Spelling patterns of plural marking and learning trajectories in French taught as a foreign language
Constanze Weth | University of Luxembourg
Sonja Ugen | University of Luxembourg
Natalia Bîlici | University of Luxembourg | Ministère de l’Éducation nationale, de l’Enfance et de la Jeunesse
Although French plural spelling has been studied extensively, the complexity of factors affecting the learning of
French plural spelling are not yet fully explained, namely on the level of adjectival and verbal plural. This study investigates
spelling profiles of French plural markers of 228 multilingual grade 5 pupils with French taught as a foreign language.Three analyses on the learner performances of plural spelling in nouns, verbs and pre- and postnominal attributive
adjectives were conducted (1) to detect the pupils’ spelling profiles of plural marking on the basis of the performances in the
pretest, (2) to test the profiles against two psycholinguistic theories, and (3) to evaluate the impact of the training on each
spelling profile in the posttest.The first analysis confirms the existing literature that pupils’ learning of French plural is not random but
ordered and emphasizes the role of the position for adjectives (pre- or postnominal) on correct plural spelling. The second
analysis reveals the theoretical difficulties of predicting spelling of adjectival and verbal plural. The third analysis shows
that strong and poor spellers both benefit from a morphosyntactic training and provides transparency and traceability of the
learning trajectories.Together, the descriptive analyses reveal clear patterns of intra-individual spelling profiles. They point to a
need for further research in those areas that have empirically provided the most inconsistent results to date and that are not
supported by the theories: verbs and adjectives.
Keywords: French, spelling, written plural, silent orthographic marker, syntactic marker, processability theory, cognitive learning based theory
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