UCL Discovery
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery

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

Joye, N; Dockrell, JE; Marshall, CR; (2020) The Spelling Errors of French and English Children With Developmental Language Disorder at the End of Primary School. Frontiers in Psychology , 11 , Article 1789. 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01789. Green open access

[thumbnail of Dockrell_The Spelling Errors of French and English Children With Developmental Language Disorder at the End of Primary School_VoR.pdf]
Preview
Text
Dockrell_The Spelling Errors of French and English Children With Developmental Language Disorder at the End of Primary School_VoR.pdf - Published Version

Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

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.

Type: Article
Title: The Spelling Errors of French and English Children With Developmental Language Disorder at the End of Primary School
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01789
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01789
Language: English
Additional information: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Psychology and Human Development
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10110052
Downloads since deposit
64Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item