The Impact of Orthography on Text Production in Three Languages: Catalan, English, and Spanish

Impact of school SES on literacy development

Effective literacy skills are essential to actively participate in today's society. However, little research has been conducted that examined the impact of contextual variables on literacy development. The present paper addressed whether and how the socioeconomic status of the school (S-SES) children attend affects their literacy achievements. Eight-hundred and seventy-eight 2nd and 4th grade children participated in the study. Data were collected in low-SES (vulnerable) and in mid-high-SES (non-vulnerable) schools. Children completed a large battery of language, cognitive, and literacy tasks in Catalan, a language spoken in a region in Spain where virtually all children are at least bilingual (they also speak Spanish) and it is the main language of instruction. Results showed that children in vulnerable schools were outperformed by children in non-vulnerable schools across all literacy competencies, but particularly affected higher order skills; that is, text quality and reading comprehension. Differences with their non-vulnerable peers remained, even after controlling for context-level covariates, including familial SES. However, S-SES ceased to exert significant influence once children's cognitive and, especially, linguistic skills were considered. The study adds to previous research claiming that school SES has an effect on students' literacy skills, above and beyond children's home SES. However, our findings also suggest that literacy performance is ultimately mostly dependent on educationally actionable, subject-level skills. Educational implications are discussed.

Spelling Errors in French Elementary School Students: A Linguistic Analysis

PURPOSE

This study offers the first description of misspellings across elementary school using the Phonological, Orthographic and Morphological Assessment of Spelling (POMAS), a linguistic framework based on Triple Word Form theory, adapted for French (POMAS-FR). It aims to test the "universality" of POMAS and its suitability to track development in French spelling.

METHOD

One hundred ninety-four typically developing French children (Grades 1-5) produced a written narrative and words-to-dictation. These were analyzed for productivity and accuracy. Misspellings were then analyzed using POMAS-FR.

RESULTS

Productivity and accuracy were better in the later grades. POMAS-FR provided a novel framework for tracking error types in our French sample. The data showed a linear trend for text production, whereby the proportion of phonological errors decreased rapidly in the early grades, while orthographic errors decreased and morphological errors increased throughout elementary school. Words-to-dictation showed a more stable pattern, with a steady decrease in phonological errors, and a stable proportion of orthographic and morphological errors. The specific error types found within each linguistic category are described for both tasks.

CONCLUSIONS

The POMAS-FR allowed for the characterization of linguistic knowledge involved in learning to spell French across elementary school. Interplays between different types of linguistic knowledge were evident at all grades. In comparison with other writing systems, French text spelling competence relied heavily on morphological knowledge. These results suggest POMAS may be applied to other orthographic systems. It also highlights the importance of task and word selection for the qualitative evaluation of spelling.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.20520774.

The Contribution of Word-, Sentence-, and Discourse-Level Abilities on Writing Performance: A 3-Year Longitudinal Study

Writing is a foundational skill throughout school grades. This study analyzed the development of different levels of written language (word, sentence, and discourse) and explored the relationship between these levels and writing performance. About 95 Portuguese students from two cohorts-Grades 4-7 (n = 47) 6-9 (n = 48)-were asked to produce a descriptive text two times, with a 3-year interval. The produced texts were used to assess spelling, syntactic correctness and complexity, and descriptive discourse as well as text length and quality. The main results showed that there were improvements from Grades 4 to 7 and 6 to 9 in word- and sentence-level skills, along with increases in some dimensions of the descriptive discourse. Moreover, the older cohort performed better than the younger cohort in terms of spelling, syntactic complexity, and text quality, but not in terms of syntactic correctness, one dimension of the descriptive discourse, and text length. Regression analyses showed that writing performance was predicted by word and sentence levels in the younger cohort only, and by discourse-level variables in both cohorts. Overall, despite indicating a generalized growth in writing skills throughout schooling, this study also highlighted the areas that may need additional attention from teachers, mainly in terms of the descriptive features.

Validation of the Writing Strategies Questionnaire in the Context of Primary Education: A Multidimensional Measurement Model

Research has shown that writers seem to follow different writing strategies to juggle the high cognitive demands of writing. The use of writing strategies seems to be an important cognitive writing-related variable which has an influence on students' writing behavior during writing and, therefore, on the quality of their compositions. Several studies have tried to assess students' writing preferences toward the use of different writing strategies in University or high-school students, while research in primary education is practically non-existent. The present study, therefore, focused on the validation of the Spanish Writing Strategies Questionnaire (WSQ-SP), aimed to measure upper-primary students' preference for the use of different writing strategies, through a multidimensional model. The sample comprised 651 Spanish upper-primary students. Questionnaire data was explored by means of exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory (CFA) factor analysis. Through exploratory factor analysis four factors were identified, labeled thinking, planning, revising, and monitoring, which represent different writing strategies. The confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the adequacy of the four-factor model, with a sustainable model composed of the four factors originally identified. Based on the analysis, the final questionnaire was composed of 16 items. According to the results, the Spanish version of the Writing Strategies Questionnaire (WSQ-SP) for upper-primary students has been shown to be a valid and reliable instrument, which can be easily applied in the educational context to explore upper-primary students' writing strategies.

The Spelling Errors of French and English Children With Developmental Language Disorder at the End of Primary School

Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) often struggle learning to spell. However, it is still unclear where their spelling difficulties lie, and whether they reflect on-going difficulties with specific linguistic domains. It is also unclear whether the spelling profiles of these children vary in different orthographies. The present study compares the spelling profiles of monolingual children with DLD in France and England at the end of primary school. By contrasting these cohorts, we explored the linguistic constraints that affect spelling, beyond phono-graphemic transparency, in two opaque orthographies. Seventeen French and 17 English children with DLD were compared to typically developing children matched for age or spelling level. Participants wrote a 5 min sample of free writing and spelled 12 controlled dictated words. Spelling errors were analyzed to capture areas of difficulty in each language, in the phonological, morphological, orthographic and semantic domains. Overall, the nature of the errors produced by children with DLD is representative of their spelling level in both languages. However, areas of difficulty vary with the language and task, with more morphological errors in French than in English across both tasks and more orthographic errors in English than in French dictated words. The error types produced by children with DLD also differed in the two languages: segmentation and contraction errors were found in French, whilst morphological ending errors were found in English. It is hypothesized that these differences reflect the phonological salience of the units misspelled in both languages. The present study also provides a detailed breakdown of the spelling errors found in both languages for children with DLD and typical peers aged 5–11.