W7: Spelling

Question 1

What is the definition of spelling?

Answer 1

The representation of spoken language as a series of printed symbols, in a conventional order

Question 2

What is fluent spelling essential for?

Answer 2

Making yourself easily understood

Appearing intelligent and literate

Keeping cognitive resources free to be able to choose which word comes next

Question 3

In the literature, spelling has been…

Answer 3

neglected

Question 4

Spelling is __ whereas reading is __

Answer 4

Spelling is recall, whereas reading is recognition

Question 5

What is the difference between shallow and deep orthographics?

Answer 5

Shallow: one-to-one grapheme-phoneme correspondence (Italian, Finnish)

Deep: Have a variety of grapheme-phoneme correspondences - there is more than one way to write each phoneme and say each grapheme (French, English)

Question 6

What do shallow and deep orthographic differences mean for children learning to write?

Answer 6

Finnish children can write more words correctly much earlier than English children - easier mapping

Question 7

What is the spelling of many English words today based on?

Answer 7

Based on English spoken in the 14th to 15th century

Question 8

How did scribes contribute to the idiosyncrasies in todays English?

Answer 8

Scribes sometimes chose a final ‘e’ as a filler to fill the end of a printed line

Angular writing (in fashion) made it hard to distinguish between u and v, n, r

Often changed U to O - dove, money, worry, constable

Question 9

How did the invention of printing press contribute to the idiosyncrasies in todays English?

Answer 9

Miss-spellings by non-native English printers

When printed - spreading and freezing archaic and idiosyncratic spellings

Question 10

Some spelling changes have been made overtime to better reflect what?

Answer 10

Pronunciation

E.g. Dette - debt, oure - hour

Question 11

Explain the role of dictionaries in spelling

Answer 11

Dictionaries were the beginning of more rigid standards of correctness, have kept the spelling system constant despite pronunciation changes

Question 12

Even though the English spelling system is complex and opaque, we still retain the ability to…

Answer 12

Read old texts despite pronunciation changes

Question 13

What are graphotactics?

Answer 13

Letter based patterns - how and where we put letters on a page

Question 14

What is morphology?

Answer 14

Meaning-based patterns

Question 15

Is spelling by sound enough?

Answer 15

Children do start off by spelling by sound, and show sensitivity to sound patterns and while a large number of words can be spelled according to their sound, it won’t help with all words in English.

Some segments could be spelled in a number of possible ways - need to learn some spelling my rote

Question 16

Graphotactics begins with… and extends to…

Answer 16

Knowledge about the direction and linearity of writing which then extends to learning the conventions of which letters can occur in which order

Question 17

Give some examples of how inconsistent spellings can preserve meaning between base and derived forms

Answer 17

Magician from magic
Decoration from decorate
Discussion from discuss

Question 18

What basic grammatical rules to adults make errors on even though they are skilled spellers?

Answer 18

Orthograohic patterns
Derivational relations
Plurals
Apostrophes

Question 19

What do models of spelling development propose?

Answer 19

They propose a series of increasingly complex stages that children progress through over a number of years

Question 20

Models of spelling development are not as developed as models of….

Answer 20

Reading development

• not as much research and testing

Question 21

What is the general sequence proposed by stage theories for children’s spelling development?

Answer 21

Prewriting: scribbles

Alphabetic principle: letters = sounds

Common letter sequences and grammatical segments (graphotactics)

Using meaning to spell (morphology e.g. magician, discussion)

Question 22

What critiques are there for stage-based theories of spelling development?

Answer 22

There is evidence that children use graphotactics and morphology from early on (e.g. not using Ck at the beginning of a word)

Question 23

Explain integration of multiple patterns

Answer 23

There is a focus on multiple cues available to spelling (phonological, graphotactic, morphological)

Sometimes these cues converge, sometimes they don’t

the IMP model proposes that the more cues towards a spelling, the more likely someone is to produce that spelling

Question 24

What problems would we run into if we changes english to be spelt as it sounds?

Answer 24

This would mean we would have to spell english different in every country/region due to pronunciation etc otherwise which spelling would we choose

Question 25

Explain the changes made to words beginning with ‘h’ overtime

Answer 25

Up until the 18th century, many H words were pronounced without the H (honest, herb, hospital, hour, hotel)

More common words remained without the h because they were heard enough to remember the pronunciation but less common words took on h’s because people saw them written more than heard them said

Question 26

To succeed in spelling what 3 skills do we need?

Answer 26

Phonological, orthographic and morphological skills

Question 27

English contains too much rich information for it to ever be….

Answer 27

Sound-based