This study with 126 fifth grade students aimed at evaluating the effects of an intervention on the spelling performance of a syntactic marker in German, the capitalization of nouns. The students were assigned to two intervention group (Syn or SynB) and two control group (Lex or Read). All groups participated in a pretest, eight training sessions of 20 minutes, a posttest and follow-up test. Training in the intervention groups targeted (Syn), whereas one group (SynB) was additionally supported by the multisensory learning tool. In the control groups, either training in lexicon (Lex) or in reading (Read) was implemented. The posttest results show that spelling performance increases significantly in the two intervention groups (Syn and SynB). No difference between the two intervention groups is observed. Results indicate that the students profited from the syntax-based training (Syn and SynB) by enhancing the use of a syntactic marker in abstract nouns and nominalizations. The observed improvement of spelling remains two months after the training.
The presentation in the colloquium will focus on the results of the post- and follow-up tests.