Measurement of spelling ability: construction and validation of a phonological, orthographic and morphological pseudo-word instrument for students in Grades 3–6

Daffern, Tessa; Ramful, Ajay

doi:10.1007/s11145-019-09976-1

Cited by 10 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 45 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Results supported this hypothesis. Previous studies using POMAS had found this category to be among the least successful (e.g., Bahr et al, 2012;Llauradó and Tolchinsky, 2016;Daffern and Ramful, 2020). However, we expected a different result based on the fact that, in contrast to most previous research using POMAS, we had distinguished between types of misspellings, reserving this category only for spelling mistakes that involved overlooking orthographic patterns and constraints, while wordspecific strategies were under the "lexical" category.…”

Section: Development Of Non-phonological Spelling Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 73%

“…Nevertheless, in the present study, morphological strategies were one of the hardest to be applied across educational levels and population types. This was a surprising result, especially because we only tested regular inflectional morphology (plural formation and gerunds), which has been reported to be the easiest context for the application of morphological knowledge in spelling (e.g., Llauradó and Tolchinsky, 2016;Daffern and Ramful, 2020). We believe that the differences with past research are essentially methodological.…”

Section: Development Of Non-phonological Spelling Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 86%

“…We expected children to be quite adept at using morpho-graphemic regularities to resolve very common spelling inconsistencies, such as plural or gerund formation. Our expectation was based on (1) the results from other studies using POMAS, which reported morphological errors to be one of the least frequent (e.g., Bahr et al, 2012;Llauradó and Tolchinsky, 2016;Daffern and Ramful, 2020) and 2the fact that children are speakers of a morphologically rich language, which is a key factor in determining their sensitivity to morphological information (e.g., Gillis and Ravid, 2006;Dressler, 2010). Nevertheless, in the present study, morphological strategies were one of the hardest to be applied across educational levels and population types.…”

Section: Development Of Non-phonological Spelling Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Non-phonological Strategies in Spelling Development

Salas

2020

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper investigated the role that types of knowledge beyond phonology have on spelling development, such as knowledge of morpheme-to-grapheme mappings, of orthographic patterns, and of word-specific orthographic patterns. It is based on the modern view that children do not learn spelling in discrete stages but, rather, they apply different types of strategies from early on. The goals of the paper were threefold: (1) to determine the relative difficulty of different types of non-phonological spelling strategies, (2) to examine the contribution of non-phonological strategies (specifically, morphological, morphophonological, orthographic, and lexical) to conventional spelling scores, and (3) to determine the role of children's educational level and population type (first-vs. second-language learners) on spelling strategy use. A large sample of 982 children (497 boys), speakers of Catalan (a Romance language similar to Spanish but with a less consistent orthography), participated in the study. They were administered a bespoke dictation task aimed to test their conventional and phonographic accuracy skill, as well as to determine their ability to use different types of non-phonological strategies for the spelling of ambiguous phonemes. Data were analyzed with a series of multigroup, multilevel SEMs. Results showed that (1) children across groups found morphological and lexical strategies harder to apply than orthographic and morphophonological strategies and (2) all types of non-phonological strategies contributed greatly to spelling accuracy scores, even after controlling for children's phonographic skills. Efficient strategy use increased as a function of schooling level, while second-language learners had a worse performance throughout, but no group showed a specific pattern of results. In conclusion, the paper offers substantial evidence that non-phonological strategies are paramount to learning to spell at least during the early and intermediate elementary school years. It is suggested that the teaching of writing should therefore be multidimensional in nature and target particularly the strategies with which children struggle the most: knowledge of morpho-graphemic mappings and word-specific lexical representations. Theoretical implications are also discussed.

show abstract

Section: Development Of Non-phonological Spelling Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 73%

Section: Development Of Non-phonological Spelling Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 86%

Section: Development Of Non-phonological Spelling Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Non-phonological Strategies in Spelling Development

Salas

2020

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This may be overcome in future studies by developing dictation tasks that provide a broader range of opportunities for spelling error across grades. Recent efforts have been made in this direction in English (see for example the pseudoword spelling task developed by Daffern & Ramful, 2020), but are yet to be replicated in French and other languages.…”

Section: Finding a Fit-for-purpose Spelling Task For Spelling Error A...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There have been a range of different coding systems characterizing spelling attempts in several languages (see Treiman et al, 2019 for a recent review and systematic comparison of some of those). Spelling error coding schemes vary in nature and focus, from the characterization of the phonological or orthographic plausibility/legality or visual similarity of early or atypical spellings (see, for examples, Bishop & Clarkson, 2003;Bruck & Waters, 1988;Masterson & Apel, 2010;Protopapas et al, 2013;Treiman, 1993), to more comprehensive schemes also considering the representation of morphological components in spelling (Apel & Masterson, 2001;Bahr et al, 2012;Daffern & Ramful, 2020;Salas, 2020). Because of the developmental focus of the current study, a comprehensive scheme based on the Triple Word Form theory was chosen, based on the seminal work of Bahr et al (2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spelling Errors in French Elementary School Students: A Linguistic Analysis

Joye

Broc

Marshall

et al. 2022

J Speech Lang Hear Res

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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

show abstract

Phonemic awareness of schoolers test assessment (PASTA): A pseudoword blending task for Italian pupils

Cardis

Fastame

2023

Psychology in the Schools

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Phonemic awareness refers to the ability to reflect on and process the sounds of spoken language and to conduct mental operations on the units that represent them, that is, phonemes. This study intended to examine the descriptive and psychometric properties of the phonemic awareness of schoolers test assessment (PASTA), a new tool that assesses one dimension of phonological awareness, namely the ability to blend pseudowords. A sample of 627 Italian 3rd-5th graders, 314 females and 313 males (M age = 9.3 years, SD = 10.2 months, age range = 7.8-11.4 years) took part in the study. Participants completed a battery of tests assessing verbal intelligence and working memory, reading, writing, word, and pseudoword-blending skills. A satisfactory internal consistency of PASTA (Kudar-Richardson 20 = 0.81) was documented. Moreover, a series of Pearson's correlations revealed adequate concurrent validity of the new test. In addition, an ANOVA showed the positive main effect of education in the PASTA condition (F [2,621) = 11.083, p < .0001, η²p = .03). As expected, 3rdgrade pupils were outperformed by children attending the 4th-and 5th grades. In conclusion, the PASTA is a reliable and valid instrument for the assessment of phonological processing in Italian 3rd to 5th graders of primary school.

show abstract

Measurement of spelling ability: construction and validation of a phonological, orthographic and morphological pseudo-word instrument for students in Grades 3–6

Cited by 10 publications

References 45 publications

Non-phonological Strategies in Spelling Development

Non-phonological Strategies in Spelling Development

Spelling Errors in French Elementary School Students: A Linguistic Analysis

Phonemic awareness of schoolers test assessment (PASTA): A pseudoword blending task for Italian pupils

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About