Beginning to Spell A Study of First-Grade Children

by Treiman, Rebecca

• ISBN13: 9780195062199
• ISBN10: 0195062191
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1992-10-29
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This groundbreaking study on the psycholinguistics of spelling presents the author's original empirical research on spelling and supplies the theoretical framework necessary to understand how children's ability to write is related to their ability to speak a language. The author explores areas in a field dominated by work traditionally concerned with the psychodynamics of reading skills and, in so doing, highlights the importance of learning to spell for both psycholinguists and educators, since as they begin to spell, children attempt to represent the phonological, or sound form, of words. The study of children's spelling can shed light on the nature of phonological systems and can illuminate the way sounds are organized into larger units, such as syllables and words. Research on children's spelling leads directly to an understanding of the way phonological knowledge is acquired and how phonological systems change with the development of reading and writing ability. In addition to this insight concerning cognitive processes, the findings presented here have implications for how spelling should be taught and why some writing systems are easier to master than others. The work will interest a wide range of cognitive and developmental psychologists, psycholinguists, and educational psychologists, as well as linguists and educators interested in psycholinguistics.

Author Biography

Rebecca Treiman is Professor of Psychology at Wayne State University. She received an undergraduate degree in linguistics from Yale University and a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on spoken language, written language, and the relationship between them.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 3
The Study	p. 4
The Sound System of English	p. 11
The Writing System of English	p. 21
Previous Research on Children's Spelling	p. 25
Spelling of Words	p. 39
Correct Spellings	p. 40
Legal Spellings	p. 48
Changes in Correct and Legal Spellings over the School Year	p. 53
Types of Words Attempted	p. 54
Adults' Ability to Interpret Legal Misspellings	p. 55
Summary of Findings	p. 58
Implications	p. 58
Spelling of Phonemes: Correct Spellings, Legal Substitutions, and Illegal Substitutions	p. 67
Correct Spellings	p. 70
Substitution Errors	p. 79
Summary of Findings	p. 86
Comparison with Results of Other Studies	p. 87
Implications	p. 90
Vowels	p. 97
Children's Spellings of Vowel Phonemes	p. 98
Comparison with Results of Other Studies	p. 112
Factors That Affect Children's Spellings of Vowels	p. 115
Implications	p. 122
Consonants	p. 128
Children's Spellings of Consonant Phonemes	p. 128
Comparison with Results of Other Studies	p. 139
Factors That Affect Children's Spellings of Consonants	p. 144
Implications	p. 147
The Influence of Orthography on Children's Spelling of Vowels and Consonants	p. 152
Vowels and Consonants Conventionally Spelled with More Than One Letter	p. 152
Graphemic Alternations	p. 162
Comparison with Results of Other Studies	p. 167
Implications	p. 171
Vowel Omissions	p. 175
Factors Associated with Vowel Omission Errors	p. 177
Factors Not Significantly Associated with Vowel Omission Errors	p. 188
Statistical Analyses	p. 191
Changes from First to Second Semester of the School Year	p. 192
Summary of Results	p. 193
Comparison with Results of Other Studies	p. 193
Implications	p. 196
Consonant Omissions	p. 203
Factors Associated with Consonant Omission Errors	p. 204
Factors Not Significantly Associated with Consonant Omission Errors	p. 225
Statistical Analyses	p. 226
Changes from First to Second Semester of the School Year	p. 228
Summary of Results	p. 228
Comparison of Consonant Omissions and Vowel Omissions	p. 229
Comparison with Results of Other Studies	p. 233
Implications	p. 240
Reversals	p. 246
Factors Associated with Reversals of Adjacent Phonemes	p. 247
Comparison with Results of Other Studies	p. 255
Summary of Results	p. 256
Implications	p. 257
Inflected and Derived Words	p. 259
Children's Spellings of Inflected Words	p. 260
Children's Spellings of Derived Words	p. 271
Comparison with Results of Other Studies	p. 272
Summary and Implications	p. 274
Conclusions and Implications	p. 277
Classification of Spelling Errors	p. 277
Models of the Spelling Process	p. 278
Children's Phonological Systems	p. 281
What Kind of Writing System is Easiest to Learn?	p. 285
The Relation between Spelling and Reading	p. 287
The Teaching of Spelling	p. 288
Appendix I	p. 295
Appendix II	p. 329
Bibliography	p. 337
Glossary	p. 347
Author Index	p. 355
Subject Index	p. 359
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