My name is Lacey Simpson, and I am a senior in the College of Education and Health Professions. My major is Communication Sciences and Disorders, and I’m thrilled to be graduating this spring of 2022. My mentor’s name is Dr. Lisa Bowers who is part of the Communication Sciences and Disorders department. This is my last semester of research in my undergraduate studies. My thesis focuses on the importance of understanding how to spell as it is a critical skill needed for academics and communication, as well as understanding the challenges of learning how to spell for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing. As my undergraduate years are coming to an end, I am excited to continue my education and attend the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences to earn my master’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology in the fall of 2022. I will hopefully be attending the American Speech Language Hearing Association Convention in November of 2022 to present the research alongside another fellow senior UARK student who was my partner for this research, Emma Villanueva, and Dr. Bowers.

The study focused on the spelling skills of fifty-two students who are deaf or hard of hearing and in the later elementary school years. The students were administered the spelling subtest of the Woodcock Johnson Tests of Achievement (3rd edition) at the beginning of the school year and at the end of the school year. In between the administration of the two spelling tests, students participated in Strategic and Interactive Writing Intervention, also known as SIWI, which focuses on writing outcomes for students. Each response from every student on both the pre-test and the post-test was entered into Microsoft Excel, where we were able to assess each correct and incorrect response. Each correct response was given one point, and each point for that student calculated their raw score. The raw score was able to show the age equivalence scores for students. Additionally, each incorrect response was assessed by the Multilinguistic Coding System (MLC) to determine what type of error was apparent in the spelling attempt. The linguistic processing errors in this study that were assessed by MLC included phonological awareness errors, orthographic pattern awareness errors, mental graphemic representation errors, semantic awareness errors, morphological awareness errors, and visual images errors. The results of this study showed that age equivalence scores increased as well as the number of words spelled correctly. Also, the results showed that the students made the most phonological awareness errors, followed by visual image errors. This means that sounds in words and visual images with the influence of American Sign Language affected the students’ spelling the most. This research is impactful because it illustrates the importance of spelling and literacy skills and where challenges may arise. Further research is needed to explore beneficial ways educators can teach spelling to students who are deaf or hard of hearing, as the error types that are made the most often have been recorded from the data. This research may assist in effective intervention of spelling. Moreover, discovering effective intervention can be implemented into classrooms and therapy sessions, improving spelling skills overall.

After taking an introduction to honors research class with Dr. Glade my sophomore year, I was introduced to Dr. Bowers who was researching literacy and spelling skills, focusing on students who are deaf or hard of hearing. I was unsure what I wanted to research, and I knew this was a great opportunity, so I was so excited to join Dr. Bowers and another student, Emma Villanueva, to begin the process of researching and writing a thesis. I learned that spelling is much more complex than I ever thought of. There are multiple ideas to grasp about the English language and literacy to become an effective speller. All I remember from elementary school is

sounding out words to learn how to spell, and I have now seen that this is not the only important aspect of spelling or an effective way to teach spelling all the time. I am more aware of the complexity of spelling and each linguistic process that plays a role in spelling which will help me as a future clinician. Challenges I faced in my research include managing stress and time; doing research for the first time can feel overwhelming. My mentor, Dr. Bowers, was fantastic at creating objectives to work on weekly to make good progress. We tackled the research little by little, working toward a big goal rather than facing research as a daunting task. Dr. Bowers guided me through how to correctly code data and helped me with understanding the researching and writing process. We had multiple meetings to check in on the work that had been done and to assess what changes needed to be made and what the next steps were. I defended my thesis on April 15, 2022, at the College of Education and Health Professions Honors Symposium. Next up for me is graduate school and hopefully attending and presenting at the American Speech- Language Hearing Association convention. I am sad to be finishing up my undergraduate degree, but I am excited to continue learning in graduate school.