[xmca] New issue in L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature: Invented Spelling in Varied Contexts

From: Peter Smagorinsky <smago who-is-at uga.edu>
Date: Thu Oct 18 2007 - 09:47:58 PDT

Dear L1- friends,

 

Due to the work of Dr Jacques Fijalkow, acting as a guest editor of this
issue, we are proud to announce an issue on Invented Spelling in various
linguistic contexts. Abstract are included in the body of this message, and
as attachment. Links provide you with direct access to to articles.

 

Kind regards,

 

On behalf of the Editorial team of L1,

 

Gert

 

 

New issue in L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature
With abstracts in Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek,
Portuguese, and Polish

Invented Spelling in Varied Contexts

A special issue guest edited
by Jacques Fijalkow (France)

Click for whole issue:

 
<http://l1.publication-archive.com/public?fn=lookup&repository=1&string=vol%
207%2c%20issue%203> vol 7, issue 3,
L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature

 

 

 

Contents

links to articles

 
<http://l1.publication-archive.com/public?fn=enter&repository=1&article=275>
Fijalkow, J. (2007). Invented spelling in various contexts: Introduction.

 
<http://l1.publication-archive.com/public?fn=enter&repository=1&article=275>
L1 - Educational Studies in Language and Literature, 7(3), p. 1-4

 

Researchers working on acquisition of written language by children are
traditionally more interested in reading than in writing even if, today,
spelling and writing have become common subjects of research and the themes
of academic conferences. A country as large as Japan, as
<http://l1.publication-archive.com/public?fn=enter&repository=1&article=265>
Tsukada says (in this issue), is just beginning to consider writing as an
object of investigation, even though reading is a classic concern in his
country. One of the most heuristic research methodologies in spelling is
"invented spelling". It is a very simple situation in which a child - most
often 4 or 5 years old - is asked to spell words or sentences that s/he has
never been taught. These written productions are very meaningful in the eyes
of a researcher.

 

 
<http://l1.publication-archive.com/public?fn=enter&repository=1&article=265>
Tsukada,Y. (2007). A study of invented spelling and developing orthographic
concepts in Japanese. L1 - Educational Studies in Language and Literature,
7(3), p. 5-29

This study examines the developmental stages of spelling ability focusing on
the learning process of the Japanese orthographic system for native speakers
of Japanese. After first providing a basic explanation of the Japanese
orthographic system, issues regarding the acquisition of Japanese spelling
are discussed. Next, in order to clarify the acquisition of writing skills
in the introductory stage of Japanese spelling, data from prior case studies
and this investigation are examined. From these results, a new proposal for
developmental stages of orthographic concepts is suggested. This study also
examines strategies of invented spelling and the relationship between
developmental stages and learning ages. Children had learned a considerable
amount of hiragana spelling before entering first grade, and by the end of
first grade (late March) had reached the point where they were mostly able
to write phrases in both hiragana and katakana.

The developmental stages were as follows:

Stage1: Hiragana spelling not yet acquired

Stage2: Hiragana spelling acquisition (unvoiced, voiced, semi-voiced)

Stage3: Hiragana spelling acquisition (special syllable markers)

Stage4: Katakana spelling acquisition (unvoiced, voiced, semi-voiced)

Stage5: Katakana spelling acquisition (special syllable markers)

Stage6: Combined usage of hiragana and katakana acquisition

Stage7: Kanji spelling not yet acquired(includes kanji learning stages).

 

 
<http://l1.publication-archive.com/public?fn=enter&repository=1&article=266>
Tantaros, S. (2007). Invented spelling in the Greek context. L1 -
Educational Studies in Language and Literature, 7(3), p. 31-62.

This paper attempts to present an overview of studies that have been
conducted in Greece during recent years on the subject of emergent literacy
and, more precisely, on preschoolers' acquisition of writing. Its aim is to
present the studies focusing on the subject from an "invented spelling"
perspective and to discuss the results obtained. Results seem to be in
accordance with the results obtained by similar studies in other countries
and in different languages, thus supporting the idea of the existence of a
universal character to the ways preschool children conceptualise writing.

 

 
<http://l1.publication-archive.com/public?fn=enter&repository=1&article=267>
Vieira de Figueiredo, R. (2007). Interpreting writing of children with
intellectual disabilities: A comparative study. L1 - Educational Studies in
Language and Literature, 7(3), p. 63-79.

This article reports the results of developmental test analyses on literacy
conducted with children with intellectual disabilities in Quebec and Brazil.
Grounded on studies carried out in Argentina by Ferreiro and Teberosky
(1986), with children without intellectual disabilities, we deal,
comparatively, with three aspects in the development of literacy in children
with intellectual disabilities: their interpretation of fragments of
writing, the connection they establish between letters and numbers, and
their knowledge of letters. The level of intellectual disability just as the
stimulation to reading are taken into account in the analysis of data
related to the three aspects previously mentioned. Children with
intellectual disabilities develop, in many aspects, similarly to the
children without intellectual disabilities during emergent literacy.
Nevertheless, they are less consistent in the use of writing classifying
criteria, as well as in their discriminating letters from numbers. Although,
the level of intellectual disability influenced the children's progress
greatly, the acquisition of the knowledge of letters differed mostly in
accordance to the level of stimulation to reading.

 

 
<http://l1.publication-archive.com/public?fn=enter&repository=1&article=268>
Pelletier,J., & Lasenby, J. (2007). Early writing development in L1 English
speaking children. L1 - Educational Studies in Language and Literature,
7(3), p. 81-107.

This paper reports on the developmental and psychometric properties of an
early writing task. The study was carried out over four years in Toronto,
Canada with L1 English-speaking children. Two cohorts of children who began
in Nursery School were followed to the end of their Grade 1 year. Children
were administered the same writing task at four time points along with
standardized measures of early reading. The early writing task required
children to write words and number and word combinations; we examined how
children move from understanding print as "objects" to understanding print
as representation of sounds. We also examined how writing in Nursery School
and Kindergarten related to later literacy skills. The methodology allowed
us to examine the extent to which early writing in Nursery School (3 years
old) and Junior Kindergarten (4 years old) predicted later literacy skills
when children were in Grade 1 (6 years old) and were receiving formal
reading instruction. Results show characteristic features of children's
early writing of number and word combinations at each of the four grade
levels and show that performance on the writing task in Kindergarten
predicted reading skills at the end of Grade 1.

 

 
<http://l1.publication-archive.com/public?fn=enter&repository=1&article=269>
Vaca Uribe, J. (2007). Invented Spanish spelling: Stress and intonation. L1
- Educational Studies in Language and Literature, 7(3), p. 109-123

When children learn to write, they must ask themselves two basic questions:
what part of the language is represented and how is it represented. Their
answers are the source of their invented writings. This article reports data
from interviews of Mexican Spanish-speaking children between the ages of 5
and 12 and analyses the child's point of view about the necessity or the
possibility of representing stress and some intonational oppositions. Both
processes present undifferentiated writings which reveal that for children,
at a given evolutionary stage, contrasts in stress and intonation are not
retained in writing (which can be considered as an invented "non-writing").
Likewise, there are invented writings that show original ideas about what
and how to represent in writing the linguistic contrasts proposed for their
reflection; finally, quasi-conventional or conventional writings appear.
Reflections on the universality of learning, problems with comparing graphic
systems and their respective acquisition processes are also discussed, as
serious consideration should be given to the concept that written languages
are mixed and linked systems and not monolithic systems.

 

 
<http://l1.publication-archive.com/public?fn=enter&repository=1&article=270>
Pellicer, A. (2007). Invented orthography. The role of Maya speaking
children in bilingual elementary education. L1 - Educational Studies in
Language and Literature , 7(3), p.125-145.

This article addresses the conceptualizations of written language held by
Mayan children who attend bilingual elementary school. The article's attempt
to show the results of psycholinguistic research carried out with Mayan
children follows the conviction that school-age Maya speakers play an
important role in generating knowledge of literacy proposals in the context
of bilingual education. By being in contact with two languages (the native
language and Spanish), the Mayan children make precise linguistic
reflections on Spanish that allow them to infer principles of the graphic
and orthographic system of their own language. This article explains those
reflections.

 

 
<http://l1.publication-archive.com/public?fn=enter&repository=1&article=272>
Martins Alves, M. (2007). Literacy practises in kindergartens and
conceptualisations about written language among Portuguese preschool
children. L1 - Educational Studies in Language and Literature , 7(3), p.
147-171.

 

Our aim was to characterise the relationships between literacy practises
developed in Portuguese kindergartens and children's conceptualisations
about the functions and nature of written language.

The participants were 16 kindergarten teachers and 160 five-year-old
children - i.e. a 1:10 teacher/child ratio. We developed an observation grid
to characterise their literacy practises. It covers two main aspects of the
teachers' work: reading, writing and metalinguistic practises (14 items) and
ways of supporting children's attempts to read and write (16 items). It was
used by two observers who spent two weeks in the kindergartens. The
kindergarten teachers were divided into three groups depending on their
literacy practises. In order to characterise the children's
conceptualisations about written language, in October and May we assessed
both their perceptions of the objectives and functions of written language
and their invented spelling. The results show that there are close
relationships between literacy practises pursued by the three groups of
kindergarten teachers and the children's conceptualisations about written
language.

 

 
<http://l1.publication-archive.com/public?fn=enter&repository=1&article=273>
Morin, M.F-. (2007). Linguistic factors and invented spelling in children:
The case of French beginners in children. L1 - Educational Studies in
Language and Literature , 7(3), p. 173-189.

Most studies in the field of first writing experiences in kindergarten have
focused on the behaviour of young English-language writers (Treiman &
Bourassa, 2000). By considering increasingly acknowledged linguistic factors
in spelling development (Seymour, Aro & Erskine, 2003), the present study
seeks to contribute to existing studies of young French-language children in
Europe by examining the case of young French-Canadian writers (North
America). Drawing on 202 kindergarten children, this study seeks to provide
a better understanding of the impact of linguistic characteristics on the
production of graphemes in an invented spelling task involving the writing
of six words. Firstly, it analyzes the "word" effect on the participants'
capacity to produce the appropriate graphemes to represent the phonological
information of words (exhaustiveness of the graphemes). Secondly, there is
an analysis of unconventional graphemes in order to identify the causes of
the deviation from the expected norm. Generally speaking, the findings
support the relevance of taking into account the particularities of written
French in the spelling development of young French-language children as well
as the constructivist view that deviations from the norm are often
indicative of difficulties arising from the nature of the writing system to
be learned.

 

 
<http://l1.publication-archive.com/public?fn=enter&repository=1&article=274>
Pasa, L., & Morin, M.-F. (2007). Beginning spelling and literacy approaches:
A comparative study between French and Québécois first-grade classes. L1 -
Educational Studies in Language and Literature , 7(3), p. 191-209.

Many studies note the difficulties experienced by young children in learning
deep writing systems (such as English and French) compared to those for
which the link between the spoken and the written is shallower (e.g.,
Spanish and Italian). A large percentage of these studies are focused on
English. As such, more research needs to be conducted with other first
languages such as French. The present exploratory study seeks to understand
the effects of these kinds of linguistic variable, along with the impact
(which has received little attention) of instructional factors, on the
competencies of first-grade, French-language writers. Two kinds of
instructional context are examined (integrated approach vs code-oriented
approach) in two countries (France and Quebec, Canada). The main findings
for invented spelling situations within an integrated-approach framework
reveal that French and Quebec pupils construct a more complete view of the
writing system. This construction includes both units involving the
transcription of phonemes by phonograms and units involving the treatment of
inaudible, semiographic information by morphograms.

Mother Education in specific Regions

 
<http://l1.publication-archive.com/public?fn=enter&repository=1&article=276>
Pamfil, A. The paradigms of Romanian language and literature curricula in
the second half of the 19th century and the 20th century. L1 - Educational
Studies in Language and Literature, 7(3), p. 211-221.

This article is the synthesis of research focused on the history of the
Romanian mother tongue language and literature curricula of the second half
of the 19th century and the 20th century[1][1]. The curricula I analyzed
comprise a history with complex syncopated rhythms, periods of
re-constitution and re-crystallization alternating with periods of
deconstruction and repression. The changes of rhythm are the result of the
dialogue between the institutional policies of the Ministry of Education and
the language, literature and education sciences. This dialogue was a
positive and constructive one in the periods of socio-cultural and economic
evolution of the country and absent or extremely tense during the communist
period. The article presents a history of the curricular projects for the
study of the Romanian mother tongue language and literature[2][2] by middle
and secondary school pupils[3][3]

 

  _____

 

Gert Rijlaarsdam

 

  _____

 <http://www.ilo.uva.nl/> Graduate School of Teaching and Learning (GSTL),
University of Amsterdam

Spinozastraat 55, 1018 HJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

T + 31 20 5251288

F + 31 20 5251290

E G.C.W.Rijlaarsdam@uva.nl

W Company <http://www.ilo.uva.nl/> www.ilo.uva.nl

W Personal www.ilo.uva.nl/projecten/Gert

W Interntational Association for the Improvement of Mother Tongue
Education IAIMTE <http://www.ilo.uva.nl/Projecten/Gert/iaimte/default.html>

W Research group <http://www.ilo.uva.nl/Projecten/Gert/taal/default.htm>
Language & Literature Education Research

W International Journal L1-Educational
<http://www.ilo.uva.nl/projecten/Gert/L1EducationResearch/index.htm>
Studies in Language and Literature

  _____

 

  _____

[1][1] The research, financed by the National Council for Scientific
Research, was conducted between 2002-2004. It is the first systematic study
of this field in Romania and appeared as a book - Pamfil A., Tămăian I.,
2005, The Study of the Romanian Language and Literature; Didactic Paradigms
(Studiul limbii și literaturii române; paradigme didactice), Casa Cărții de
Știință, Cluj-Napoca.

[2][2] The Romanian mother-tongue language and literature curricula refer to
reading, grammar, oral and written communication in the syllabi for middle
school and language and literature in the ones for the secondary school.

[3][3] The ages of middle school pupils are between 11 - 14/15 and the ages
of secondary school pupils are 14/15 - 18/19.

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Received on Thu Oct 18 09:52 PDT 2007

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