This blog post is part of our Research Article of the Month series. For this month, we highlight “Investigating the Contribution of Spelling Practice to the Multisyllabic Word Reading Skills of Upper Elementary Students With Dyslexia,” an article written by Dr. Jessica Toste and colleagues. Toste will be a featured speaker at the 2026 Iowa Science of Reading Summit. To learn more about Toste and the summit, visit the summit webpage.

Find more information on terminology specific to literacy learning in our reading glossary. Important words related to research are bolded throughout this post, and definitions of these terms are included at the end of the article in the “Terms to Know” section.

Key Takeaways

• Spelling requires greater cognitive effort than reading.
• In brief intervention sessions, the added demands of spelling (e.g., time, cognitive effort, sustained attention, handwriting) may limit the immediate benefits of spelling practice on reading.
• When instructional time is fixed, allocating more opportunities to read words with feedback may be more efficient than spelling practice to support multisyllabic word reading for older students with dyslexia.

What Did the Researchers Examine?

Spelling and reading are closely connected. Both rely on students’ ability to link letters and sounds and store accurate word representations in memory. Spelling, compared to reading, requires greater precision because it demands the full and accurate understanding of a word’s phonology (pronunciation), orthography (spelling), and morphology (meaningful word parts). Whereas readers can often successfully identify and read words with only partial information, spellers must produce each grapheme in the correct sequence. Thus, it is often assumed that adding spelling practice to reading intervention will strengthen students’ word reading skills—especially for students with dyslexia.

Students with dyslexia in Grades 3–5 often continue to struggle with multisyllabic words—words that are common in academic texts and essential for later reading success. Instructional time for intervention is limited, and educators must make careful decisions about how that time is spent. Spelling activities, while potentially valuable, take longer than reading practice and may place greater cognitive demands on students. If spelling practice does not meaningfully improve reading outcomes beyond decoding practice, educators need clear evidence to guide instructional priorities.

But does spelling practice actually provide an added benefit beyond well-designed decoding instruction?

Toste et al.’s recent study explored this question with upper-elementary students with dyslexia, focusing on whether spelling practice improves multisyllabic word reading more than additional reading practice alone.

What Did the Researchers Find?

Students were divided into two groups: one group that practiced multisyllabic word reading through additional reading practice, and one group that practiced multisyllabic word reading through reading and spelling practice. Both groups of students improved their ability to read multisyllabic words. However, spelling practice did not produce stronger reading outcomes than reading practice alone.

Across multiple measures—including taught words, untaught words, and standardized assessments—students who practiced spelling did not outperform students who spent that same time rereading words. In fact, on one standardized measure of word reading efficiency, students in the reading-only condition showed a small advantage. These findings suggest that repeated, supported reading practice may be sufficient to build the orthographic knowledge needed for multisyllabic word reading, at least within short instructional periods.

What Are the Implications of These Findings?

This study does not suggest that spelling instruction is unimportant. Spelling remains a critical literacy skill and supports word reading, writing, and vocabulary development. The key takeaway is not that spelling should be removed from literacy instruction, but that its role in reading intervention should be guided by evidence, purpose, and student need.

For educators designing or delivering reading intervention:

• Prioritize explicit decoding instruction and ample opportunities to read multisyllabic words with feedback.
• Be thoughtful about how spelling practice is integrated, especially when time is limited.
• Recognize that spelling may support reading in some contexts, but it should not automatically replace reading practice.

For researchers and policymakers:

• More experimental research is needed to identify when, how, and for whom specific instructional methods support spelling and word reading outcomes.
• Intervention guidance should be grounded in evidence that also considers efficiency.

How Did the Researchers Find This?

They conducted a brief, tightly controlled experiment with 32 third- through fifth-grade students diagnosed with dyslexia. All students received the same explicit instruction in multisyllabic word reading, including instruction on common suffixes.

Where students differed was in how they practiced. Students were divided into two conditions that practiced multisyllabic word reading in different ways:

• Decoding condition: Students spent practice time rereading multisyllabic words with feedback.
• Decoding and spelling condition: Students spent the same amount of time practicing spelling those words using a modified cover-copy-compare approach. This approach involves (1) reading and spelling a word aloud, (2) writing the word from memory, and (3) checking the spelling.

Students were tested before and after instruction using word-reading assessments (TOWRE 2 and a researcher-developed word reading list) in order to measure how instruction impacted their learning. 

Regression analysis was used to examine the effects of the conditions. T-tests were used to compare the average proportion of words learned in each condition.

What Are the Limitations of This Paper?

This study tested one common spelling practice approach (i.e., cover-copy-compare), not all possible spelling methods.

It is possible that different types of spelling instruction—particularly more explicit instruction focused on sound-spelling correspondences (e.g., phonemic or targeted word analysis approaches)—could yield different results. 

Helping students with dyslexia become proficient readers requires careful attention to instructional design. This study contributes to a growing body of research aimed at identifying which components of reading intervention matter most—and how to use limited instructional time wisely.

Terms to Know

• Experiment: Experimental research aims to determine whether a certain treatment influences a measurable outcome—for example, whether a certain instructional method influences students’ reading comprehension scores. To do this, participants are divided into two groups, or conditions: an experimental group, which receives the treatment, and a control group, which does not receive the treatment. In an experimental study, these groups are randomly assigned, meaning each participant has equal probability of being in either the treatment or the control group. Both groups are tested before and after the treatment, and their results are compared.
• Regression analysis: In statistics, regression analysis is a process for estimating the relationship between one or more independent variables and a dependent variable. Regression analysis can be used to predict the value of a dependent variable for a given value of an independent variable (e.g., predicting a student’s composite reading score based on length of intervention time in minutes). In some cases, regression analysis can be used to infer cause-effect relationships between a dependent variable and an independent variable.
  • Dependent variable: Dependent variables are factors that may change in response to an independent variable. For example, a student’s composite reading score (dependent variable) may change in response to the length of reading intervention they receive in total minutes (independent variable).
  • Independent variable: An independent variable is a factor that influences dependent variables in experimental studies. For example, the length of a reading intervention in total minutes (independent variable) may affect a student’s composite reading score (dependent variable). They are called “independent” because they are manipulated by the experimenter and therefore independent of other influences.
• t-test: A t-test is a statistical test used to determine whether the difference between the responses of two groups is statistically significant. For example, in an experimental study, a researcher may use a t-test to determine whether participants’ responses to a posttest are significantly different from their responses to the pretest.

References

Toste, J. R., Clemens, N., Filderman, M. J., Chandler, B. W., Rodrigo, S., & Moore, C. (2025). Investigating the contribution of spelling practice to the multisyllabic word reading skills of upper elementary students with dyslexia. Learning Disability Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1177/07319487251327223