References
60
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 4 · 2012: 4
FWCI
11.82
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Scientific Studies of Reading (publishedVersion)
  • CentAUR (University of Reading) (submittedVersion)
  • ePrints Soton (University of Southampton) (submittedVersion)
  • UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Reading and Literacy Development
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Second Language Acquisition and Learning
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
Keywords
self-education, novel word learning, orthographic learning, semantic learning, spelling, phonological recoding, decoding, oral vocabulary, story context, children's reading, English-speaking children

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