Abstract
The ability to spell properly is usually regarded as a good indicator of one’s level of education (Fagerberg, 2006). In this study spelling difficulties are classified as phonological, morphological, and orthographical difficulties in order to examine the correlation between spelling difficulties and the linguistic awareness of Iranian EFL students in Malaysia. The participants of the study were 41 Iranian EFL students (20 males and 21 females) who were selected purposefully from an Iranian secondary school in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. A pre-test post-test design adapting a set of tests from Tabrizi et al. (2013) was used to examine the correlation between linguistic awareness and spelling difficulties. Forty words were selected from the second-year English textbook of Iranian EFL students in the pre-test and post-test. Based on the results of the pre-test, the most frequent types of errors were identified. They were related to the Visual Memory, Training Error, Listening Accuracy, Visual Accuracy, Dysgraphia and Visual Sequential Memory. Analysis of the data showed a significant correlation between the participants’ linguistic awareness and phonological, morphological and orthographical spelling difficulties. It was concluded that children’s developing awareness of linguistic features can help them become more proficient language learners. Findings from this study can assist EFL teachers in mitigating the spelling difficulties among young learners. Keywords: linguistic awareness; spelling; difficulties; EFL
Highlights
English language is a global language used in communications, interactions, and information transfer (Pandarangga, S. 2016)
The more an individual is aware of the features of his/her first language, such as its semantics, linguistic structures, sociolinguistic knowledge, phonology, and orthography, the greater opportunity there is for cross-linguistic influence to occur in language learning
Review of the literature on Iranian’s spelling difficulties shows that despite several studies conducted on Persian, Arabic and Latin languages, there is still a gap between research and practice in addressing Iranian English language learners’ spelling difficulties with a focus on phonology, morphology, orthography as well as their linguistic awareness
Summary
English language is a global language used in communications, interactions, and information transfer (Pandarangga, S. 2016). The Persian linguistic background of Iranian EFL learners means that they often search for the correspondence between sounds and symbols in English words (Ediger, 2001); they become confused when they fail to find any.
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