Learning How to Spell in Turkish

Özet

Öz In comparison to the large body of research on reading and its underlying processes in the field of literacyacquisition, 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 natureof spelling may contribute to improvements in literacy instruction, in particular, for those who experiencelearning 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 workthere appears to be a growing interest to investigate spelling patterns in relatively transparent orthographiessuch as German (Wimmer & Hummer, 1990) and Czech (Caravolas, Volin & Hulme, 2005). However, onlyfew 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). Theprimary purpose of the present paper is to examine spelling development in Turkish across grades 1-3. Wecompared results obtained from different tasks (e.g., single word, sentence and text spelling tasks based onauditory and visual prompts) based on a comprehensive error categorization. Spelling performance inTurkish is analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively; and the findings are discussed in terms ofdevelopment of spelling across grades and characteristics of error types according to varying spelling taskdemands. The most common error type was found to be grapheme substitution, followed by graphemeomission; and auditory prompts yielded more errors when compared to visual prompts, which was anexpected outcome. Some implications are made regarding the role of universal processes and languagespecific characteristics in the emergence of spelling errors.