A longitudinal study of the effects of syllabic structure on the development of reading and spelling skills in French

The central hypothesis of this study was that phonological mediation plays a critical role in the early development of reading and spelling in French. Therefore, the phonological structure of items, as opposed to their visual characteristics, was expected to be a significant determinant of performance. This hypothesis was tested in a short term longitudinal study with a group of first graders (N=57) who were administered a reading and a spelling task involving pseudowords of different syllabic structures. The first prediction was that there would be better performance on pseudowords with a simple structure (CVCVCV) as compared to pseudowords with a complex structure (CCVCVC or CVCCVC) and that errors on syllables with a complex structure would involve the deletion of codas or the simplification of complex onsets. Secondly, we predicted that errors would be consistent with a sonority hierarchy, for example, we expected more deletions of liquids than obstruents in clusters. Thirdly, we predicted that the principal phonological categories and not the visual characteristics would be preserved in substitutions (for example, stops would be substituted by stops). Our fourth prediction was that the structural characteristics of French would influence performance, specifically, the frequency of open syllables in French would result in superior performance on CV and CCV (open) syllables in contrast to CVC (closed) syllables and in the deletion of codas in closed syllables. Moreover, because of the stability of vowels in French, we expected few errors involving vowels. The findings corroborated the predictions, except for the failure to find differences between open and closed syllables. The results confirmed the importance of phonological mediation in the initial stage of the acquisition of reading and spelling.