Linguistic Factors and the Spelling Ability of Spanish Heritage Language Learners

Eve Zyzik,Amàlia Llombart-Huesca

doi:10.3389/feduc.2019.00150

Abstract

Spelling is an aspect of literacy that causes significant difficulties for Spanish heritage language (HL) learners. Because little is known about how spelling skills are developed in this population, instructors of HL courses often struggle when attempting to teach spelling rules, leading to frustration among both teachers and students in heritage language courses. (Beaudrie, 2012). The current research study targets one of the most problematic areas of Spanish orthography: substitution of ‘s’ and ‘c’ letters to represent /s/. An experimental dictation task was designed in order to test two linguistic factors hypothesized to impact spelling accuracy: target letter (‘s’ vs. ‘c’) and cognate status of the word (cognate vs. non-cognate). Participants (n=72) were young adults, Spanish HL learners, who completed the dictation task in addition to a standardized measure of proficiency. The results indicate a main effect for cognate status (suggesting facilitative transfer from English), but no effect for letter. These results suggest that ‘s’ is not the default letter for representing /s/, contrary to what had been found in a number of previous studies. We discuss the data in the broader context of pedagogical proposals for targeting spelling among college-aged HL learners.

Highlights

At first glance, spelling in Spanish seems to be a mechanical aspect of writing that requires learning and applying a series of rules governing the correspondences between graphemes and phonemes
Our study was designed to address this issue by targeting words with /s/, which can be represented by three different graphemes: “c,” “s,” and “z.” In what follows, we present the relevant details of Spanish orthography and review the existing research on spelling acquisition
The current study offers new data on one of the more daunting areas of Spanish orthography: the representation of /s/ in words spelled with “c” and “s.” In an experimental dictation task, we found that heritage language learners (HLLs) utilize their knowledge of English spellings to their benefit, resulting in more accurate spelling of cognate words

Summary

Introduction

At first glance, spelling in Spanish seems to be a mechanical aspect of writing that requires learning and applying a series of rules governing the correspondences between graphemes and phonemes. Learning to spell is a complex and lengthy process that involves much more than the application of spelling rules, even in a language with a relatively transparent orthographic system such as Spanish. 1), and recent research highlights the many component skills that underlie spelling ability, including phonological and morphological awareness, as well as sensitivity to the permissible letter patterns in the language (Westwood, 2018). Spelling is not an isolated skill; it is reciprocally related to vocabulary knowledge (Ocal and Ehri, 2017a) and contributes to reading ability. Knowing the spelling of a word makes the representation of it sturdy and accessible for fluent reading.”. Knowing the spelling of a word makes the representation of it sturdy and accessible for fluent reading.” In short, spelling must be understood as a critical aspect of literacy

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