Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T20:12:37.736Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Transfer effects in spelling from transparent Greek to opaque English in seven-to-ten-year-old children*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2012

GEORGIA Z. NIOLAKI  and
JACKIE MASTERSON
GEORGIA Z. NIOLAKI
Affiliation:
Institute of Education, London
JACKIE MASTERSON*
Affiliation:
Institute of Education, London
*
Address for correspondence: Jackie Masterson, Institute of Education, University of London, 25 Woburn Square, London WC1H 0AL, UK[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The study investigated single-word spelling performance of 33 English- and 38 Greek-speaking monolingual children, and 46 English- and Greek-speaking bilingual children (age range from 6;7 to 10;1 years). The bilingual children were divided into two groups on the basis of their single-word reading and spelling performance in Greek. In line with predictions, we found that scores on an assessment of phonological awareness were a significant predictor of spelling in English for the bilingual children with stronger Greek literacy skill. Phonological awareness scores were also a strong predictor of spelling in Greek in the monolingual Greek-speaking children. For the bilingual children with weaker Greek literacy ability, spelling in English was predicted by performance in a test of visual memory. This was more in line with results for the monolingual English-speaking children, for whom spelling performance was predicted by visual memory and phonological awareness scores. Qualitative analysis of misspellings revealed that phonologically appropriate errors were significantly greater in the strong Greek literacy ability bilingual group than the weaker Greek literacy ability bilingual group. Stimulus analyses using regression techniques are also reported. The results are interpreted to suggest that in biliterates literacy processes are transferred from one language to the other (Mumtaz & Humphreys, 2002).

Keywords

Greek spellingEnglish spellingintra- and cross-linguistic factors
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , October 2012 , pp. 757 - 770
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

The research was supported by a Central Research Fund Grant, the Institute of Education, European Scholarship, the Onasis Foundation and the Wingate Scholarship awarded to the first author. The authors are grateful to the teachers, staff, parents and children of participating schools in London, Greece and Cyprus. They are also grateful to Maria Christou and Angeliki Kaloudi for their help in data collection, and to three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier versions of the paper.

References

Abu-Rabia, S., & Siegel, L. S. (2002). Reading, syntactic, orthographic, and working memory skills of bilingual Arabic–English speaking Canadian children. Journal of Psycholinguistic, 31 (6), 661–678.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bergmann, J., & Wimmer, H. (2008). A dual-route perspective on poor reading in a regular orthography: Evidence from phonological and orthographic lexical decision. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 25 (5), 653–676.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berninger, V., Abbott, R. D., Abbott, S. P., Graham, S., & Richards, T. (2002). Writing and reading connections between language by hand and language by eye. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 35 (1), 39–56.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Caravolas, M., Bruck, M., & Genesse, F. (2003). Similarities and differences between English- and French-speaking poor spellers. In Gouladris, N. (eds.), Dyslexia in different languages, cross-linguistic comparison, pp. 157–181. London: Whurr Publishers.Google Scholar
Caravolas, M., Hulme, C., & Snowling, M. (2001). The foundations of spelling ability: Evidence from a 3-year longitudinal study. Journal of Memory and Language, 45, 751–774.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caravolas, M., Kessler, B., Hulme, C., & Snowling, M. J. (2005). Effects of orthographic consistency, frequency, and letter knowledge on children's vowel spelling development. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 92, 307–321.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Caravolas, M., Volin, J., & Hulme, C. (2005). Phoneme awareness is a key component of alphabetic literacy skills in consistent and inconsistent orthographies: Evidence from Czech and English children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 92, 107–139.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
CiLT [The National Centre for Languages] (2005). Language trends 2005. Community language learning in England, Wales and Scotland: Key findings from a survey of local authorities, mainstream and complementary schools. London: CiLT. http://www.wmro.org/displayResource.aspx/6830/Language_trends_2005_Community_language_learning_in_England_Wales_and_Scotland_Key_findings_from_a_s.html (retrieved March 18, 2008).Google Scholar
Cummins, J. (2000). Language, power and pedagogy: Bilingual children in the crossfire. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Da Fortuna, H. A., & Siegel, L. S. (1995). Reading, syntactic, and working memory skills of bilingual Portuguese–English Canadian children. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 7, 139–153.Google Scholar
DfES [Department for Education and Skills] (2008). Statistical first release: Pupil characteristics and class sizes in maintained schools in England (provisional). www.dfes.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000786/SFR_09_2008.pdf (retrieved March 16, 2008).Google Scholar
Durgunoglu, A. Y., Nagy, W. E., & Hancin-Bhatt, B. J. (1993). Cross-language transfer of phonological awareness. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85 (3), 453–465.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ehri, L. C., Nunes, S., Willows, D. M., Schuster, B. V., Yaghoub-Zadeh, Z., & Shanahan, T. (2001). Phonemic awareness instruction helps children learn to read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel's meta-analysis. Reading Research Quarterly, 36 (3), 250–287.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, N. C. (2005). Introduction to part I: Acquisition. In Kroll, J. F., & De Groot, A. M. B. (eds.), Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches, pp. 3–9. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Figueredo, L. (2006). Using the known to chart the unknown: A review of first language influence on the development of English-as-a-second-language spelling skill. Reading and Writing, 19, 873–905.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frith, U. (1985). Beneath the surface of developmental dyslexia. In Patterson, K. E., Marshall, J. C. & Coltheart, M. (eds.), Surface dyslexia, pp. 301–330. London: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Giles, D. C., & Terrell, C. D. (1997). Visual sequential memory and spelling ability. Educational Psychology, 17 (3), 245–253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goswami, U., Porpodas, C., & Wheelwright, S. (1997). Children's orthographic representations in English and Greek. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 12 (3), 273–292.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goswami, U., Ziegler, J. C., & Richardson, U. (2005). The effects of spelling consistency on phonological awareness: A comparison of English and German. Journal Experimental Child Psychology, 92, 345–365.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Graham, S., Berninger, V. W., Abbott, R. D., Abbott, S. P., & Whitaker, D. (1997). The role of mechanics in composing of elementary school students: A new methodological approach. Journal of Educational Psychology, 89 (1), 170–182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, M., & Giannouli, V. (1999). Learning to read and spell in Greek: The importance of letter knowledge and morphological awareness. In Harris, M. & Hatano, G. (eds.), Learning to read and write: A cross-linguistic perspective, pp. 51–69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Holm, A., & Dodd, B. (1996). The effect of first written language on the acquisition of English literacy. Cognition, 59, 119–147.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Howard, E. R., Artteagoitia, I., Louguit, M., Malabonga, V., & Kenyon, D. M. (2006). The development of the English developmental contrastive spelling test: A tool for investigating Spanish Influence on English spelling development. TESOL Quarterly, 40 (2), 399–420.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koda, K. (2005). Insights into second language reading: A cross-linguistic approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koda, K. (2008). Impacts on prior literacy experience on second-language learning to read. In Koda, K. & Zehler, A. M. (eds.), Learning to read across languages, pp. 68–92. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liow, S. J. R., & Lau, L. H.-S. (2006). The development of bilingual children's early spelling in English. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98 (4), 868–878.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loizidou-Ieridou, N., Masterson, J., & Hanley, J. R. (2009). Spelling development in 6–11-year-old Greek-speaking Cypriot children. Journal of Research in Reading, 33 (3), 247–262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loizou, M., & Stuart, M. (2003). Phonological awareness in monolingual and bilingual English and Greek five-year-olds. Journal of Research in Reading, 26 (1), 3–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Masterson, J., Colombo, L., Spencer, K., Ftika, K., & Syntili, A. (2008). Factors affecting spelling of English- and Greek-speaking Grade 1 and 2 children. Presented at the 1st Writing Systems Conference, Institute of Education, London.Google Scholar
Masterson, J., Stuart, M., Dixon, M., & Lovejoy, S. (2003). Children's printed word database (CPWD). www.essex.ac.uk/psychology/cpwd/ (retrieved March 16, 2009).Google Scholar
McCutchen, D. (1996). A capacity theory of writing: Working memory in composition. Educational Psychology Review, 8 (3), 299–325.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mumtaz, S., & Humphreys, G. W. (2001). The effects of bilingualism on learning to read English: Evidence from the contrast between Urdu–English bilingual and English monolingual children. Journal of Research in Reading, 24 (2), 113–134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mumtaz, S., & Humphreys, G. W. (2002). The effect of Urdu vocabulary size on the acquisition of word reading in English. Educational Psychology, 22 (2), 165–190.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Naglieri, J. A. (1985). Matrix Analogies Test (short form) (MAT–SF). San Antonio, TX: The Psychological Corporation.Google Scholar
Nikolopoulos, D., Goulandris, N., Hulme, C., & Snowling, M. J. (2006). The cognitive bases of learning to read and spell in Greek: Evidence from a longitudinal study. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 94, 1–17.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nikolopoulos, D., Goulandris, N., & Snowling, M. J. (2003). Developmental dyslexia in Greek. In Goulandris, N. (ed.), Dyslexia in different languages cross-linguistic comparisons, pp. 68–92. London: Whurr Publishers.Google Scholar
Nunes, T., Aidinis, A., & Bryant, P. E. (2006). The acquisition of written morphology in Greek. In Malatesha, A. Joshi & Aaron, P. G. (eds.), Handbook of orthography and literacy, pp. 201–219. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Pae, H. K., Sevcik, R., & Morris, R. (2010). Cross-language correlates in phonological awareness and naming speed: Evidence from deep and shallow orthographies. Journal of Research in Reading, 33 (4), 374–391.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paraskevopoulos, I. N., Kalantzi-Azizi, A., & Giannitsas, N. D. (1999). Αθηνά τεστ διάγνωσης δυσκολιών μάθησης [Athena Test: Diagnosis of reading difficulties]. Athens: Ellinika Grammata.Google Scholar
Perfetti, C. A., Liu, Y., Fiez, J., Nelson, J., Bolger, D. J., & Tan, L-H. (2007). Reading in two writing systems: Accommodation and assimilation of the brain's reading network. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10 (2), 131–146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perry, C., Ziegler, J. C., & Coltheart, M. (2002). How predictable is spelling? Development and testing metrics of phoneme–grapheme contingency. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A, 55 (3), 897–915.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Porpodas, C. P. (1991). The relations between phonemic awareness and reading and spelling of Greek words in the first school years. In Carretero, M., Rope, M., Simons, R. J. & Pozo, J. (eds.), Learning and instruction: European research in an international context (vol. 3), pp. 203–217. Oxford: Pergamon.Google Scholar
Porpodas, C. P. (1999). Patterns of phonological and memory processing in beginning readers and spellers of Greek. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 32 (5), 406–416.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Seymour, P. H. K., Aro, M., & Erskine, J. M. (2003). Foundation literacy acquisition in European orthographies. British Journal of Psychology, 94, 143–174.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Spencer, K. (2007). Predicting children's word-spelling difficulty for common English words from measures of orthographic transparency, phonemic and graphemic length and word frequency. British Journal of Psychology, 98, 305–338.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Spencer, K., & Hanley, R. J. (2003). Effects of orthographic transparency on reading and phoneme awareness in children learning to read in Wales. British Journal of Psychology, 94, 1–28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Spencer, K., Loizidou, N., & Masterson, J. (2010). Feed-forward, -backward, and neutral transparency measures for Grade 1 and Grade 2 Greek readers. Behavioral Research Methods, 42 (1), 96–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stuart, M. (2004). Getting ready for reading: A follow-up study of inner city second language learners at the end of Key Stage I. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 74 (1), 15–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stuart, M., Dixon, M., Masterson, J., & Gray, B. (2003). Children's early reading vocabulary: Description and word frequency lists. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 73, 585–598.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stuart, M., & Masterson, J. (1992). Patterns of reading and spelling in 10-year-old children related to pre-reading phonological abilities. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 54, 168–187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stuart, M., Masterson, J., & Dixon, M. (2000). Spongelike acquisition of sight vocabulary in beginning readers? Journal of Research in Reading, 23 (1), 12–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sun-Alperin, K., & Wang, M. (2011). Cross-language transfer of phonological and orthographic processing skills in Spanish-speaking children learning to read and spell in English. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 24 (5), 591–614.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Treiman, R. (1993). Beginning to spell. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Treiman, R., Mullennix, J., Bijeljac-Babic, R., & Richmond-Welty, E. D. (1995). The special role of rimes in the description, use, and acquisition of English orthography. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 124 (2), 107–136.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vousden, J. I. (2008). Units of English spelling-to-sound mapping: A rational approach to reading instruction. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 22, 247–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wagner, R., Torgesen, J. K., & Rashotte, C. A. (1999). Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP). Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.Google Scholar
Wang, M., Koda, K., & Perfetti, C. A. (2003). Alphabetic and non-alphabetic L1 effects in English word identification: A comparison of Korean and Chinese English L2 learners. Cognition, 87, 129–149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Xuereb, R. (2009). Literacy skills in Maltese–English bilingual children. Journal of Research in Reading, 32 (3), 327–248.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ziegler, J. C., & Goswami, U. (2005). Reading acquisition, developmental dyslexia, and skilled reading across languages: A psycholinguistic grain size theory. Psychological Bulletin, 131, 3–29.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ziegler, J. C., & Goswami, U. (2006). Becoming literate in different languages: Similar problems, different solutions. Developmental Science, 9, 429–436.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zoccolotti, P., De Luca, M., Di Filippo, G., & Martelli, M. (2009). Reading development in an orthographically regular language: Effects of length, frequency, lexicality and global processing ability. Reading and Writing, 22, 1053–1079.CrossRefGoogle Scholar