Abstract Orthographic features of ...

Abstract

Orthographic features of English spelling can be ordered according to a developmental progression (Viise, 1994) so features, when scored dichotomously and arranged according to difficulty, form a scale that is unidimensional and cumulative. The final cause of the present study is to determine if similar graphophonemic features exist in Spanish orthography and evolve an instrument to assess them. A criterion of Spanish Word Features (TSWF) was devised and pilot exampleed on 129 elementary school children. After revision, the instrument assessed 12 Spanish word features between the sides of the spellings of 50 exemplar words clustered into clumps offive. The TSWF and its English counterpart were administered to 196 first, secondary third, fourth, and fifth graders. Individual spelling features in Spanish prov to be internally consistent (reliable), yet when arranged according to difficulty, formed a scale that was single marginally cumulative. Compared to those of English, the Spanish word features varied little in complexity, and the evidence that children mastered them in a particular order was les compelling.

An increasing number of educators and researchers have embraced the additive pattern of bilingualism-a tradition which hem ins that learning a second language is aided through knowledge of a first (Garcia, Jimenez, & Pearson, 1998) In fresh years, a number of investigators have systematically documented the knowledge and strategies Spanish speakers bring to the classroom when they learn English as a inferior language. It is now known that like individuals pose a rich understanding of cognates and a armed force of metacognitive strategies to help them learn to speak a recent language (Jimenez, Garcia, & Pearson, 1996)

Much has been learned about bilingualism through the whole extent of the last three decades, moreover little is known about biliteracy. We believe it is important to learn more about for what reason fluent readers, competent writers, and accurate spelling-books in one language go about the task of acquiring comparable skills in a next to the first language. Because the orthographies of Spanish and English at hand intriguing contrasts and similarities, these sum of two units languages provide ideal vehicles for initial meditation of spelling transfer. Whereas written Spanish uses a shallow orthography, English relies upon a letter to sound map that is the one and the other complex and subtle. Indeed, Spanish orthography is thus transparent that young students correctly charm words they cannot yet read-a phenomenon not at all observed among children learning to season English.

We have reason to believe, then, that pupils who learn to read Spanish first, and English next to the first approach the new language with a greater expectation of predictability and orderliness than those who learn these languages in overturn order. For this reason, Spanish-first bookish mans are likely to develop a richer mind of phonemic awareness and profit more from phonics instruction than their English-first counterparts. Thus, Spanish-speaking youngsters who are taught to read and write their native language before becoming literate in English will probably learn to charm better in both languages. In our view, the time has originate to test these conjectures-to document the advantages, if any, that accrue to biliterate observers who first become literate in Spanish. However, any like test depends upon the evolution of appropriate and comparable measures of children's knowledge of the written features of the two languages.

According to the National Center for Research onward Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning (1996) there are many promising approaches to instruction consistent with passing from hand to hand knowledge about how children learn-- approaches cognizant of the cultural and linguistic words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following in which learning occurs. Unfortunately, comparable advances in to what extent to assess learning have not been made. greatest in quantity researchers continue to rely in succession standardized tests to document fortunate instruction, tests that are astonishingly off-target for minority scholars inappropriate for those not current in English, and insensitive to many kinds of learning advocated by means of educational reformers.

The goal of the not absent series of studies is to introduce and refine a modern type of measuring device, single in kind more appropriate for assessing understanding of the orthographic features that underlie written language. Our immediate objective, however, is more virtuous It is to develop a measure of children's progressive understanding of the written features of Spanish that is the pair reliable and valid. Such an assessment tool could be used to inform educators who are using developmental systems of teaching early reading in a transitional bilingual connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts

We began with the work of Viise, (1994) who studied graphophonemic features in English. According to Viise, features of English spelling can be ordered according to a developmental progression. Children comprehend the simplest features first, and, with increase master the more difficult. As Viise has shown a number of spelling features, when ordered according to difficulty and scored dichotomously, form a Guttman scale-a scale that is unidimensional (the items are intercorrelated) and cumulative (passing an item entails passing all those les difficult and, reciprocally failing an item entails failing all those more difficult). upon the basis of years of research in succession children's understanding of English spelling, we calculate uponed to find at least any features of Spanish orthography that would, when ordered according to difficulty, form a Guttman scale. The drift of the present study is to identify of that kind features, create an instrument to assess them, and assess their scalability.