The Spelling Skills of French‐Speaking Dyslexic Children

Abstract

Learning to spell is very difficult for dyslexic children, a phenomenon explained by a deficit in processing phonological information. However, to spell correctly in an alphabetic language such as French, phonological knowledge is not enough. Indeed, the French written system requires the speller to acquire visuo-orthographical and morphological knowledge as well. To date, the majority of studies aimed at describing dyslexic children's spelling abilities related to English and reading. The general goal of this study is to describe the spelling performance, from an explanatory perspective, of 26 French-Canadian dyslexic children, aged 9 to 12 years. The specific goals are to describe the spelling performances of these pupils in the context of free production and to compare them with the performances of 26 normally achieving children matched on age (CA) and with those of 29 younger normally achieving children matched on reading age (RA). To do so, errors were classified according to phonological, visuo-orthographical and morphological properties of French written words. The results indicate that the dyslexic group scored lower than the CA group but sometimes also lower than the RA group. The results are discussed according to the types of knowledge required to spell correctly in French.

Spelling in oral deaf and hearing dyslexic children: A comparison of phonologically plausible errors

“…Nearly three quarters of spelling errors for the hearing dyslexic group were phonologically plausible, compared with just over half the errors of the oral deaf group; percentages which are very much in line with previous findings for hearing dyslexic and oral deaf children of this age (Hayes et al, 2011;Plisson et al, 2013). Bearing in mind that our hearing dyslexic group were younger, and that PPE increases with age, it is likely that this is a conservative estimate of the overall differences in spelling strategies.…”

Spelling Errors in French‐speaking Children with Dyslexia: Phonology May Not Provide the Best Evidence

“…In spelling studies, most researchers have agreed that children with dyslexia encounter great difficulties leaning to spell, and that these difficulties are persistent (Plisson, Daigle, & Montésinos‐Gelet, ; Berninger, Nielsen, Abbott, Wijsman, & Raskind, ; Bourassa & Treiman, ; Connelly, Campbell, MacLean, & Barnes, ; Kemp et al, ; Landerl & Wimmer, ; Maughan, Messer, Collishaw, Pickles, Snowling, Yule, & Rutter, ). As in reading research, studies investigating dyslexic learners' spelling have often focused on phonological processing (Bernstein, ; Coleman, Gregg, McLain, & Bellair, ; Moats, ; Curtin, Manis, & Seidenberg, ; Lennox & Siegel, ; Sawyer, Wade, & Jwa, ; Snowling, Goulandris, & Defty, , among other studies).…”

“…Some researchers have explored this avenue (e.g. Plisson et al, ; Bourassa & Treiman, ; Cassar et al, ; Kemp, Parrila and Kirby, ; Protopapas et al, ). For example, Bourassa and Treiman () tested the orthographic plausibility (or legality) of spelling production in subjects with or without dyslexia.…”

Studies on spelling in the context of dyslexia: a literature review

“…Dyslexic children are slower at spelling (sounding out letters) when compared to children with no specific learning disabilities 19,21 . In a study that was performed with French non-dyslexic and dyslexic children 19 , spelling skills were analyzed through dictation of words.…”