Phonemic Spelling Research Articles

I’m writing in Tunisian: Orthography and identity in written Tunisian Arabic

In recent years the amount of written vernacular Arabic has increased dramatically. But encoding an unstandardized language in writing is not straightforward and mechanical; rather, it is a complex process that balances practical considerations with ideological stances such as autonomy from the standard language. This study examines how writers of Tunisian Arabic (or derja) are navigating this elaboration process. Using a quantitative analysis of a 279,000-word corpus of print literary works written in Tunisian Arabic (2014–2021) and a 5.8-million-word corpus of internet forum posts (2010–2021), this paper explores how Tunisians writing in derja make orthographic choices to collectively position themselves in relation to the larger Arab world. The study finds that forum writers who have advocated for an improved status for Tunisian Arabic use more phonemic spelling forms—more closely representing Tunisian pronunciation—while those who have advocated for Standard Arabic are more conservative in their spelling choices. The authors of Tunisian Arabic novels and translations—pulled between issues of elaboration and readability—are a bit more conservative than the pro- derja group. These results show how writers in unstandardized or not-yet-standardized languages like Tunisian Arabic use orthography to express national identity stances in relation to supranational languages and identities.

Influence of transparency and opacity on the spelling of fricative phonemes.

(1) to verify to what extent the occurrence of possible errors is influenced by the relationship (opaque/transparent) between fricative phonemes and the graphemes with which they can be spelled; (2) verify the differences (if present or not) of relationship types among the phonemes that present common graphemic relationships. We analyzed 750 textual productions from children in the first year of Elementary School (ES), and conducted a survey of the frequency of correct answers and errors in all fricative phonemes of Brazilian Portuguese (BP). The errors occurred in greater numbers in the group of phonemes with opaque spelling when compared with the number of errors in the group of phonemes with transparent spelling. In the first group, the errors showed a non-symmetrical behavior, since they varied according to the possibilities of graphemes for each phoneme. In the second group, the errors showed a symmetrical behavior. Given the symmetry in the errors of the phonemes of the first group and the non-symmetry of those of the second group, our results point to a gradation in the occurrence of errors, which varies as a function of the transparency and degree of opacity in the relations between phonemes and graphemes of a same class.

Effects of Integrated Spelling in Phonics Instruction for At-Risk Children in Kindergarten

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of a brief experimental intervention that integrated spelling practice into a systematic phonics approach to initial reading instruction for at-risk children. The effects of this intervention were studied by means of a randomized controlled trial design that compared the experimental condition to two trained control conditions and a further business-as-usual condition. The two trained control conditions were phonics-based interventions without spelling but with additional time spent on letter-sound practice. One emphasized letter-sound production, the other letter-sound recognition. Participants were 65 kindergartners with limited letter knowledge and no reading skills. Each participant was randomly assigned to one of the four conditions. Children were taught individually in four 20-min sessions in all three trained conditions. Analyses of the gains in abilities from pre- to posttest revealed that the integrated spelling condition was associated with significantly larger gains in phoneme awareness, spelling, and reading than were either the trained letter-sound recognition condition (d = 0.38–0.86) or the business-as-usual condition (d = 0.54–1.21). The results also favored the integrated spelling condition over the trained letter-sound production condition. Regarding the two trained control conditions, the letter-sound production condition was associated with slightly better reading and spelling outcomes than the letter-sound recognition condition. These findings indicate that integrated spelling may improve systematic phonics for children at risk of early reading difficulties, and that activities that encourage letter-sound production may be more beneficial than those which only require letter-sound recognition.

Non-phonological Strategies in Spelling Development.

This paper investigated the role that types of knowledge beyond phonology have on spelling development, such as knowledge of morpheme-to-grapheme mappings, of orthographic patterns, and of word-specific orthographic patterns. It is based on the modern view that children do not learn spelling in discrete stages but, rather, they apply different types of strategies from early on. The goals of the paper were threefold: (1) to determine the relative difficulty of different types of non-phonological spelling strategies, (2) to examine the contribution of non-phonological strategies (specifically, morphological, morphophonological, orthographic, and lexical) to conventional spelling scores, and (3) to determine the role of children’s educational level and population type (first- vs. second-language learners) on spelling strategy use. A large sample of 982 children (497 boys), speakers of Catalan (a Romance language similar to Spanish but with a less consistent orthography), participated in the study. They were administered a bespoke dictation task aimed to test their conventional and phonographic accuracy skill, as well as to determine their ability to use different types of non-phonological strategies for the spelling of ambiguous phonemes. Data were analyzed with a series of multigroup, multilevel SEMs. Results showed that (1) children across groups found morphological and lexical strategies harder to apply than orthographic and morphophonological strategies and (2) all types of non-phonological strategies contributed greatly to spelling accuracy scores, even after controlling for children’s phonographic skills. Efficient strategy use increased as a function of schooling level, while second-language learners had a worse performance throughout, but no group showed a specific pattern of results. In conclusion, the paper offers substantial evidence that non-phonological strategies are paramount to learning to spell at least during the early and intermediate elementary school years. It is suggested that the teaching of writing should therefore be multidimensional in nature and target particularly the strategies with which children struggle the most: knowledge of morpho-graphemic mappings and word-specific lexical representations. Theoretical implications are also discussed.

Effects of word boxes on improving students’ basic literacy skills: A literature review

Word boxes (also referred to as Elkonin or sound boxes) are used to teach basic literacy skills to children. However, there has not been a review of studies reporting on the effects of word boxes on students’ reading achievement. The purpose of this review was to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the effects of word boxes on students’ reading performance. Several experimental studies reporting on the effects of word boxes were identified through database searches followed by an ancestral search. Findings from this review revealed that there was evidence to support the use of word boxes for helping preschool to elementary students acquire phonemic awareness, letter-sound correspondences, and spelling. Limitations and directions for future research are presented.

Progress in Reading Instruction Requires a Better Understanding of the English Spelling System

It is widely claimed that the English spelling system conforms to the alphabetic principle, according to which letters or letter combinations (graphemes) represent speech sounds (phonemes). But this is not accurate. English spellings have evolved to represent both phonemes and meaning (through morphology and etymology), and in direct contradiction to the alphabetic principle, spellings prioritize the consistent spelling of morphemes over the consistent spellings of phonemes. This is important because the alphabetic principle provides the main theoretical motivation for systematic phonics instruction that explicitly teaches children grapheme–phoneme correspondences in English without reference to morphology and etymology. Furthermore, this theoretical claim has biased the research literature, with many studies considering the efficacy of phonics but few studies assessing the relevance of morphology and etymology to reading instruction. We briefly describe the linguistic organization of the English spelling system and then outline pedagogical and empirical arguments in support of the hypothesis that reading instruction should be designed to teach children the logical and meaningful organization of English spellings.

From phonemic spelling to distinctive spelling

AbstractWhether spelling is phonemic is only one factor in whether a writing system is suitable for a given language; another consideration is "lexical distinctiveness" of spelling, in two separate senses, and the importance of lexical distinctiveness grows as a writing system matures. Seen in this light, the increasing irregularity of English spelling, over the period when English has been a written language, has been a desirable response to the changing needs of the English-speaking world.

Growth of phonemic awareness and spelling in a second language

ABSTRACT Previous studies have examined the predictive significance of the level of phonemic awareness in L2 spelling, but have left the role of phonemic awareness growth relatively unexplored. The aims of the present study were to examine (1) the growth trajectory of phonemic awareness in the kindergarten years; and (2) the unique contribution of initial levels and growth of phonemic awareness in L2 spelling, with other important cognitive-linguistic predictors statistically controlled. One hundred and forty-one Chinese ESL children were followed for one year during which their phonemic awareness was assessed four times, at three-monthly intervals. Spelling was assessed at Time 5, which was 12 months after the beginning of the study. Non-linear growth of phonemic awareness was observed. With age, non-verbal intelligence, letter name knowledge, vocabulary knowledge, syntactic awareness, word reading statistically controlled, both the initial levels and growth of phonemic awareness predicted L2 spelling at T5. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The Use of Direct Spelling Instruction for Children With Language Impairment

Children with language impairment frequently struggle with written language skills such as spelling. With their expertise in language, speech-language pathologists are in the position to promote the development of such skills. One way to do this is through the use of direct spelling instruction which has been shown to facilitate growth in a number of literacy skills such as phonemic awareness, reading, and spelling. This article outlines a 10-week direct spelling intervention program that is aimed at improving the literacy skills of children with language impairment. This treatment protocol may be adapted as necessary to meet the needs of individual students.

Three DIBELS Tasks vs. Three Informal Reading/Spelling Tasks: A Comparison of Predictive Validity

Within a developmental framework, this study compared the predictive validity of three DIBELS tasks (phoneme segmentation fluency [PSF], nonsense word fluency [NWF], and oral reading fluency [ORF]) with that of three alternative tasks drawn from the field of reading (phonemic spelling [phSPEL], word recognition-timed [WR-t], and graded passage reading [grPASS), an oral reading fluency measure). Two cohorts of students (n = 319) were assessed with the aforementioned tasks multiple times across a four-year period—middle of kindergarten through end of third grade. The results were clear and closely replicated in the two cohorts: (a) phSPEL (moderate) outperformed DIBELS PSF (weak to moderate) in predicting future orthographic-unit processing; (b) WR-t (very strong) outperformed DIBELS NWF (moderate) in predicting future oral reading fluency; and (c) DIBELS ORF and grPASS were equally good predictors (moderately strong) of future reading comprehension.

Choosing between alternative spellings of sounds: The role of context.

We investigated how university students select between alternative spellings of phonemes in written production by asking them to spell nonwords whose final consonants have extended spellings (e.g., ‹ff› for /f/) and simpler spellings (e.g., ‹f› for /f/). Participants' choices of spellings for the final consonant were influenced by whether they used one letter or more than one letter to spell the preceding vowel. Specifically, participants tended to use extended consonant spellings when they spelled the vowel with one letter and simple consonant spellings when they spelled the vowel with more than one letter. This held true whether the vowel was phonologically short or long. The findings pose problems for models of the spelling process according to which people use different spellings of a phoneme in accordance with the frequency of the phoneme-to-grapheme links in the vocabulary as a whole but in which the choices are not influenced by context. The findings also pose problems for models according to which phonological context but not graphic context can influence the choice among spelling options. Models that behave in this manner, including the best-developed computational model of the spelling process to date, need to be modified so as to take graphic context into account. (PsycINFO Database Record

Haitian Creole: Structure, Variation, Status, Origin by Albert Valdman

Reviewed by: Haitian Creole: Structure, Variation, Status, Origin by Albert Valdman Sibylle Kriegel Haitian Creole: Structure, Variation, Status, Origin. Albert Valdman. Sheffield: Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2015. Pp. xviii + 477. $125.00 (hardcover), $35.00 (paper). Even though the title of the book recalls one that Albert Valdman published in 1978 in French, this is a new work that reflects advances in research over the last forty years. Chapter 1 is a substantial introduction. It gives a general account of the differences between pidgin and creole languages, followed by a sketch of the often violent and unstable history of Haiti, from the arrival of Christopher Columbus until the present day; it then briefly discusses the role of French and Creole in Haiti and lists descriptive [End Page 329] studies of Haitian Creole. Section 1.4 gives very valuable information about Atlantic French-based creoles not often discussed in the linguistic literature. In this section, Valdman mentions poorly known French creoles spoken in the Lesser Antilles such as the variety spoken in Trinidad and Tobago, to which the first description of a creole language by Thomas in 1869 is dedicated, the endangered Guïria Creole spoken in Venezuela, and Karipúna Creole, spoken by indigenous peoples in the northeastern Brazilian state of Amapá. Chapter 2, “The Phonological System” (pp. 58–78), points out that the phonological system of Haitian Creole does not differ greatly from that of French. This chapter prepares the reader for the discussion of spelling in chapter 4. Chapter 3, “Variation in the Forms of Words” (pp. 79–95), deals with morphophonological processes—systematic alternations in the forms of words—that are very frequent in Haitian Creole and differ significantly from those of French. As Valdman points out, awareness of these alternations is central for the development of spelling systems. Chapter 4, “Toward a Systematic Autonomous Spelling” (pp. 95–138), starts with general considerations about spelling systems—specifically, the notion of biuniqueness. In section 4.3, Valdman reviews the history of the development of etymologically based orthographies for Haitian Creole; he takes the opportunity to provide excerpts from older texts, starting with La Passion de Notre Seigneur selon Saint-Jean en Langage Negre, probably written between 1720 and 1740. Section 4.4, on phonemic spelling systems presents the three systematic, autonomous orthographies developed in Haiti since the 1940s, one of which was recognized as official. In the last section of the chapter, Valdman addresses the challenges of morphophonological variation for spelling systems. Chapter 5, “The Structure of the Haitian Creole Lexicon” (pp. 139–65), argues vigorously against the common view that Haitian Creole originated in an impoverished pidgin. Its numerous examples illustrate the rich word formation resources of Haitian Creole, as shown by the most comprehensive dictionary (Valdman, Iskrova, and Hebblethwaite 2007). A review of the variety of mechanisms of lexical renewal achieved by derivation and the creation of compounds shows that Haitian Creole is capable of meeting all the communicative needs of a language on its way to literacy. The chapter also discusses contact phenomena with the neighboring languages, Spanish and English, without neglecting the fact that the main source of loanwords remains French. The next three chapters deal with the syntactic structure of Haitian Creole. Chapter 7, “Basic Sentence Structure” (pp. 189–208), discusses some important features of Haitian Creole predicates, starting with the relative lack of inflectional affixes, the multifunctionality of word classes, and the resulting importance of word order. While these features are shared by almost all creoles, the following section on the copula deals with a feature more specific to Haitian Creole, the syntactic operators ye and se. As in numerous other French-based creoles, reflexivity can be marked either by concepts referring to the human body plus the personal pronoun (kò/tèt + pronoun) or by a direct-object pronoun, and there is no overt passive marking. In chapter 8, “The Verbal System” (pp. 209–52), Valdman addresses some issues of typological comparison; he places Haitian Creole near the analytic pole of a synthetic-to-analytic scale, thus continuing an evolution already present in vernacular French. He then discusses the use of the tense-mode-aspect markers Ø, ap, te, and a...

Orthographic constraints on the spelling of German a-sounds

In the framework of the Modular Writing System Theory (Neef 2005a), two levels of representation are distinguished that are relevant for the analysis of phonographic writing systems. These levels are called graphematics and systematic orthography, respectively. In this text, we focus on the latter module. As a case study, we take into account the spelling potential of the German vowels [a] (lax) and [ɑ] (tense). For this purpose, we first discuss the graphematic properties of these two vowels which allows deriving their graphematic solution spaces that capture such spelling variants that are theoretically given in the writing system of German. Subsequently, we use the spelling potential of [a] and [ɑ] to investigate their distribution in the systematic orthography of German. In doing so, we formulate orthographic constraints that regulate the appearance of the spelling variants. These constraints are sensitive for different levels of the German vocabulary. Some of the constraints have already been found relevant for the spelling of other phonemes as well, while others are specific to the two sounds under consideration. This theoretical approach allows analyzing a much broader part of the vocabulary compared to other theories.

Phonemic Awareness Contributes to Text Reading Fluency: Evidence From Eye Movements

.Although phonemic awareness is a known predictor of early decoding and word recognition, less is known about relationships between phonemic awareness and text reading fluency. This longitudinal study is the first to investigate this relationship by measuring eye movements during picture matching tasks and during silent sentence reading. Time spent looking at the correct target during phonemic awareness and receptive spelling tasks gauged the efficiency of phonological and orthographic processes. Children's eye movements during sentence reading provided a direct measure of silent reading fluency for comprehended text. Results indicate that children who processed the phonemic awareness targets more slowly in Grade 2 tended to be slower readers in Grade 3. Processing difficulty during a receptive spelling task was related to reading fluency within Grade 2. Findings suggest that inefficient phonemic processing contributes to poor silent reading fluency after second grade.

Botella al mar para el dios de las palabras. Reflexiones de García Márquez sobre gramática y ortografía

The opening of the International Congress of the Spanish Language in Zacatecas, which was charged to Gabriel Garcia Marquez under the title “Bottle the sea for the God of words”, showed that not all academics of Spanish have consistent views on the current situation of Spanish, its spelling and grammar. The writer reflects a current of opinion about spelling and grammatical simplification, which began several centuries earlier (from Nebrija, straps, Bello and later with Juan Ramón Jimenez proposals) and which has a blunt response from other Spanish-speaking intellectuals on this occasion. In this article, we analyze the controversy, providing the most relevant points of view on the issue, to conclude that a phonemic spelling system such as ours is only sustained with the pillar of historically consistent spelling.

Contribution of Phonemic Segmentation Instruction With Letters and Articulation Pictures to Word Reading and Spelling in Beginners

English-speaking preschoolers who knew letters but were nonreaders (M = 4 years 9 months; n = 60) were taught to segment consonant–vowel (CV), VC, and CVC words into phonemes either with letters and pictures of articulatory gestures (the LPA condition) or with letters only (the LO condition). A control group received no treatment. Both trained groups outperformed controls on phoneme segmentation, spelling, word reading, and nonword repetition posttests. LPA training enhanced children's ability to learn to read words with practice more than LO training. The favored explanation, consonant with the motor theory of speech perception, is that LPA training activated the articulatory features of phonemes in words as children practiced reading them so that grapheme-phoneme connections were better secured in memory. Results also suggested that phoneme segmentation training with letters improved phonological short-term memory.

Phonemic Representation and Early Spelling Errors in Bilingual Children

The relationship between linguistic experience and phonemic representations in spelling was investigated in two groups of Mandarin–English bilingual children (aged 5–6 years) who spoke mostly Mandarin-L1 (n = 23) or mostly English-L1 (n = 27) at home. A 60-item cloze task including high- and low-frequency words with word-initial and word-final target phonemes that are either common to Mandarin and English (/f/ and /p/), or found only in English (/v/ and /b/), was developed and administered to both groups. With performance for a neutral control phoneme /m/ matched, spelling accuracy for the common phonemes was equivalent but the Mandarin-L1 children's performance for /v/ and /b/ was significantly poorer than that of their English-L1 classmates in low-frequency words. For both groups, performance on word-final targets was poorer for English-only phonemes than common phonemes. If early literacy development depends on stored phonological representations of the first language, these findings have implications for language minority communities.

Phonemic awareness and early spelling skills in urban Australian Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children

This study investigated the phonological awareness and early spelling skills of 10 Australian Aboriginal and 10 non-Aboriginal children in their first year of schooling at urban schools. Phonological awareness was assessed using a standardized test (the Queensland University Inventory of Literacy), and children completed a standard spelling task that required them to generate spelling attempts in response to 12 line drawings of familiar animals. Spelling was analysed using the Spelling Scoring Sensitivity procedure. All children performed within the normal range for scores on the QUIL. However, as a group, Aboriginal children performed more poorly than their non-Aboriginal peers. Statistically significant differences were found on the subtests non-word spelling, non-word reading, and phoneme segmentation. Both formal scoring and informal observations were used to examine the spelling skills of participants. Possible explanations of the differences between groups are discussed in terms of health and cultural factors, and implications for the education of Aboriginal children are suggested.

Dyslexia and hyperlexia in bilinguals

This study explores the nature of reading difficulties of two bilinguals in Kannada and English, which vary in their orthographic depth and script layout. VN and MS manifest two different types of reading disabilities, dyslexia and hyperlexia, respectively. The performance of VN was below average on Kannada and English tests of phonemic awareness, spelling, and pseudoword naming. Despite his poor decoding skills, the listening comprehension skill both at the word level and at the sentence level of VN was within the normal range. VN, therefore, can be described to have developmental dyslexia. MS, in contrast, showed good decoding ability in both Kannada and English, but his listening and reading comprehension were poor in both languages. MS, therefore, displays a pattern of reading disability akin to that of hyperlexia. The deficits of both VN and MS, although dissimilar from each other, cut across the linguistic boundaries and affect their performance in both Kannada and English.

Die Bedeutung der Phonemdiskrimination für eine Lese-Rechtschreibstörung in den Klassenstufen eins bis sechs

The research on phoneme discrimination in connection with dyslexia has focused mostly on reading ability. The aim of this study was to analyse phoneme discrimination in relation to spelling ability in the context of different school grades. The data of 253 children in school grades 1 to 6 who were seen for diagnosis of dyslexia and auditory processing disorder were analyzed retrospectively. Phoneme discrimination was assessed via the Heidelberger Phoneme Discrimination Test at 3 levels: auditory discrimination, repetition of minimal pairs, and analyzing the initial consonants in phoneme clusters. We found a high correlation of phoneme discrimination and spelling ability in the lower school grades. While the phoneme discrimination deficit still showed up in higher grades, its influence on spelling ability was greater in the first two grades. In the whole population, phoneme discrimination proved to be a significant criterion for differentiating poor and normal spelling ability. Speech and language therapy and auditory processing training for dyslexic children should be adjusted according to these results.