Spelling in alphabetic languages
Spelling in alphabetic languages
Spelling provides valuable information about children’s extent of orthographic knowledge which is one of the major foundations of language and literacy development. However, as compared to reading, spelling research has received much less attention, even less so in the spelling development of children learning English as a second language and in other non-English alphabetic languages. What holds true for monolingual children learning English might not be universal across different learners and different alphabetic languages. For instance, it has been shown that monolingual Spanish speaking children make more errors on consonants than on vowels, a trend opposite of what is seen among monolingual English speaking children. The purpose of this symposium is to examine the spelling performance of children from bilingual backgrounds who learn English and contrast that to other alphabetic languages of differing orthographic depth. The papers adopt multiple perspectives, looking at both spelling errors and achievement of children.”