Narrator:
0:03

Welcome to Literacy Talks, the podcast for literacy leaders and champions everywhere. Brought to you by Reading Horizons. Literacy Talks is the place to discover new ideas, trends, insights, and practical strategies for helping all learners reach reading proficiency. Our hosts are Stacy Hurst, a professor at Southern Utah University and chief academic advisor for Reading Horizons, Donell Pons, a recognized expert and advocate in literacy, dyslexia, and special education, and Lindsay Kemeny, an elementary classroom teacher, author, and speaker. Now let's talk literacy.

Stacy Hurst:
0:47

Welcome to this episode of Literacy Talks. I'm Stacy Hurst, and I'm joined by Lindsay Kemeny and Donell Pons, as I am every week. And we talk about literacy, and today is nothing different. We have heard oftentimes. I'll just preface the the rationale for the topic of this episode. We hear all the time that phrase "research to practice," and as researchers and as teachers, I think on either end of that spectrum, that could mean different things for different people. One thing that has become apparent is that in our pre-service education, at least I wasn't in in my elementary education studies. I was not taught how to read research, how to read a research article, and even just the meaningful parts of it for me as a practitioner. And we kind of we want to change that, and in the same way, I don't think some researchers are not very comfortable or experienced in practice, right? So I think that communication needs to go back and forth. But our topic today kind of covers both because it's a research article that has some really good implications for a very common practice. Before we dive into that, though, I thought I would just ask

Lindsay:
2:07

Were you ever taught how to read research in your pre-service education?

Lindsay Kemeny:
2:13

Not in pre-service, but post-service, yes, because I took a like a graduate-level course at the University of Utah, and we were taught it was all research. We were just reading research studies like the whole time, and we were taught how to teach research. But yeah, not in pre-service.

Stacy Hurst:
2:30

Yeah, and I I need to clarify too. I was taught in my sociology degree, which was undergrad, so it can be taught there. And Donell, as a in your education, how have you approached reading research articles?

Donell Pons:
2:48

Yeah, it's interesting because my first career, as I've mentioned several times, was as a reporter, and so I had that lens where oftentimes, as a reporter, you're given a topic or subject to write upon, and there might be some research component or research studies that you have to examine. So I had that approach as a reporter, in generally how to examine information. But then within education, it wasn't until I did my dual masters, and it was really in the MED, not the MAT, that we examined research. I thought that was interesting, but really examining a how a research study is conducted and making sure that it is done properly, or understanding how that is done, that has been really added to by my son who just completed his master's in social psychology, and I oftentimes end up calling him, and he's looked at many reading studies for me in my behalf, and helped me. That's really been helpful.

Stacy Hurst:
3:49

Good, because that nuance matters. I think as teachers, we always hear the phrase "research says," and we. I don't know. I used to not question it, but when you get in the nitty gritty of a research study, the report of it, especially especially, then you can learn a lot about how that applies to your practice and what the limitations are too. So

Donell Pons:
4:13

yeah,

Stacy Hurst:
4:14

yeah, maybe that's a topic for another time. But I will say that for teachers who don't have a lot of time because research studies are also known for being very wordy. Lots of information about, in especially in the analysis section, that's statistical. And I know for me, a lot of it still goes over my head. I'm learning and growing and understanding more of that part. But the abstract, we'll start there with this study. is just a blessing to humanity because it really it it is a spoiler alert too because it tells you the results of the study. But even with the abstract, there's more to be learned, right? So I I failed to introduce the article. This is from the scientific study. Studies of Reading Journal. It's I don't remember the month. It's their most recent one. It's volume 30 from 2026, and the research study is related to this. Is the title, teaching irregular words, a comparison of mispronunciation correction and heart word methods. The researchers. are Anna Lipgau, Saskia Conan, Polly Barr, Sergey Robidu, and Daniel Columbrander. So, if you're interested, it is open access, and we will attach it to the show notes. And Lindsay and Donell read their research study, as did I, so I thought we would talk about it. So as we, while read the abstract, how about we do that? This abstract is broken down by purpose, method, results, and conclusion. And so I'll just ask for your responses to this, Lindsay and Donell, as we read

it. So the purpose:
5:58

this study compared two methods of

irregular word instruction:
6:02

mispronunciation correction, which they continue to refer to as MPC, and heart words.

Donell Pons:
6:11

Yeah, explain what they meant by that term for folks.

Stacy Hurst:
6:15

Yeah, and you know what? I think we will get into that a little bit later because it describes it in detail, which I think is important, but it's basically you might hear it called the spelling pronunciation of a word. I think one of the very first examples they give is the word Wednesday, and we don't spell it like it says Wednesday. So thinking of Wednesday as Wednesday will help you to recognize it and spell it. So that's basically the mispronunciation corruption, and then heart words. And I guess I don't want to assume that we are all familiar with that. We'll go into detail about that a little bit later too, because they do describe the way that they teach heart words, which may or may not be exactly the same as you do if you teach them. But heartword approach basically is that you are looking at the graphemes in a word and how closely they're connected to the pronunciation, and if there's a tricky part, then that's the part we have to learn by heart, and the others are just mapped to those consistent correspondences. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute as well. So they were comparing those two approaches with an active condition involving look and say reading homework. So that is, I picture flashcards when we're talking about this, but it's literally literally probably the way that a lot of us were taught these high frequency words, you just kind of got to memorize them. Is the approach? So that was the purpose. They wanted to find out how those two methods compared to the looks say, and this is how they went about it. And this is important too because we are in the United States, but this this was conducted in the UK. So they had 60 year one children, and about 11% of them spoke English as an additional language. Over a little over half were female. They completed four active control sessions, learning 14 irregular words, followed by four experimental conditions, learning a different set of 14 words using either the mispronunciation correction MPC or the heart word training. Post testing assessed reading and spelling accuracy for those conditions. So, I know that like if researchers were writing papers to have us engaged, they might do a better job of not telling us the outcome right away. But because only because you have to know,

Lindsay Kemeny:
8:48

like, is it worth reading this, or do I not want to read it? You know, the

Stacy Hurst:
8:52

spoiler alert. Yeah, when you were younger, did you read the last page of a book before you read? No,

Lindsay Kemeny:
8:59

no, but this is so different. I'm just. I don't want to read a whole research article if I'm like, yeah, I don't need to dive into that. I want to read the abstract first and then decide by detail more details. And that's a very

Stacy Hurst:
9:11

practical approach. I I appreciate that, and I bet most of our listeners are the same as you. Then there are some of us who just think that some research just a real cliffhanger. It's really cool.

Lindsay Kemeny:
9:23

I would just die if I had to like flip through pages to be like, but what did they find? Like, we don't have time for that. Come on, get the good stuff.

Stacy Hurst:
9:33

Okay, but when we do have time, it's so great. Anyway, okay. So the result, and those of us who are listening to this podcast, and certainly those of us who are on it, probably are not surprised by this. Both conditions, the MPC and the heart word instruction, produce significantly greater improvements in reading and spelling than than the active control condition was, which was the look say method. There were. No. Okay. At this point, you might be wondering which is better. If you do hard word instruction, are you thinking, do I need to do mispronunciation correction? Is there a better one? Right. So this will answer that question. No significant differences emerged between the two experimental methods in overall learning outcomes, and so that was in the Hart word approach in the MPC or the mispronunciation correction approach. However, children achieved equivalent gains of more quickly with the mispronunciation correction. Any responses to that so far?

Lindsay Kemeny:
10:39

Well, I think it was less time. It took less time for the teacher to teach the mispronunciation. Well, I can't say it. Correction, mispronunciation, correction. Right. So yeah, yeah. We

Stacy Hurst:
10:51

learned that later in the method part that the of the research study that the Hart word instruction was over a minute longer than the MPC too as well, Donell. I was kind

Donell Pons:
11:01

of worrying about. I was I was interested in the makeup of the students.

Stacy Hurst:
11:05

Yeah. What were you thinking? Yeah.

Donell Pons:
11:08

Well, yeah. Just just thinking about practically how many of those students already had really good orthographic mapping to begin with.

Stacy Hurst:
11:16

Oh yeah.

Donell Pons:
11:18

Anyway, I just. Okay.

Stacy Hurst: Spoiler alert:
11:19

that question will be answered in the in the research. Also, but these are this is the way to approach it, right? Even from the the abstract, we're asking these questions. And Donell, I was inferring when you started out by saying I have questions about the students. In my mind, I you you went right down the path, I was thinking, and in my mind, I was thinking, well, we already know they're basically in first grade. It's our equivalent of first grade. So, what about older learners, right? Have they like that? Would be my question as well.

Donell Pons:
11:52

Yeah.

Stacy Hurst:
11:53

So that that matters, and the conclusions are that the findings provide the first empirical evaluation of the heart word method.

Lindsay Kemeny:
12:03

Yeah, so so exciting. This is the first one. Yeah,

Stacy Hurst:
12:07

and support previous research suggesting that instruction involving active orthographic processing is effective for irregular word learning, and then the practical and theoretical implications are discussed. Discussed. So, starting with the introduction is where we really learn the history of basically why the researchers did this study and the previous research they were going on. And I will tell. I mean, we can kind of summarize this part by saying, repeating that there was no research that specifically studied the heartword approach, although that approach was based on solid research, which was Aries orthographic mapping. Any thoughts about that? Did you notice that as you read that?

Lindsay Kemeny:
12:55

Well, that's what I was going to say. It's like even though there's not specific, because just in your classrooms, there's not research for every single little thing you do, but you know that actually both of these approaches, heartword method and mispronunciation correction, they both lean into facilitating orthographic mapping. So you know, like it's not a surprise it did better than look and say because look and say, you're not doing any type of. You're not connecting sounds with letters at all, whereas both the other approaches you are. So of course they're going to be more effective than that. But I was very curious to see if one of those, the GPC, right? Oh, MPC, the MPC or the heart word, if one was better than the other. So that's what I was really interested in. But it looks like they kind of, you know, they're about the same except one maybe takes a little less time. So yeah, I thought it was a fascinating study. Yeah,

Stacy Hurst:
13:48

yeah. What about you, Donell? Anything that stood out in the introduction, Bexley?

Donell Pons:
13:54

No, just that again. It was a wealth of information. So even that, if you're daunted by reading the 25 plus pages of that study, it's pretty dense and thick. Don't be put off. Read that beginning because it was well worth the read.

Stacy Hurst:
14:12

Yeah, and it will tell you how a lot of terms that we learn about as we study the science of reading, it will tell you how they relate to this particular study, like in the introduction, we have a really good description of set for variability and a history of it. For example, I didn't know that it went clear back to 1965, so we've been talking about that for a long time. Yeah, who didn't let us know that sooner? But also, that does matter, especially when you're talking about the MPC condition because there is a set for variability that that facilitates, but they do mention set for very variability is crucial because it is very predictive of word reading. So there we should be looking for that too.

Donell Pons:
14:58

Stacy, the paragraph before. Was David shares self-teaching hypothesis? So those are two things that oftentimes can be challenging, and those paragraphs are very good set next to each other. Anyway, for a teaching moment, it was pretty good.

Lindsay Kemeny:
15:11

And I just want to say, point out to busy teachers in the classroom who don't have time to read a research study, but are still interested in kind of getting the the main idea of the research. You don't have to read the introduction. That's just going to give you a history of all this stuff, and you can skip around in the article. So I'm always like, read the abstract, then skip down, read through the instruction. Like, what did they actually do, and then go down and read the results, and that's going to give you the core things. And then, if you have more time and you're a nerd like the rest of us, and you want to like dive deeper into the other parts of this research study, go for it. But like, like you know, teachers, we don't have time. We don't have time for all this a lot of time. Yeah,

Stacy Hurst:
15:53

that's true. I and I think that you know, I did, I I did, I did take the time. I say like that reading the National Reading Panel report really impacted my career, and so if you do have the time, it is very building. But during the school year, you probably don't, so you can save your knowledge building for summer, and apply it in the meantime. But I will say this, because in I do when I'm in a hurry or I'm looking over a research study quickly. I will read the abstract. I will skim the introduction. I will go to the results section and then the discussion and limitations. And if I have more questions, if I'm applying it, and I'm like, that's not quite what they said, then definitely go back and take a deeper dive in the methodology, and you might notice some differences in your setting compared to the one they they research. So one important distinction they make in the introduction is that that set for variability is presented as a general cognitive attribute or skill that may be implicit, but the MPC and this is really important is a an explicit skill that we can teach students that will will facilitate that. So that mispronunciation correction is a process that leads to that set for variability, and there but they're often used interchangeably in the literature. So there are some really important caveats to that, Donell. You look like you're deep in thought.

Donell Pons:
17:25

No, I just am. I'm deep in thought over here, Stacy.

Stacy Hurst:
17:27

Yeah, I love it. It's an active problem-solving strategy. That's how they refer to MPC. And so they say that in this research study, they're using MPC to describe the corrective strategy or task, and set for variability to refer to the general cognitive attribute. So it's kind of the difference between phoneme-grapheme correspondence and orthographic mapping, right?

Donell Pons:
17:55

And I just want to point out that most of my students with dyslexia who are older are saying to themselves before they write Wednesday Wednesday Wednesday,

Stacy Hurst:
18:04

yeah,

Donell Pons:
18:05

and when they write people, Piopal, yes, so I'm just saying,

Stacy Hurst:
18:10

yeah, and you know, I um, I, I did that, and I wouldn't consider myself ever a struggling reader, but as a child, the word together, um, to get her, I remembered that from in first grade. I learned that trick. I think my dad taught me. Okay, the other thing that they pointed out is there's been a lot of research on this MPC. Lot, so they kind of went into this with a great amount of confidence in their ability to predict the outcome for that. But like we've pointed out, there has not been a specific research study related to the heart word approach. So let's talk about on page 488. They say they talk about the heart word approach. It's been advocated among educators in online forums. It's typically used alongside phonics instruction, and they did break down the method. It involves encouraging novice readers to identify known GPCs, but they get they do it step by step. So they say typical instruction is as follows, and as I read this, compared to maybe how you approach this, number one, an irregular word is introduced in sentence context. For example, the boy said yes. The phonemes are identified, and they're focusing on the word said here. And the word is repeated in isolation. Said the children are asked to identify how many sounds are in the word. The children identify the regular letter sound correspondences, which in this case would be this, and yeah, which are emphasized as regular and already known. And then the fifth step is the irregular one is explicitly taught, and then they did put this in

parentheses:
19:55

the etymology explained if appropriate by the. Instructor and encircled with a heart to indicate that children must learn this part by heart. It is widely promoted as a scientifically backed method. However, no published experimental studies have been investigated. Any, I mean, that's generally the Harvard strategy.

Donell Pons:
20:20

Yeah,

Stacy Hurst:
20:21

but it is important to know as you read the study that that's how they approached it. Okay, so we talked about how it's related to orthographic mapping. It lends to that the spelling pronunciation typically involves decoding a target word using frequent or regular graphing pronunciations to produce a regularized spelling pronunciation. Children then apply their spoken vocabulary knowledge and/or use of semantic context to determine whether the spelling pronunciation is a known word that makes sense in context, so that is using that right that they have to have it in their vocabulary. I think is the main point, which goes back to the importance of vocabulary building. And it did say that this the Process is really advantageous for improving spelling skills, but may the heart word approach may not be as advantageous for spelling skills because you're taking the word as it is seen in print. Any thoughts about that?

Lindsay Kemeny:
21:38

My only thought is that in the the the instruction that they used in the study, they weren't having the students write the words. So I think it might be different if in your quote unquote a heart word instruction, you're having them spell the words because like that's what I do. It's a little different than how they described here. You know, I bet your results would be maybe stronger in spelling.

Stacy Hurst:
22:02

Yeah, good point.

Donell Pons:
22:03

They also talked about something I thought was interesting. Additionally, MPC instruction arguably has greater potential for independent use, which in turn means such instruction may have greater potential to generalize to untaught words. There is mixed evidence from training studies that transfer can occur. In contrast, the heart word method depends on an instructor providing correct pronunciations of irregular GPCs, potentially limiting transferred untaught words. I thought that was kind of interesting that mention as well. So I like your what you just said too, Lindsay, about writing them as well within the instruction, and then it's interesting to think about some of the limitations, perhaps just because of being out in the wild, a student might have an opportunity to apply one of those over the other on their own. Anyway, just kind of interesting to think about all that.

Stacy Hurst:
22:48

Yeah, that is really important. And they actually surmised that the heart word approach might be a more efficient way of mapping the orthography and phonology of irregular words, precisely because it does not require the extra step from regularize to correct

Donell Pons:
23:07

information. Yeah, yeah.

Stacy Hurst:
23:10

So that is an interesting. All

Donell Pons:
23:12

interesting, aren't they?

Stacy Hurst:
23:13

Yeah, I think they really are. And Lindsay's like, let's just get to the bottom line. How can I apply this in class?

Donell Pons:
23:20

What's happening tomorrow?

Stacy Hurst:
23:22

Yeah, exactly. So it really that's yeah. So then they get to their research questions. Therefore, we wish to conduct the empirical investigation of the effectiveness of the heart word methods compared to the MPC instruction for teaching specific irregular words, due to the possibility that the two methods may lead to different outcomes for spelling, we also wish to examine children's spelling performance on a dictation task involving the trained items. So they did assess that if they didn't use it in their methodology. By comparison, the look say method, and this was interesting the way they approached this. So they gave students a teacher in instruction in class briefly introduced each of these 14 words, and then they sent home the list for additional reading practice, and this is basically that's the whole thing. Then they just say, you know, read over them, and they imagine that about 30% of the students did that. However, so really, this is a homework task that we're comparing to, and on the surface, that might seem well. Then that's really not a fair comparison. But in all honesty, that is the look-say approach anyway, right? Which is what they quantified. So they were saying, as any form of direct instruction would be considered to outperform. So this is not direct instruction. It's really introduction and then practice and application. For memorizing, and they

Lindsay Kemeny:
25:02

were supposed to do four, like so one session with the teacher, and then it was just three sessions at home. So like across all the different approaches, there were four sessions for each approach. The

Stacy Hurst:
25:54

other thing that to look for in a research study that is sometimes listed in the abstract, but not always, are the specific research questions? So on page 490 of our study, we have two questions that the study aimed to answer. Number one is there a difference in effectiveness between the mispronunciation correction and a heart word and heart word instruction for teaching year one? So that's first grade children to read and spell irregular words. Number two is either the MPC or heart word instruction more effective than look and say in class and at home practice for teaching your children one your one children how to read and spell irregular words.

Lindsay Kemeny:
26:40

And just FYI, the year one in the UK is kindergarten here in the US.

Donell Pons:
26:47

Because I gave six years four months. Yes, that would be first grade at the beginning.

Lindsay Kemeny:
26:53

Yeah, I thought it was. That's interesting. Yeah,

Stacy Hurst:
26:55

I think they have a different term for kindergarten, and I'm not remembering it at this point. I had

Donell Pons:
27:00

to look that too, Lindsay, because I was really interested, and I found that it said six years, four months is what they were talking about

Lindsay Kemeny:
27:05

in the study. Yeah, it said that. Okay, that's

Stacy Hurst:
27:08

the average age. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so they they used all the students to do this. So initially, they were taught the look say method, and then they had one group of students. Let me back up. All of the students received the look and say method with the same 14 words. Then they split the children into two groups, and after the look say, they had one group that was were followed with the MPC training, which is instruction, and then the other group had the heart word instruction. So I thought that

Lindsay Kemeny:
27:45

was really interesting. I liked that design part of the design because it it's just it's the same group of students you know that had the look and say. So they're like comparing against themselves because first these group of students learned 14 words with look and say, and then after that, the same group did either heart word or mispronunciation correction. So I thought that was neat because it wasn't you couldn't be like, well, they didn't do well because it was maybe different group of students, or you know, like it was the same students. Yeah, yeah. So

Stacy Hurst:
28:18

let and then they go through, and we're not going to list how they tested these students, but the information is all in there, pre and post intervention. But then also, they it's important to learn about the way that the words were selected, because there are two really important things that stand out here. So both children, both groups of children, received in total a group of 28 words, but the words were rejected for use if they had more than one irregular grapheme phoneme correspondence. So we're talking about a word like a said would only have one irregular phoneme grapheme. So these were not very complex words, so let's keep that in mind too. And then, if they appeared on the test that they gave pre and post, then they didn't use them. So that is an important caveat. Yeah. And let's see. So the instruction, the instructional sessions were scripted, and not so they could control for you know variation, so that teachers weren't riffing on something or doing something different than the other teacher. But they did give the duration of each session. So each session, the average for the MPC was seven minutes and 43 seconds, and for Hartwurst training it was eight minutes and 48 seconds, and the difference though was not significant in the statistical analysis. So then they go into. That active control instruction, and then how they went through

that. So, one thing to note:
30:04

when they did send home the look say method, the flashcards, the researcher read each word aloud and prompted the children to repeat the word out loud once. That's when they did it in class, and then they sent them home. Lindsay, like you said, for was it three or four times? Three times at home. Three

Lindsay Kemeny:
30:24

times.

Stacy Hurst:
30:25

And they told the the parents in the letter that they sent home that this should not take more than 10 minutes to complete. So, by comparison, it could have been longer. It could have been less time.

Donell Pons:
30:37

Now, Stacy, just to be clear on that, no statistically significant difference. I'm not going to translate no statistically significant difference into the methods are exactly the same, or it doesn't matter what you do. This simply means the study did not detect a statistically significant difference between the two approaches on the outcomes that they measured.

Stacy Hurst:
30:59

Yeah, even though further

Donell Pons:
31:00

study would be interesting.

Stacy Hurst:
31:02

Yes, based on the the amount of time it took, that was not a factor that mattered. So any time we're referencing

Donell Pons:
31:09

that, they'll think about that because we have said that a few times. Yeah, that's

Stacy Hurst:
31:13

true. Significantly better than the

Lindsay Kemeny:
31:16

look and say

Stacy Hurst:
31:17

method. Yeah, and they did say that this is the MPC instruction. They on page 495. They kind of tell you about that. Oh, Lindsay, go ahead. I'll

Lindsay Kemeny:
31:29

demonstrate this. Do it. Yep, you do it. Yeah, this is reviewing it. Okay, so they the the researcher is going to sound out the word. So it's displayed. I think they had little powerpoints. So they go ouch. Okay, so like the word is touch. Okay, ouch, touch, touch, and then she says a sentence. I must not touch the oven when it's hot. And then ask the children to silently think about what the correct pronunciation would be, and then say, say it, touch, and they would confirm touch, and then they were prompted to say aloud the correct pronunciation twice more. So touch, touch, and then they would go on to the next word. So

Stacy Hurst:
32:12

yeah, and then they saw the word in isolation after that as well. So they saw it, they pronounced it twice. Yeah, good demonstration, Lindsay. And

Donell Pons:
32:21

again, Lindsay, no writing of the word at that time. Yeah, there's

Lindsay Kemeny:
32:24

no writing in this. So we want to point that out.

Stacy Hurst:
32:26

Yeah, and then in the heart word training sessions, I think we kind of went over. Lindsay, do you want to do that as well?

Lindsay Kemeny:
32:34

Okay, so using the same word, they read the so they display the word on the PowerPoint and say touch, then sound it out two times. And then there's a sentence. I must not touch the oven when it's hot. Then it shows the screen shows one at a time. And the students are supposed to say t, and then it shows the o uh, and the student says uh, and then the ch and it the the o u would be red on the PowerPoint to show that that's the part they have to memorize by heart, and then the children are prompted like the then the it prompts them to blend the sounds again together again and say touch, so that's it. That's the whole thing. And then the the researcher says, right, the word is touch.

Stacy Hurst:
33:27

Good job. And what's in common? They didn't have them write that either, right? Yeah, no writing. So they're just doing the grapheme phoneme, grapheme correspondence out loud. Okay. So then we have in the research study a lot of analysis, and that's absolutely the part as a teacher I would probably snooze out on, even as not a teacher. I mean, I look at this where I am in my career. I look at that part now to see, like, oh, what approach did they use to analyze the data? But we skip right to the results. Let's do that. Page 496. So they talk about the baseline differences between groups, meaning when they started, there was no significant difference between the two groups of children, and they had given a test to determine that. So right away, you might say, "Oh, well, maybe you know they had the lower students or they had the higher, so they took that off the table. That was not a factor. And then the other thing that with the at baseline there was just again no significant differences at post test though. The reading scores were significantly greater following both MPC and heartword training when compared to the active look and say training or instruction. And I think, like Lindsay, like you said, I don't think any of us are surprised by that. Surprised? Yeah, but they did. They did give that spelling test, right? So within the spelling model, they said the results indicate that at baseline there was no significant difference in their spelling accuracy between the the groups, but at post test spelling accuracy was significantly greater following both MPC and Hart word training compared to the active control, looks say training, and that's yeah

Donell Pons:
35:26

big,

Stacy Hurst:
35:28

especially because they didn't use it in their instruction. Right, that that speaks to transfer and generalization. Yeah, that's the hardest skill.

Donell Pons:
35:36

Much harder to do. But you know what struck me from the beginning is that neither approach is going to treat irregular words as something a child simply has to memorize as a whole. Both approaches are getting the students to examine those words. Yes,

Stacy Hurst:
35:50

yeah, and they did say too that the results indicate that spelling scores improved significantly following training across all conditions. So there's a chart on page 498 with raw spelling accuracy means, and you can compare the active control, the mispronunciation correction, and the heart words. And there is significant difference in the pre and post in all of those. But if you notice that the active control at post is not is less than half of what it is for the mispronunciation and heart words. So that had a significant difference in their spelling ability. Another really fun part of a research report is the discussion. So I look at that because they really go into what that means? What are the what are the implications of this? So they did say that there there's a lot of evidence. Again, they reiterate there was a lot of evidence already that MPC instruction was more effective than the look and say method, and now that we know that MPC and Hart word method involve actively processing a word's orthography, Donell, like you just said, which is key to facilitating that orthographic learning in beginning readers.

Donell Pons:
37:14

Yeah,

Stacy Hurst:
37:16

and then as expected, the MPC produced significantly greater gains for taught words at post test, and it did say this though. Consequently, our data does not allow us to make a direct comparison between MPC instruction and an equivalent amount of instructor led look say training, so the amount of time was significantly different. But it does that it was instructor led, but it does say. However, it is unlikely that the advantage was solely like chance, right? Like they're talking about. That's why all that stuff at the beginning tells us that we can predict that it's going to be more effective, and then they talked about they talked about how decoding attempts for the words that they tested the students on in a previous assessment resulted in regularized spelling pronunciations and consistent with previous findings. By the way, there is a lot of repetition in a research study, so be prepared for that too. And then they talk about spelling, and again, the MPC and Hart word training resulted in significant spelling accuracy at post test.

But here's a cool new thing:
38:40

previous MPC training studies or instructional studies did not measure the ability to spell words that were trained to dictation. So that's also a newer finding. No significant differences were observed between the MPC and the heart word approach for spelling at the end, which they all. If you look at the graph, it looks like there was a greater gain for the MPC in spelling, but it was not statistically significant. So, either way, so their base

Lindsay Kemeny:
39:14

test was slightly higher. Like they started slightly higher that group. Yeah, that's true. Harvard group. So I feel like yeah, that makes you wonder how

Donell Pons:
39:22

many words they already if they're orthographic anyway. That's to be said what the students already knew and brought, right?

Stacy Hurst:
39:28

Yeah, yeah, and they did give a vocabulary assessment, which also would be a factor in that outcome as well. Okay, so they the practical and theoretical implications always a really fun thing to read. So they one of the kind of limitations was that they only chose words with one tricky graphing phoneme correspondence. But in MPC training, which encourages children to foster a flexible set. For variability, it might be considered to be more applicable to all words as opposed to the heart word approach. So, like the word Wednesday in a heart word lesson, how would you approach that? Like that would be you do it, but it would be really different, right? But in the mispronunciation, that could be a lot more practical than other, and then not all words are suited to an NPC strategy either. They gave the example of the word rhythm, which would be if you pronounce that like it was spelled, how would you pronounce rhythm? It's not really like that. Mispronunciation is not relatively close to the actual word. Yeah. Yeah. So they were looking at the word transparency.

Donell Pons:
40:51

I thought it interesting they broke out and said MPC is more of a top-down strategy, whereas Heart Word is a bottom-up, and that would be interesting to think about in your practice with your students, right?

Stacy Hurst:
41:02

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and explain the difference between top-down and bottom-up.

Donell Pons:
41:08

Yeah. Why don't you, Stacy? Because you've been running into this along the way the whole way.

Stacy Hurst:
41:13

Yeah. Well, you start with the whole word, right? And then you you break it down after that. With the heart word approach, you're kind of starting with the individual phonemes and then building that way, which is what we traditionally call bottom up. Start with the sounds. We've been wrapping up

Donell Pons:
41:28

against against this the whole way, haven't we? In talking about

Lindsay Kemeny:
41:31

it, but wasn't the instruction for the mispronunciation? What weren't you just going to ouch first, or did you say touch first? You said

Stacy Hurst:
41:39

touch, and you used it in a sentence first, so you started with the in context and then went to the word and then the sound. And that that's typically how we refer to bottom up and top down instruction

Lindsay Kemeny:
41:56

because it says they were presented with the word and the researcher first sounded the word out. Pronouncing eats graphene. Ouch. Touch. So I wouldn't call that top down necessarily.

Stacy Hurst:
42:09

But they did say they started. They used it in a sentence first, right?

Lindsay Kemeny:
42:13

No. Or was that the

Stacy Hurst:
42:15

heart word approach?

Lindsay Kemeny:
42:16

No.

Stacy Hurst:
42:18

Because they did use it in the context of a sentence. They both

Lindsay Kemeny:
42:21

used them in a sentence, but it wasn't the first thing. So I don't know.

Stacy Hurst:
42:25

Okay, we might have to look back at that because I remember reading at one point that they used it in a sentence first, and then yeah, they even

Donell Pons:
42:32

mentioned prior to that that students who are already weak with their set for variability may lead to less effective MPC. So

Stacy Hurst:
42:39

yeah,

Donell Pons:
42:40

yeah,

Stacy Hurst:
42:40

which is where these child level factors come in, and this is where I think as a teacher, if you're trying to implement this in your room, in your classroom, and you're thinking, "I'm just not seeing the same thing," it could be because of the students you're teaching. So there were some things they brought out here that the participants already had been proven to have a really good ability for phoneme-grapheme correspondence, so that was not that was a prerequisite to either of these approaches, which I think is interesting about when we introduced them, right? And then the other thing was, and I don't know that this so much matters, but the words that they used were from year two and three word lists. So they were words that those children would typically be taught explicitly the following years in their education. But these first graders, our equivalent of first graders, were towards the end of their school year. They said closer to the second half of the year, so I don't know if that matters as much. Yeah, if students were struggling, if they had weaker grapheme phoneme correspondent knowledge and decoding skills, they would they were more likely to struggle. But all of these students in this study had already demonstrated that they had good graphing, phoneme, correspondence skills. And then, as you mentioned, Donell, that's where children at the weaker set for variability ability may have difficulties applying that strategy. And some of that could mean, and they state this here as well, that for students with a weaker set for variability, then the heart word method might actually be better for them.

Donell Pons:
44:32

Yeah,

Stacy Hurst:
44:33

yeah. But then also the role that vocabulary would play in that that ability as well. Okay, so the one the last section is oh a couple other things. The length of this the instruction in this study was really brief, and they say it was because it was hard to find teachers who would let them come in for a longer amount of time. Also, a question, which is a problem we have with this research to practice and practice to research. That's why research is usually conducted outside of a classroom, which is unfortunate. I don't want to say usually, but I've got a lot. Also, the testing that they did was right after the day after all of this happened, so it was a really short time frame. And I would have the question: Did they maintain those gains?

Lindsay Kemeny:
45:31

Yeah, and is that where you saw a difference between the the two main approaches?

Stacy Hurst:
45:36

Yeah, yeah, that would be really interesting, wouldn't it? Um and then that let's see the potential for that generalization. So it does say that there is evidence to suggest that some children go through the process of MPC spontaneously. Yeah, which makes sense to me. Yeah, that was the first

Lindsay Kemeny:
46:03

time. Like, what? It was like my first year teaching kindergarten, and this is like the same year I had my whole journey with my son being diagnosed. And you know, I was, you know, deep in balanced literacy at the time, and just like starting learning. And I remember just being so blown away by him because this was I was doing that terrible just look and say and basically sending home word lists for them to memorize at home, and I remember this little boy when I would listen to him do his words and he would be like, w a z waz a ni mini t a two yes and I was like what the heck is he doing oh my gosh! But it works, and it's so funny. Like now that I know, like that's that was excellent. What he was doing, he was connecting the sound and the spelling versus that just whole word memorization. That's not as effective. And but I just remember he just did that spontaneously, and I just remember being blown away by it. And that he was, but it worked, you know?

Stacy Hurst:
47:00

Yeah, yeah, and I bet eventually he just naturally kind of stopped doing that and recognized. Yeah, and could just say it. Yeah, that's a really great example of that, Lindsay. And then they did say, despite the potential for MPC training gains to transfer to untreated items, to date there is very limited evidence that such transfer does occur more in long term, so I think that is a good research question that they could they could ask in the future. They also said the limitations, and this is an important part of a study to read as well. They say that their sample size was small, and so that it may not apply to larger populations, and they didn't conduct follow-up testing. So they were saying also that their findings suggested that the use of those homework activities, like memorizing those high-frequency words, may have some effect, but they're not a substitute for the teacher-delivered instruction, which includes active processing of a word's orthography. So I am left with questions, even though I felt like this was very informative. One is again, I

already asked this:
48:15

like, would this be different for students who are older? And then, secondly, do teachers combine strategies? Could you do both, Lindsay? Talk about that.

Lindsay Kemeny:
48:28

I do. I do both. So, um, at the end of the day, after reading this study, am I changing anything? No, I'm going to still do what I'm doing. But um, so I kind of start with more that heart word approach, I we don't draw heart. We just circle the irregular part to point out to it. And the other thing that's different is my students write it along with me. Yes. And then after we've written that, we've analyzed. You know, we've segmented. We've connected the sounds and spellings. Pointed out the regular part. We will say, "I was like, what would you say with your spelling voice?" You know, or we could say, "Fry end, fry end," or like, "What? What does this look like with your spelling voice?" Manny looks like Manny, and you know, I'll show them, but you might forget, and you might sound out the word "at wat," and then go. Oh, that's not a word. I'm going to switch that. What? And like, we'll talk about that. So we kind of do that part at the end. So I'm doing both. So that would also be interesting study to see if doing both gets more effects or not. And and maybe you know maybe it's just and why you're using

Donell Pons:
49:38

both, right?

Lindsay Kemeny:
49:39

Yeah, yeah. So well,

Stacy Hurst:
49:41

and you know, I did read this research on MPCs a long time ago, a long, long time ago in my first grade classroom. I used it for spelling, so I'd say when we read the word, we say, but when we spell the word, we think, right? And that would be helpful. But it, like you're describing, Lindsay, it could be that. Two sides of the same coin, right? You could go back and forth between

Lindsay Kemeny:
50:04

yeah

Stacy Hurst:
50:04

reading and spelling.

Lindsay Kemeny:
50:05

Well, and I do say like spell. I use the term spelling voice. What would you say in your spelling voice? You know, for that because as they're writing, they all go fry and or p opal like Donell. Yeah, p opal to remember that and yeah.

Stacy Hurst:
50:19

I also think that that MPC lends itself to teaching set for variability, even a very practical way. And I see this often with the students that I tutor when they come to your word and they mispronounce it. Even if I know they have that in their spoken vocabulary, it you can guide them explicitly to connect it if they're not immediately doing that. Do you know a word that sounds like that? That would make sense here, right? So you could very explicitly do that. Donell, how do you see this in your practice?

Donell Pons:
50:50

Well, the same. I mean, I'm just listening to some nodding my head. Yeah, absolutely nodding my head.

Stacy Hurst:
50:54

Yeah.

Donell Pons:
50:54

And it's strategies that students who are older, if they have never really had a great deal of help with spelling, they're using some of those strategies, saying the word piopal as I just brought up at the beginning, Wednesday, to be able to write these words that are common. They might be asked to write. They're so tired of missing them. The thing that's missing for a lot of the students who haven't had good intervention is they're not sure why. Why am I doing that? Why am I 20 and still having to use this? Why am I 30, etc.? Why is it still very embarrassing for me that I can't remember these things? And it's finding out the why behind why am I doing this? That

Stacy Hurst:
51:31

is

Donell Pons:
51:32

oftentimes a first, and that lends itself to helping older students really buy into examining words. Trust me, that's not an easy thing to get students to do. We talk about how it might not be easy for young students. They they want to get quick, they want to move along, da da da. But as adults, they've also had a lot of pain. That's a pain point to examine those words that forever have plagued them. They still can't get them. Why can't I get it? And it's the beginning of the conversation around why examining them is so important. Paying attention to the word, and it might even be for the first time in a long time, that older student has gone back to okay, let's take a look at the word, and then we still use a lot of the heart method too to say a lot of this word you know. Now that you have this understanding of the importance of the sounds and the mapping, and we've gone back and really built a lot of structures that weren't there or supported things, and now they're able to apply those things that weren't there.

Stacy Hurst:
52:28

That is one thing that was mentioned in the research study, which I think is gold, and that was the metacognitive value in teaching either of those ways, that you learn to pay attention metacognitively to the structure of those words and of sentences too, because vocabulary is a factor here as well.

Lindsay Kemeny:
52:49

Dr. Seidenberg said, "We want students to be familiar with the details of the word," and and that's I love that quote. And you know, both of these approaches do that. We're getting we want students to be very familiar with the details of the word, not just look at the first letter, not look at the word as a whole, but really look at every part.

Stacy Hurst:
53:08

Yeah, and it did not over rely or I think overemphasize meaning, but that's also you know orthographic lexical quality. Part of a big part of that is the meaning of the words that you're reading to. These are more high-frequency words. It sounded like so. Well, to that end, I

Lindsay Kemeny:
53:25

think it would be a valuable addition because, like, what I do with our irregular word instruction is have the students use the word in a sentence at the end. So we always need to connect it with meaning, and perhaps that's something missing with the approach shared here. Is that remember there's a third part of orthographic mapping and that's bringing to the meaning or the function of the word. So even if it's a regular like the word of, we want them to use a sentence with it to to get to the function of the word. And so if we did that, if we came

Donell Pons:
53:54

back and looked at the test of them again weeks or or so far later to see what held, all of that I think, would play in.

Stacy Hurst:
54:01

That might be the reason that it does. Yeah, that it takes. And I just this is timely because I just introduced the four-part processing model to my students, and I'm thinking about this as we're talking about that too. Just which prompted me to ask the question about meaning and even context, right? That matters because you can have a word like contract, and it could be contract depending on the the context of the sentence. Anyway, okay. Well, thank you guys. Another fun discussion about a research study, which I hope highlighted. You guys are laughing, which I hope highlighted the importance of whatever side of that research to practice you see yourself on, we need people who can help translate, right? So spending time with research, if you're a practitioner, is beneficial, and if you're a researcher, spending time in practice is beneficial. I think the more that we can set up systems to be able to do. That would be really beneficial for us. I don't know how close we are to that, but looks fun things to look forward to. Any closing remarks about research or this particular study?

Lindsay Kemeny:
55:14

Well, it was a great study. It's interesting and exciting to finally have you know something solid to back up that heart word method and yeah,

Stacy Hurst:
55:23

I hope there's more, right? Yeah, I really do. There

Lindsay Kemeny:
55:25

needs to be,

Stacy Hurst:
55:26

yeah. And Donell, my hope is I'm looking at you because I'm hoping there's more with older students or struggling readers and how these approaches specifically impact them, which is always a question we should ask. How would this apply to my students, right? Well, thank you for the conversation, and thanks to our listeners for joining us. And we hope that you'll join us on the next episode of Literacy Talks.

Narrator:
55:51

Thanks for joining us today. Literacy Talks comes to you from Reading Horizons, where literacy momentum begins. Visit readinghorizons.com/literacytalks to access episodes and resources to support your journey in the science of reading.