Spelling
Britney
Hopkins, Joan Horky, Jennifer Hurtado, Rachel Kleinsteiber
Definition
of process
According to Bourassa
and Treiman (2001), spelling is a two-step process. One has to first be able to segment the
phonemic components of a spoken word and then select “the appropriate graphemes
to represent the phonemes.” In other
words, it is the process of carefully selecting the appropriate orthographical
representation of a word that encompasses its phonemic attributes. The process
of spelling is a highly constructive skill in which one has to be able to
select the appropriate orthographical representation of words that are not transparent
to their phonemic representations. For
example, spelling the word cat may be more transparent than spelling the word
dry (which children may initially spell as jrie) because the graphemes
correspond more accordingly to the phonemic representation of the word. When referring to development, young
children’s spelling typically represents their notions of the phonemic
representations of their words (Denton et. al., 2000).
Developmental
information of process
- Spelling development is not homogeneous.
- Efforts will be made to symbolize the phonological structure of spoken words once the child begins to learn the alphabet.
- As a child develops, the child will incorporate their knowledge of orthographic patterns into spelling. They will also incorporate morphological information into how they spell.
·
Phonology
and spelling
o Spelling
doesn’t emerge all at once when a child enters school.
o A
young child (preschool age) may pretend to write. They can tell the difference between writing
and drawing, but they don’t understand that words represent sounds yet.
o Young
children may think that large objects (house, bear, tree, etc.) should be long
words because of their size. This is
also true of small objects (i.e., grasshopper should be a small word). This will change as the child learns more
about spelling.
o Phoneme
perception depends on where a phoneme occurs in a word.
o The
child has to learn phoneme-grapheme mappings.
Some are harder to learn/use than other.
·
Orthography
and spelling
o
Knowledge of position is present at
kindergarten.
o
Knowledge of consonant doublets emerges in the
first grade.
o
Rime (emerging as young at 6 years old) may
important for English orthography acquisition.
The results of many studies are mixed in regards to spelling, but it can
help with reading.
· Morphology
and Spelling Development
o Children
use morphology that they have learned to help them spell.
o Misspellings
are common because of flap production. A
child will spell out what they hear.
§ Example:
Child hears “budder” for the word “butter” because the /t/ is not pronounced as
a /t/ sound.
Stage
of reading impacted
Spelling would impact
every level of reading: beginning, transitional, intermediate and advanced.
When children are first beginning to spell, they start by spelling the word by how
it sounds. Eventually, spelling errors subside as we become more proficient
with language. But, as advanced readers we can still have spelling errors. Whenever
we encounter a new word, we start by spelling it by how it sounds. Thus, the
spelling can transcend the stages of reading.
Connections
to Oral Language
Spelling difficulties
are related to the phonological, orthographic, and morphological patterns of a
child. When a child is learning the alphabetic principles, the way in which
they spell will reflect their knowledge of the phonological structure of spoken
words. The authors’ state in order for a child to achieve successful spelling
performance, they must be able to split a spoken word into its phonemic
parts. Moreover, children have
difficulties translating oral language into written language. Children typically omit sonorants and
liquids, as opposed to obstruents, when writing. Children appear to conceptualize these
phonemes as “part of the vowel” as opposed to their own separate entity.
Another example is children tend to omit final consonant clusters when writing,
and occasionally omit the second consonant in initial clusters (snow->so).
Consequently though, failure to spell these consonant clusters doesn’t mean
these children don’t pronounce these clusters when speaking. A child will still have spelling errors, even
if he/she can correctly pronounce the words. The child will spell the word “how
it sounds” or phonetically. An example is when a child conceptualized the
initial blend /dr/ as /j/ (dress->jres). Phonetically, this scenario is
possible. Since, the friction of the /dr/ sound is similar to /ʤ/. Thus,
orthography is closely connected to oral language.
The article found
children with spelling disabilities have a difficult time understanding the
English writing system and how it relates to the word structure. These children
typically have more knowledge of morphology in oral production than what is
displayed in their spelling. In one
experiment, children with spelling disabilities produced more inaccurate
morphological complex words when writing spontaneously than typically
developing peers. A correlation was
found between the child’s performance on spontaneous writing tasks and oral
production. The article concluded that more research needed to be done looking
at the relationship between oral knowledge of morphology and its prediction of
spelling performance.
Connections
to bilingual or culturally/linguistically diverse
The process of spelling
involves having a phonological awareness of the phonemic representation of a
word and then having the ability to choose the appropriate orthographical
representation for that word. Bourassa
and Treiman (2011) mention certain words may be more transparent and therefore
more easily spelled than others.
Children have to be able to have a cognitive flexibility to spell words
despite the fact that some English words are more easily transparent than
others. Certain languages, like Spanish,
are more transparent and therefore more phonically regular with their
orthographical representation. According
to Denton, Hasbrouck, Weaver, and Riccio (2000), the pronunciation of a Spanish
word can be directly derived from print. When applying the research on the development of spelling, it is
important to note the language the research is discussing. Certain developmental hypotheses of spelling
in the English language may be applicable to other languages. For example, the hypothesis that physical
features of words directly represent the meaning of words may be able to be
generalized to other languages. Other
aspects of spelling, such as phonological awareness and morphology may vary
across languages depending on the phonetic and orthographical properties of
that language (Denton et. al., 2000).
Video
examples
http://youtu.be/sliyBcvrtVM
http://youtu.be/Rynx9myjH4Y
Resources
Bourassa,
D., & Treiman, R. (2001). Clinical forum. Spelling development and
disability: the importance of linguistic factors. Language, Speech &
Hearing Services In Schools, 32(3), 172.
Denton,
C.A., Hasbrouck, J.E., Weaver, L.R., Riccio, C.A. (2000) What do we know about
phonological awareness in Spanish? Reading Phsychology, 21, 335-352
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