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Mastering inflectional suffixes: a longitudinal study of beginning writers' spellings*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 August 2010

KATHRYN TURNBULL ,
S. HÉLÈNE DEACON  and
ELIZABETH KAY-RAINING BIRD
KATHRYN TURNBULL
Affiliation:
University of Western Ontario
S. HÉLÈNE DEACON*
Affiliation:
Dalhousie University
ELIZABETH KAY-RAINING BIRD
Affiliation:
Dalhousie University
*
[*]Address for correspondence: Hélène Deacon, Psychology Department, Dalhousie University, Life Sciences Centre, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3H 4J1. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This study tracked the order in which ten beginning spellers (M age=5 ; 05; SD=0·21 years) mastered the correct spellings of common inflectional suffixes in English. Spellings from children's journals from kindergarten and grade 1 were coded. An inflectional suffix was judged to be mastered when children spelled it accurately in 90 percent of the contexts in which it was grammatically required, a criterion used to study the order of acquisition of grammatical morphemes in oral language. The results indicated that the order in which children learned to spell inflectional suffixes correctly is similar to the order in which they learn to use them in oral language, before school age. Discrepancies between the order of mastery for inflectional suffixes in written and oral language are discussed in terms of English spelling conventions, which introduce variables into the spelling of inflected words that are not present in oral language.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , June 2011 , pp. 533 - 553
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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