Orthographically Shallow and Orthographically Deep (L1) First Language Strategies as Predictors of English (L2) Spelling Abilities Neha Bhatt William Paterson University
Why Spelling? Impact on Writing Academic Success Negative Perceptions
Factors Related to Spelling Working memory. Morphology/morphological relationships. Phonological Processing. Orthographic Processing.
Critical Factors: Phonological & Orthographic Processing Badian (1998) proposed that both orthographic processing and phonological awareness are important predictors of spelling ability.
Phonological Processing Phonological processing refers to the processes of phonological recoding of written words via letter sound correspondence (Wang & Geva, 2003).
Phonological Processing According to Plaza & Cohen (2003), present and past research has consistently established that phonological processing abilities are closely related to the development of reading and spelling.
Orthographic Processing Orthographic processing is defined as the visual ability to process letters and letter patterns into words and word parts according the writing system of a given language.
Orthography The orthography of a language is it s writing system, which is typically standard (Comrie, Matthews, & Polinsky, 1996). Every language uses a particular type of script which represents the language s orthography (writing system).
Orthography There are several types of scripts: Logographic and Phonetic.
Logographic A logographic script is made of characters which represent words in their entirety rather than as their phonetic components, (Comrie, Matthews, & Polinsky, 1996)
Logographic The character in logographic scripts carries the meaning without reference to its spoken form.
Phonetic Phonetic scripts consist of letters (graphemes) representing individual consonant and vowel sounds.
Orthographic Depth Languages can be classified according to orthographic depth, (Cook, 1997; Wang & Geva, 2003). There is a continuum. Deep Shallow
Classification of Languages English Spanish Chinese
_t.jji. ~...c,., - d /,...'-'".-.-...e, = /0/ do
Hypothesis Building on the work of Wang & Geva (2003), it was hypothesized that first languages (L1) that are close to English (i.e.-deep languages) will facilitate learning to spell in English when English is acquired as a second language (L2); whereas first languages that are shallow will not facilitate the acquisition of spelling in English as L2.
Rationale If L1 is a shallow language, the learners are more likely to apply auditory strategies in learning to spell words in English as L2. Deep languages & Visual Strategies.
Participants 32 children Shallow group: 17 Spanish-speaking ESL students Deep group: 15 Chinese-speaking ESL students. 2 nd or 3 rd grade with a mean age of 7.78 years for the shallow group, and 8.32 years for the deep group
Measures Baseline Auditory Visual
Baseline Measure 16 high-frequency words (e.g.-cats, flying) with varying inflectional morphemes.
Auditory Measure Verbally presenting 16 onesyllable, four-letter pseudowords which did not violate English phonotactics (e.g.-spiv, nesh, poth, visp).
Visual Measure 12 pseudo words (e.g.-pcth, poth, nfsh, shfn) written on three-by-five index cards, with capital letters in 72 point font size.
Procedure Counterbalanced Timing One on one (about 20 mins. Per child)
Design A mixed 2X2 factorial design was used. Independent variables: Between Groups Within Groups 1 Dependent Variable
Hypothesis revisited What was expected: Shallow group and Auditory Condition Deep group and Visual Condition Interaction Effect
Group & Mode of Presentation 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 0.4085 1 0.7444 De e p Shallow Percent C orrect 0.4818 2 0.5638 Visual Auditory Auditory Visual
Findings F (1,30) = 4.698; p =.038!!! The results indicate that the type of first language as described in terms of deep vs. shallow interacts with mode of presentation when spelling words in L2, which is English in this study.