Icelandic children's spelling development in first to fourth grade

Þróun stafsetningar í textaritun barna í 1.-4. bekk

Abstract

Spelling is an important part of writing development. To become skilled writers, children must learn how to spell words correctly. In alphabetical languages, spelling relies mostly on the phonology of words and words can be sounded out to discover how to spell them. However, spelling does not only rely on phonology but also follows writing conventions and spelling rules. These rules can rely on older pronunciations in the language, be related to etymology or grammar. Some of them are easy to learn but others are more complicated and harder to acquire.

Languages differ in the complexity of their spelling systems. Some languages have a shallow (transparent) orthography, also called phonemic orthography. They have a one-to-one relationship between letters and phonemes. Other languages have a deep (opaque) orthography, where the relationship between sounds and letters is more complicated. They do not have a one-to-one correspondence between sounds and letters and their spelling also generally relies on morphology. Icelandic has a medium-shallow orthography, which might make it easier to learn to spell Icelandic correctly than for example English which has a much deeper orthography. However, spelling in Icelandic is also based on writing conventions and spelling rules that children must learn to spell correctly. Some of these rules rely on older pronunciations in Icelandic and others lean on grammar or morphology.

Until now, very few studies have focused on the development of spelling among Icelandic children. Thus, we have little knowledge about how it develops or what they find easy to learn and what is more difficult to learn. The purpose of this longitudinal study was to examine the development of spelling among Icelandic children in grades 1.–4. Two cohorts of children were observed, one with 42 children in grade 1, 2 and 4 and another with 45 children in grade 2, 3 and 4. Each year the children wrote two texts, a narrative, and an information text. Spelling errors in their texts were analysed and classified as phonological errors, phonetically plausible errors or errors that can be attributed to the fact that the writers do not know spelling conventions or rules.

The results show that the number of errors steadily decreases with increasing age and longer schooling of the children. In first grade, on average 34% of words in the texts were misspelled, 23% in second grade, 16% in third grade, and 12% in fourth grade. In all grades children make all types of errors. However, with increasing age phonological and phonetically plausible errors decrease rapidly, while errors that have to do with writing convention and spelling rules are almost as common in all grades. Nevertheless, progress could be seen in those errors as well. In the younger grades almost all spelling errors were caused by the children not using spelling rules. In the older grades, some errors occurred because the children used a spelling rule where it did not apply.

At the end of the youngest stage in elementary school, children correctly write words written according to their pronunciation, which indicates that they have mastered phonics and letter-sound correspondence and rely on it when they write. They have also learned the most common writing conventions and spelling rules in Icelandic and use this knowledge in their writing, but sometimes they forget the rules or use them inappropriately and consequently misspell. This suggests that they do not understand the rule well enough to be able to use it where appropriate and not elsewhere, which is a reminder that it is not enough to learn the rules to be able to apply them, it is also necessary to understand the points on which the rules are based. Spelling lessons must, therefore, follow lessons in other aspects of Icelandic, keeping in mind what understanding the children have gained about the structure of the language and grammar.