Grammatical Spelling and Written Syntactic Awareness in Children With and Without Dyslexia.

Children with dyslexia face persistent difficulties in acquiring not only reading skills but also spelling skills. Among difficulties in spelling, problems in grammatical spelling have been studied very rarely. The goal of the study is to better understand grammatical spelling difficulties in children with dyslexia by assessing written syntactic awareness skills, a linguistic factor that has not been investigated in the context of spelling until now. It is worth noting that while morphological awareness has been well studied in children with dyslexia, only very few studies have focused on syntactic awareness, which is, however, necessary to produce number or gender agreement. Twenty children with dyslexia were matched to typically developing children on both chronological age and on grammatical spelling level. All the children were asked to perform a subject verb agreement grammatical spelling test and a written syntactic awareness test on the same sentences, as well as control measures. Results demonstrated that the children with dyslexia performed equally compared to grammatical spelling matched children in grammatical spelling, whilst they performed less well compared to children of the same age. For syntactic awareness, they were less accurate at identifying the subject of the complex sentences than spelling age matched children, even though both groups were matched in grammatical spelling. These results demonstrate that children with dyslexia face a specific deficit in written syntactic awareness. It highlights how better understanding of the spelling difficulty will better guide treatment.

The Impact of Different Writing Systems on Children's Spelling Error Profiles: Alphabetic, Akshara, and Hanzi Cases.

The importance of literacy in academics and the predominantly digital world cannot be understated. The literacy component of writing is less researched than that of reading, even though it holds equal significance for modern success. Spelling is an important aspect of the construct of literacy, and is more difficult to acquire than reading. Previous work on spelling error analysis for English provides insight into the sets of knowledge and cognitive processes required for children to perform the task, and their different strategies across development. However, different sets of skills and strategies may contribute to spelling across types of orthographies. In this study, we extend spelling error analysis to groups of biliterate children learning two scripts, which include English plus either: (a) another Latin-script alphabet with a shallow orthography (Malay); (b) a transparent alphasyllabary using akshara (Tamil); or (c) a non-alphabetic, morphosyllabic script using simplified hanzi characters (Mandarin Chinese). These sets of scripts vary in how speech is mapped to print. We utilized an error coding scheme based on triple-code theory to enumerate the occurrence of phonological, orthographic (graphemic), and morphological (semantic) types of spelling errors across the three language groups. Five hundred and sixty-eight Grade 1, 6-year-old children participated, with 128 English + Malay, 119 English + Tamil, and 321 English + Chinese children in each bilingual group. They completed a spelling to dictation task in their Asian language, with ten words taken from the grade level curriculum per language. Results indicate group differences in the proportions of error types, with more overall errors for Tamil, more phonological errors for Malay, and more irrelevant or non-sense words for Chinese. The implications are that different scripts present different challenges for young learners.

Children benefit from morphological relatedness independently of orthographic relatedness when they learn to spell new words.

We examined whether French children in Grades 3 and 5 (aged ∼ 8-11 years) benefit from morphological relatedness beyond orthographic relatedness in the implicit learning of new spellings. Children silently read stories that included two target nonwords. One nonword was in an opaque condition in that nothing in the story could justify the spelling of its final sound. The other nonword was in either a morphological condition (for children in the morphological group) or an orthographic condition (for children in the orthographic group). In the morphological condition, the final spelling of the target nonword was justified by two morphologically related nonwords. For example, coirardage, obtained by adding the suffixage to coirard, designates the coirard's song and justifies the final silentdofcoirard. The orthographic condition included two nonwords that were orthographically but not morphologically related to the target. For example, the coirard's song wascoirardume, obtained by addingume,which is not a suffix, tocoirard. Then, 30 min after reading the stories, children were asked to choose the correct spelling of each nonword from among three phonologically plausible alternatives (e.g.,coirard, coirars, coirar). In the morphological group, both third and fifth graders more often selected the correct spellings for items presented in the morphological condition than for items presented in the opaque condition. In the orthographic group, the results were very similar in the opaque and orthographic conditions.The findings show that the benefit of morphological relatedness in the implicit learning of new spellings cannot be reduced to orthographic relatedness.

Learning to spell in a language with transparent orthography: Distributional properties of orthography and whole-word lexical processing.

We examined how whole-word lexical information and knowledge of distributional properties of orthography interact in children's spelling. High- versus low-frequency words, which included inconsistently spelled segments occurring more or less frequently in the orthography, were used in two experiments: (a) word spelling; (b) lexical priming of pseudoword spelling. Participants were 1st-, 2nd-, and 4th-grade Italian children. Word spelling showed sensitivity to the distributional properties of orthography in all children: accuracy in spelling uncommon transcription segments emerged progressively as a function of word frequency and schooling. Lexical priming effects emerged as a function of age. When related primes contained an uncommon segment, 2nd- and 4th-graders preferred uncommon segments than common ones in spelling target pseudowords, thus inverting the response trend found in the control condition. A smaller but significant effect was present in 1st- graders, who, unlike 2nd- and 4th-graders, still preferred common segments, only slightly increasing the use of uncommon ones. A larger priming effect emerged for high-frequency primes than low-frequency ones. Results indicate that children learning to spell in a transparent orthography are sensitive to the distributional properties of the orthography. However, whole-word lexical representations are also used, with larger effects in more skilled pupils.

Spelling Acquisition in English and Italian: A Cross-Linguistic Study.

We examined the spelling acquisition in children up to late primary school of a consistent orthography (Italian) and an inconsistent orthography (English). The effects of frequency, lexicality, length, and regularity in modulating spelling performance of the two groups were examined. English and Italian children were matched for both chronological age and number of years of schooling. Two-hundred and seven Italian children and 79 English children took part in the study. We found greater accuracy in spelling in Italian than English children: Italian children were very accurate after only 2 years of schooling, while in English children the spelling performance was still poor after 5 years of schooling. Cross-linguistic differences in spelling accuracy proved to be more persistent than the corresponding ones in reading accuracy. Orthographic consistency produced not only quantitative, but also qualitative differences, with larger frequency and regularity effects in English than in Italian children.

Children benefit from morphological relatedness when they learn to spell new words.

Use of morphologically related words often helps in selecting among spellings of sounds in French. For instance, final /wa/ may be spelled oi (e.g., envoi "sendoff"), oit (e.g., exploit "exploit"), ois (e.g., siamois, "siamese"), or oie (e.g., joie "joy"). The morphologically complex word exploiter "to exploit", with a pronounced t, can be used to indicate that the stem exploit is spelled with a silent t. We asked whether 8-year-old children benefited from such cues to learn new spellings. Children read silently stories which included two target nonwords, one presented in an opaque condition and the other in a morphological condition. In the opaque condition, the sentence provided semantic information (e.g., a vensois is a musical instrument) but no morphological information that could justify the spelling of the target word's final sound. Such justification was available in the morphological condition (e.g., the vensoisist plays the vensois instrument, which justifies that vensois includes a final silent s). 30 min after having read the stories, children's orthographic learning was assessed by asking them to choose the correct spelling of each nonword from among three phonologically plausible alternatives (e.g., vensois, vensoit, vensoie). Children chose correct spellings more often in the morphological condition than the opaque condition, even though the root (vensois) had been presented equally often in both conditions. That is, children benefited from information about the spelling of the morphologically complex word to learn the spelling of the stem.

El desarrollo de la escritura de palabras en español: Interacción entre el conocimiento fonológico y ortográfico / Spelling development in Spanish: Interaction between phonological and orthographic knowledge

El presente trabajo se propone ampliar los conocimientos acerca de las estrategias léxicas y fonológicas que utilizan los niños en la tarea de escritura de palabras en español, durante los primeros años de escolaridad. Para ello se analizó en dos experimentos, cómo incidían las variables de complejidad, extensión y frecuencia, así como el conocimiento ortográfico en el aprendizaje temprano de la escritura. En el primer experimento la variable ortográfica no fue considerada de manera específica, por lo que se diseñó y aplicó un segundo experimento. En el experimento dos se evaluó la incidencia del conocimiento léxico al comparar la adquisición de correspondencias consistentes e inconsistentes, dependientes e independientes del contexto. Las pruebas de escritura de palabras se aplicaron al finalizar el primer año y segundo año de Enseñanza General Básica (EGB). En los resultados, a finales de primer año, no se encontró un efecto de frecuencia, pero se observó, en cambio, una fuerte incidencia de la complejidad y la longitud en el desempeño de los niños, lo que puso de manifiesto que los mecanismos fonológicos son fundamentales en la primera etapa de aprendizaje de la escritura. Asimismo, se advirtió que los mecanismos léxicos son relativamente tardíos y se adquieren gradualmente. Sólo a finales de segundo año se encontró una interacción entre los mecanismos fonológicos y léxicos. Las implicancias pedagógicas del estudio fueron también consideradas.

This study analyzed the acquisition of word spelling strategies in Spanish-speaking children, during the first two years of elementary education. The cognitive word spelling models, initially developed for English, describe different stages in the acquisition spelling process. In the first stage, children write by memory, reproducing visual cues. At a second stage, children analyze the phonological structure of the word. Finally, in an orthographic stage, children can write words, using lexical information, without phonological mediation (Frith, 1984, 1985; Marsh, Friedman, Welch & Desberg, 1980). Even when the stages theory was discussed, these first studies allowed the identification of early lexical strategies and phonological mechanisms implied in the English word spelling processes. However, English is a language with a deep orthography, and the phonological strategy is a necessary mechanism but it is not enough to spell words properly. On the contrary, the Spanish orthographic system is shallow, and the phonemes-graphemes correspondences are very regular. Consequently, the spelling strategies could be different in these two languages, and the models developed for English would partially explain the orthographic learning process in transparent languages. This work aims to contribute to the knowledge on early spelling word strategies in Spanish. In two experiments, first and second grade children were given spelling tests designed to explore their phonological and orthographic knowledge. In the first experiment, the incidence of word complexity, length and frequency on spelling performance was explored. However, there was a possibility that, if children performed better in frequent words spelling, in relation to less frequent, they were resorting to their lexical knowledge. In this case, children were using an orthographic-lexical strategy. On the other hand, the possibility of writing complex and long words is associated to the phonological awareness level and correspondence knowledge. If children were able to easily write frequent and non frequent short and simple words, but had difficulties in writing long and complex words, they were possibly analyzing the sounds of the words and thus activating the corresponding letters. If the word was long or complex and the phonological skills were not well developed, children would have difficulties in writing them; one such problem, for example, would be in omitting letters. In this case, complexity and length variables that show the use of an analytic strategy would be influencing the performance. In the first experiment, the orthographic variable was not considered specifically, so a second experiment was designed. The second experiment evaluated orthographic knowledge, considering the orthographic characteristics of the words. The acquisition of the consistent and inconsistent correspondences was compared. The consistent correspondences could be solved using transcription rules, while inconsistent correspondences could be written only through lexical knowledge. Furthermore, consistent correspondences could be independent or dependent from context. In the first case, we refer to phonemes that are always represented with the same letter. In the other case, transcription depends on the syllabic context. Tests were applied at the end of the first and the second year of primary education. Results of the first experiment showed that, at the end of the first year, there was no frequency effect but the variables of complexity and length affected the children's performance. At the end of the second year, a frequency effect and a significant interaction between complexity and frequency were found. In the second experiment, a significant consistence effect was observed, but there was no frequency effect. These results indicate that phonological strategies are fundamental in the beginning of spelling acquisition. On the contrary, lexical mechanisms appear later and they are acquired gradually. Indeed, at the end of the first grade, frequency only affected performance of context dependent correspondences, but not independent. Likewise, interaction between phonological and lexical strategies was found only at the end of the second year. Pedagogical implications were also considered.