Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemThe spelling process: children's use of phonemic, morphemic and visual memory spelling strategies( 1985)This thesis examined the language strategies used during the cognitive processing involved in the production of English orthography. The methodology used was observation and analysis of spelling errors produced by a sample of primary school children in Years 2, 3 and 4. It was hypothesised that in the process of learning to spell children learn how to use several language strategies - the phonemic strategy, the visual memory strategy and the morphemic strategy. It was further hypothesised that the data obtained from analysing children's spelling errors would reflect the nature and extent of the use of these strategies. A sample of words which had the potential to show these language strategies in operation was selected. These words were deemed to be words containing what are referred to as silent letters, and words indicating the past tense. The data were analysed using a clustering analysis technique. The results of this research gave clear evidence that children's errors are not random events. Observation of the children's spelling performance revealed errors which reflected phonemic, visual memory and morphemic strategies in operation. However, it is possible that the visual memory and morphemic strategies form parts of one higher order cognitive strategy - knowledge of the orthographic structure of English. The possibility of a hierarchical sequence in the acquisition of the language strategies was also examined. The data support the notion of developmental proficiency, but not discrete sequential stages of acquisition. Year level analysis showed qualitative differences in the use of each of the three language strategies. The younger children showed greater use of the phonemic strategy and the older children showed greater use of both the visual memory and morphemic strategies. Analyses involving clustering of individual subjects in Years 2 and 4 indicate quite clearly that the poorer the spelling performance the more likely are the children to use a phonemic strategy in their incorrect attempts at a word. Conversely, the better the spelling performance the more likely is the chance that children will exhibit responses that are characterised by the visual memory or morphemic nature of the spelling errors. However, children in each of the Year levels 2, 3 and 4 used all three language strategies. The results of this study have implications for teaching practice. Teaching practices which deal with the study of the orthographic structure of English in an holistic manner may be more beneficial to the learner than isolated sequential steps of instruction. Integrating the phonological, graphemic and morphemic attributes of a word may enable the learner to recall the spelling of a word through a diverse range of networks in the lexicon.