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Part of
Multilingual Acquisition and Learning: An ecosystemic view to diversity
Edited by Elena Babatsouli
[Studies in Bilingualism 67] 2024
► pp. 586–612

Chapter 22
More than spelling accuracy

Linguistic feature patterns in the misspellings of superior, average, and poor spellers

| University of South Florida
| University of South Florida
| University of South Florida
Spelling is a linguistic process that integrates phonological, orthographic, and morphological knowledge into novel word forms. Regardless of language, students learn to identify meaningful sound/letter combinations as they learn how to spell. However, most spelling investigations only consider overall word accuracy and not the nature and number of linguistic features in error. This chapter illustrates the utility of a linguistic scoring procedure in documenting the nature of misspelling patterns longitudinally in two groups of students from grades 1–7 that varied by spelling ability. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of misspellings demonstrate how general word knowledge develops into specific word knowledge for spelling. This type of fine-grained linguistic analysis is useful in studying spelling skill in any alphabetic or alphasyllabary language.
Keywords: spelling development, cross code integration, error complexity, vocabulary learning
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Defining spelling ability
    • 2.1Who is the good speller?
    • 2.2Problems in identifying good vs. poor spellers
  • 3.Spelling as the linguistic machinery for creating new words
    • 3.1Linguistic properties of spelling
    • 3.2Role of language transparency in the development of spelling patterns
    • 3.3The contributions of general and specific word knowledge to spelling ability
      • 3.3.1General word knowledge
      • 3.3.2Specific word knowledge
  • 4.A longitudinal study of spelling patterns by spelling ability
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Measures evaluating spelling skill
      • 4.2.1Phonological orthographic morphological analysis of spelling (POMAS)
      • 4.2.2POMplexity
    • 4.3Quantitative analysis of misspelling complexity
    • 4.4Qualitative analysis of linguistic feature errors by spelling ability and grade
      • 4.4.1Phonological error patterns
      • 4.4.2Orthographic error patterns
      • 4.4.3Morphological error patterns
    • 4.5Summary of results
  • 5.Conclusions
    • 5.1Variations in POMplexity scores over time
    • 5.2Examples of error patterns in three linguistic domains
      • 5.2.1Granularity
      • 5.2.2Stability
      • 5.2.3Accessibility
  • 6.Implications
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 30 May 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.67.22bah
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