Contribution of phonological,morphological and orthographic awareness to English word spelling: A comparison of EL1 and EFL models

The purpose of the present study was to examine the contribution of metalinguistic skills—as measured through orthographic awareness, phonological awareness, and morphological awareness—to the English spelling ability of Grade 8 Chinese students who study English as a foreign language (EFL group) and of third graders in the U.S. whose first language is English (EL1 group). The two groups were initially matched through calculating the Flesch-Kincaid reading level of Chinese EFL students' textbooks and then through propensity score matching, taking into consideration various predictors. Using multiple regression and dominance analysis, we compared the models of metalinguistic awareness that predict English word spelling between the two groups. We found that orthographic awareness and morphological awareness were uniquely related to spelling for the EL1 group, whereas morphological awareness, orthographic awareness and phonological awareness were uniquely related to spelling for the EFL group, after accounting for the effect of vocabulary. Further analysis of relative importance of the predictors showed that orthographic choice was the dominant predictor for the EL1 group and inflectional morpheme production was the dominant predictor for the EFL group. The importance of metalinguistic awareness in acquiring English spelling in both EL1 and EFL groups is discussed.     

Pinch my wig or winch my pig: Spelling,spoonerisms and other language skills

Phonological processing skills have often been assumed to play a minimal role in skilled adult spelling despite evidence showing their importance in the development of spelling skills. The present study investigated the relationship between phonological awareness and spelling in adults. It was hypothesised that subjects demonstrating higher levels of spelling proficiency would also show superior phonological processing skills. This relationship was expected to be mediated by sound-spelling mapping knowledge. Given the irregularities of sound-spelling correspondences in English, it was also predicted that knowledge of orthographic conventions would be related to spelling competency. Two measures of each component skill were used on seventy three university students. As predicted, the importance of spelling-sound mapping skills in spelling were demonstrated, as was a relationship between phonological awareness and spelling-sound correspondences. In addition a moderate correlation was found between orthographic tasks and spelling performance. It was concluded that, among university students at least, phonological ability makes an important contribution to skilled adult spelling.     

Predicting word-spelling difficulty in 7- to 11-year-olds

Some languages have simple grapheme-phoneme codes in which there is a one-to-one mapping, making them easy to teach and learn, while others have more complicated structures and are more difficult for teachers and students. There is now an increasing number of studies which demonstrate that readers in more transparent orthographies such as Italian, Spanish, Turkish, Greek and German have little difficulty in decoding written words, while English children have many more problems. Increasingly, lack of orthographic transparency in English is seen as having a powerful negative effect on the development of literacy skills in English-speaking children. In the present study, the word factors associated with poor spelling in 5 school year-groups (ages 7 to 11 years) are identified as: (a) frequency of the word in the English language, (b) length of the word and (c) a measure of the phoneticity of the word. The concept of word phoneticity is explored and data is presented illustrating the predictive model of spelling. The implications the model has for teaching and learning English are discussed, with particular reference to the beneficial effects that greater orthographic transparency would have for children.     

Learning to Read Bilingually Modulates the Manifestations of Dyslexia in Adults

According to the Grain Size Accommodation hypothesis (Lallier & Carreiras, 2017), learning to read in two languages differing in orthographic consistency leads to a cross-linguistic modulation of reading and spelling processes. Here, we test the prediction that bilingualism may influence the manifestations of dyslexia. We compared the deficits of English monolingual and early Welsh–English bilingual dyslexic adults on reading and spelling irregular English words and English-like pseudowords. As predicted, monolinguals were relatively more impaired in reading pseudowords than irregular words, whereas the opposite was true for bilinguals. Moreover, monolinguals showed stronger sublexical processing deficits than bilinguals and were poorer spellers overall. This study shows that early bilingual reading experience has long-lasting effects on the manifestations of dyslexia in adulthood. It demonstrates that learning to read in a consistent language like Welsh in addition to English gives bilingual dyslexic adults an advantage in English literacy tasks strongly relying on phonological processing.     

The influence of study of a second language on improvement in spelling

The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which study of Latin might influence high school students' improvement in spelling. Skilled and less skilled spellers who chose to study Latin or other second languages in ninth-grade were given a standardized and an experimental spelling test, which allowed for a comparison of their spelling of words of Latin and Greek origin, both in the fall of their ninth-grade and the spring of their eleventh-grade year. While skilled spellers generally made greater progress than less skilled spellers, the students of Latin did not outperform students of other second languages either on the standardized spelling test or specifically on words of Latin origin. Analysis of errors on the experimental test indicated that certain words of Latin origin were misspelled as frequently by eleventh as by ninth graders; these may have affected the lower rate of improvement on words of Latin origin, in contrast to the words of Greek origin. The results suggest particular ways in which the relationship of spelling proficiency and study of language might be investigated further.     

The value of learning English in Thailand and its impact on Thai: perspectives from university students

English is widely regarded as an essential skill for the globalized economy by governments around the world which devote considerable resources to its teaching in formal education, though often with limited success in terms of achievement levels. Thailand is a case in point. Set against the putative benefits of acquiring proficiency in English, concerns have been raised that the spread of English has a negative impact, threatening the vitality of the first languages and cultures of its learners. Examining whether these concerns are valid in Thailand, this article reports on a study amongst Thai university students which investigated their perceptions of English alongside their first language, Thai. Results indicate that these Thai students subscribe to the notion of English as a tool for personal economic advancement but that the position of Thai as the language of national identity remains unchallenged.     

The relationship between language dominance and pre-reading skills in young bilingual children in Egypt

This study explored the relationship among pre-reading skills, language proficiency, and visual perceptual abilities in 150 children who had been exposed to both English and Arabic (mean age 70 months). Information regarding language proficiency was gathered indirectly through reports from teachers and parents and directly through children’s test performance. Consequently, the children were divided into three language dominance groups: stronger in Arabic, stronger in English, or equally strong in both English and Arabic. The main aim of this study was to determine whether the pre-literacy skills (visual processing skills, phonological processes, and orthographic knowledge) differed across the three groups and were correlated with langauge dominance. No significant relationships were found between language dominance and tasks that pertained to phonological awareness skills, which may support the notion of the transfer of phonological processing skills between languages. Visual processing and visual memory skills did not differ across language groups, a finding which was expected, as these functions do not directly pertain to language dominance. However, overall the groups did better on the English orthographic task than on the Arabic orthography, perhaps because they found Arabic print more visually confusing and demanding than English.     

Predicting Spelling Behaviour in 7 to 11 Year-olds

There is an increasing number of studies which demonstrate that readers in more transparent orthographies than English, such as Italian, Spanish, Turkish, Greek and German have little difficulty in decoding written words, while English children have many more problems. Increasingly, lack of orthographic transparency in English is seen as having a powerful negative effect on the development of reading skills in English-speaking children. There is evidence that English-speaking children who fail to acquire reading skills may fall into two distinct categories: those who would succeed in languages, other than English, that have greater orthographic consistency; and, those who would still have problems even with perfect orthographic transparency. The first, larger, group are let down by the interaction of poor teaching methods and an incomprehensible system of orthography. At Hull University’s Institute for Learning, word factors associated with poor spelling and reading have been identified. We have found three factors which account for the relative ease with which pupils can spell words: frequency of the word in the English language, length of the word, and the presence of “tricky” letters or letter combinations. Data is presented illustrating our predictive model of spelling which enables word difficulty to be calculated from the characteristics of English words. The implications the model has for teaching and learning English is elaborated, with particular reference to the most common 150 words in the English language.     

Does the study of Latin affect spelling proficiency?

This investigation explores Latin study as a possible route to superior spelling proficiency. The spelling ability of two groups of academically able eleventh graders — students of Latin and students of other second languages — is compared. It was found that the Latin students were superior in general spelling ability and were particularly proficient at spelling words of Latin origin. In addition, analysis of the spelling of derivatives for which knowledge of Latin could either facilitate or mislead the speller shows that Latin students were differentially affected by the two types of derivatives. In contrast, students of other second languages, lacking the knowledge of Latinate derivatives, simply made more errors on both types of words. Thus, it appears that Latin study does have an effect on spelling performance. Whether it can fully account for the superior spelling proficiency of the Latin students, however, remains a question to be answered by a prospective longitudinal investigation. Implications for instruction drawn from the present study are discussed.     

Complexity and lexicality effects on the acquisition of Spanish spelling

This study investigated how Spanish orthographic code complexities influence learning to spell. Word and pseudoword dictation tests were carried out by 208 first- to fourth-grade students. Items included the following orthographic code complexities: digraph, contextual effect, position effect, letter H, inconsistency, and stress mark. The results revealed effect of grade and type of complexity on spelling performance. The type of complexity also interacted with grade and lexical value of the type of items (word vs. pseudoword). It seems that children acquire spelling skills early in terms of phoneme–grapheme correspondence rules, but lexical knowledge develops more slowly. The importance of lexical knowledge is highlighted, as well as the need of prosodic knowledge for the stress mark.     

Foreign language learning, hyperlexia, and early word recognition

Children with hyperlexia read words spontaneously before the age of five, have impaired comprehension on both listening and reading tasks, and have word recognition skill above expectations based on cognitive and linguistic abilities. One student with hyperlexia and another student with higher word recognition than comprehension skills who started to read words at a very early age were followed over several years from the primary grades through high school when both were completing a second-year Spanish course. The purpose of the present study was to examine the foreign language (FL) word recognition, spelling, reading comprehension, writing, speaking, and listening skills of the two students and another high school student without hyperlexia. Results showed that the student without hyperlexia achieved higher scores than the hyperlexic student and the student with above average word recognition skills on most FL proficiency measures. The student with hyperlexia and the student with above average word recognition skills achieved higher scores on the Spanish proficiency tasks that required the exclusive use of phonological (pronunciation) and phonological/orthographic (word recognition, spelling) skills than on Spanish proficiency tasks that required the use of listening comprehension and speaking and writing skills. The findings provide support for the notion that word recognition and spelling in a FL may be modular processes and exist independently of general cognitive and linguistic skills. Results also suggest that students may have stronger FL learning skills in one language component than in other components of language, and that there may be a weak relationship between FL word recognition and oral proficiency in the FL.     

Cross-language transfer of phonological and orthographic processing skills from Spanish L1 to English L2

Previous cross-language research has focused on L1 phonological processing and its relation to L2 reading. Less extensive is the research on the effect that L1 orthographic processing skill has on L2 reading and spelling. This study was designed to investigate how reading and spelling acquisition in English (L2) is influenced by phonological and orthographic processing skills in Spanish (L1) in 89 Spanish-English bilingual children in grades 2 and 3. Comparable measures in English and Spanish tapping phonological and orthographic processing were administered to the bilingual children. We found that cross-language phonological and orthographic transfer occurs from Spanish to English. Specifically, the Spanish phoneme deletion task contributed a significant amount of unique variance to English word reading and spelling, for both real words and pseudowords. The Spanish homophone choice task predicted English reading, but not spelling. Taken together, these results suggest that there are shared phonological and orthographic processes in bilingual reading; however, orthographic patterns may be language specific, thereby not likely to transfer to spelling performance.     

The role of orthographic and phonological processing skills in the reading and spelling of monolingual Persian children

The main objective of the present study was to examine the contribution of phonological and orthographic skills to Persian reading and spelling. The Persian language is of interest because it has very consistent grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences, but somewhat inconsistent phoneme-to-grapheme correspondences. Reading, spelling, phonological, and orthographic skills were tested in a sample of 109 monolingual Persian students (mean age = 8;1, SD = 4 mo) attending Grade 2 in Iran. The results showed that although monolingual Persian children relied both on phonological and orthographic skills, phonological skills were a strong predictor for both reading and spelling. Another objective of the study was to compare children’s spelling performance in terms of phoneme-to-grapheme (PG) consistencies. As expected, children spelled PG-consistent words more accurately than PG-inconsistent words. Moreover, they relied more on orthographic skills for spelling PG-inconsistent words than for spelling PG-consistent words. The results are discussed in terms of the differential effect of orthographic consistency on reading and spelling.     

英语拼读不一致的根源以及潜在的规则

英语是表音文字,但英语的拼法看来很不规则,字母与音素不相对应的现象不少,然而,有些语言学家认为英语拼写优点很多,几近最佳的拼写法,英语拼写中的不规则现象是出于某种需要而产生的,并不是任意的变化无常的。许多表面看似古怪难解的拼写和读音现象,实则为有趣的音系规则所致。当我们懂得了其中的奥妙,那些古怪的现象非但不怪,而成了妙不可言,美不胜收的语言现象。拟探讨英语拼读不一致的根源和潜在的规则,认为探讨英语的拼写与读音的深层次的规则和联系对于英语词汇的教学有重要的意义。     

Diversity among Spanish-speaking English language learners: profiles of early literacy skills in kindergarten

This study explored heterogeneity in literacy development among 2,300 Hispanic children receiving English as a Second Language (ESL) services at the start of kindergarten. Two research questions guided this work: (1) Do Spanish-speaking English language learners receiving ESL services in the fall of kindergarten demonstrate homogeneous early literacy skills, or are there distinct patterns of achievement across measures of phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge, and orthography? and (2) if there are distinct profiles, to what extent do they predict literacy achievement at the end of kindergarten and the beginning of first grade? Using cluster analysis, the authors identified four distinct literacy profiles derived from fall kindergarten measures of phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge, and phonetic spelling. These profiles were found to be associated with literacy outcomes in spring of kindergarten and fall of first grade. The two profiles that were associated with greater success on later measures of concept of word in text, letter sound knowledge, word reading, and spelling were the two that included stronger performance on orthographic skills (i.e., alphabet knowledge and phonetic spelling). These findings demonstrated that there is heterogeneity among Hispanic ESL students at kindergarten entry and suggested that literacy instruction must be differentiated from the very beginning in order to meet students’ individual needs. The findings also suggested that orthographic skills should be assessed and taught early on. While phonological awareness may be a necessary precursor to reading, phonological awareness in the absence of orthographic skills may not be sufficient.     

Reading skills in three orthographies: The case of trilingual Arabic–Hebrew–English-speaking Arab children

This study is an investigation into theinterconnections among three languages, Arabic,Hebrew and English, each of which has adifferent orthography. Hebrew and Arabic havemore in common with each other than withEnglish; they are considered ``shallow'orthographies if vowelized and ``deep'orthographies if unvowelized. The reading,language, and working memory skills of 70trilingual Israeli-Arab students, aged 14–15,were assessed. Arabic was their maininstructional language in school, and Hebrewand English were studied as required subjects.All these adolescents studied Hebrew from thethird grade and English from the fourth grade.They were administered word and pseudowordreading, language, orthographic, and workingmemory tests in Arabic, Hebrew, and English. Inspite of differences among these threelanguages, the majority of the children showedadequate proficiency in three languages. Asignificant relationship was found between theacquisition of word and pseudoword readingskills, working memory, and syntactic awarenessskills within and across the three languages.Trilingualism of this nature seems not to havenegative consequences (and may even havepositive consequences) for the development oforal language and reading skills in the threelanguages in spite of their differentorthographies.     

Spelling performance of English consonants among students whose first language is Arabic

The purpose of the present study was to examine the influence of some aspects of the Arabic phonological system on spelling English words. In Study 1, the spelling performance of Arabic students from grades four and six was compared with English students in cognate phoneme pairs which exist across both languages (/d/ and /t/), and pairs in which only one of the phonemes exists in Arabic (/b/ and /p/, /f/ and /v/) using a spelling test which contained words with the target phonemes. The findings showed that the Arabic participants performed similarly to the English participants on the phonemes /t/ and /d/, but they tended to spell the phonemes /b/, /p/, /f/, and /v/ using their cognate pairs more often than the English participants did. In Study 2, the spelling performance of Arabic students was compared across grades 4, 6, 8, and 10 for the same target phonemes. The analyses showed no difference between the Arabic participants in how often they confused the target phonemes with their cognate pairs across the different grade levels, except for the phonemes /p/ and /v/, for which the effect size was small. The findings of this study demonstrate the importance of phonology in spelling, as well as the influence of the first language on spelling in a second language. They also indicate that Arabic students continue to be dependent on phonological processes when spelling English words even as they grow older.     

Longitudinal predictors of reading and spelling across languages varying in orthographic consistency

We examined the longitudinal predictors of nonword decoding, reading fluency, and spelling in three languages that vary in orthographic depth: Finnish, Greek, and English. Eighty-two English-speaking, 70 Greek, and 88 Finnish children were followed from the age of 5.5 years old until Grade 2. Prior to any reading instruction, they were administered measures of phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and rapid naming speed. In Grade 2, they were administered measures of nonword decoding, text-reading fluency, and spelling. The results showed that the model for nonword decoding in Greek was similar to that of Finnish (both have consistent grapheme-to-phoneme mappings) while the model for spelling in Greek was similar to that of English (both have some inconsistent phoneme-to-grapheme mappings). In addition, the models for nonword decoding and spelling in Finnish were similar, because Finnish is consistent in both directions. Letter knowledge dominated the prediction in each language. The predictable role of orthographic consistency on literacy acquisition is discussed.     

Flexibility in young second‐language learners: examining the language specificity of orthographic processing

This study examines whether orthographic processing transfers across languages to reading when the writing systems under acquisition are sufficiently related. We conducted a study with 76 7‐year‐old English‐first‐language children in French immersion. Measures of English and French orthographic processing (orthographic choice tasks) and standardised measures of English and French word reading (Woodcock and FIAT) were taken, in addition to verbal and nonverbal ability, and phonological and morphological awareness. Analyses reveal significant contributions of orthographic processing to reading both within and across the two languages, despite the inclusion of control variables. Findings of the transfer of orthographic processing skills to reading across languages suggest that orthographic processing may not be as language specific as previously hypothesised. We discuss the several similarities between English and French, such as a shared alphabet and cognates, that may drive transfer across languages in the context of current theories of second‐language reading development.