Learning How to Spell in Turkish

Year 2015, Volume: 32 Issue: 1, 34 - 50, 01.01.2015

Ecehan Sönmez Nalan Babür , Belma Haznedar

Abstract

In comparison to the large body of research on reading and its underlying processes in the field of literacy

acquisition, the number of studies investigating the components of writing has remained rather limited

(Treiman, 1993). Given that spelling is a fundamental aspect of the ability to write, understanding the nature

of spelling may contribute to improvements in literacy instruction, in particular, for those who experience

learning difficulties. The course of spelling development has been mostly studied in English (Ehri, 1986;

Frith, 1980; Gentry, 1982; Henderson, 1985), a language known for its opaque orthography. In recent work

there appears to be a growing interest to investigate spelling patterns in relatively transparent orthographies

such as German (Wimmer & Hummer, 1990) and Czech (Caravolas, Volin & Hulme, 2005). However, only

few studies to date have dealt with spelling performance in transparent orthographies such as Finnish

(Lehtonen, 2006) and Turkish (e.g., Babayiğit & Stainthorp, 2007; Erden, Kurdoğlu, & Uslu, 2002). The

primary purpose of the present paper is to examine spelling development in Turkish across grades 1-3. We

compared results obtained from different tasks (e.g., single word, sentence and text spelling tasks based on

auditory and visual prompts) based on a comprehensive error categorization. Spelling performance in

Turkish is analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively; and the findings are discussed in terms of

development of spelling across grades and characteristics of error types according to varying spelling task

demands. The most common error type was found to be grapheme substitution, followed by grapheme

omission; and auditory prompts yielded more errors when compared to visual prompts, which was an

expected outcome. Some implications are made regarding the role of universal processes and language

specific characteristics in the emergence of spelling errors.

Keywords

Error types, Spelling, Transparent Orthography, Turkish

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