W7: Spelling Flashcards
What is the definition of spelling?
The representation of spoken language as a series of printed symbols, in a conventional order
What is fluent spelling essential for?
Making yourself easily understood
Appearing intelligent and literate
Keeping cognitive resources free to be able to choose which word comes next
In the literature, spelling has been…
neglected
Spelling is __ whereas reading is __
Spelling is recall, whereas reading is recognition
What is the difference between shallow and deep orthographics?
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)
What do shallow and deep orthographic differences mean for children learning to write?
Finnish children can write more words correctly much earlier than English children - easier mapping
What is the spelling of many English words today based on?
Based on English spoken in the 14th to 15th century
How did scribes contribute to the idiosyncrasies in todays English?
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
How did the invention of printing press contribute to the idiosyncrasies in todays English?
Miss-spellings by non-native English printers
When printed - spreading and freezing archaic and idiosyncratic spellings
Some spelling changes have been made overtime to better reflect what?
Pronunciation
E.g. Dette - debt, oure - hour
Explain the role of dictionaries in spelling
Dictionaries were the beginning of more rigid standards of correctness, have kept the spelling system constant despite pronunciation changes
Even though the English spelling system is complex and opaque, we still retain the ability to…
Read old texts despite pronunciation changes
What are graphotactics?
Letter based patterns - how and where we put letters on a page
What is morphology?
Meaning-based patterns
Is spelling by sound enough?
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
Graphotactics begins with… and extends to…
Knowledge about the direction and linearity of writing which then extends to learning the conventions of which letters can occur in which order
Give some examples of how inconsistent spellings can preserve meaning between base and derived forms
Magician from magic
Decoration from decorate
Discussion from discuss
What basic grammatical rules to adults make errors on even though they are skilled spellers?
Orthograohic patterns
Derivational relations
Plurals
Apostrophes
What do models of spelling development propose?
They propose a series of increasingly complex stages that children progress through over a number of years
Models of spelling development are not as developed as models of….
Reading development
- not as much research and testing
What is the general sequence proposed by stage theories for children’s spelling development?
Prewriting: scribbles
Alphabetic principle: letters = sounds
Common letter sequences and grammatical segments (graphotactics)
Using meaning to spell (morphology e.g. magician, discussion)
What critiques are there for stage-based theories of spelling development?
There is evidence that children use graphotactics and morphology from early on (e.g. not using Ck at the beginning of a word)
Explain integration of multiple patterns
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
What problems would we run into if we changes english to be spelt as it sounds?
This would mean we would have to spell english different in every country/region due to pronunciation etc otherwise which spelling would we choose
Explain the changes made to words beginning with ‘h’ overtime
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
To succeed in spelling what 3 skills do we need?
Phonological, orthographic and morphological skills
English contains too much rich information for it to ever be….
Sound-based
