Spelling Acquisition in English and Italian: A Cross-Linguistic Study
نویسندگان
چکیده
We examined the spelling acquisition in children up to late primary school of a consistent orthography (Italian) and an inconsistent orthography (English). The effects of frequency, lexicality, length, and regularity in modulating spelling performance of the two groups were examined. English and Italian children were matched for both chronological age and number of years of schooling. Two-hundred and seven Italian children and 79 English children took part in the study. We found greater accuracy in spelling in Italian than English children: Italian children were very accurate after only 2 years of schooling, while in English children the spelling performance was still poor after 5 years of schooling. Cross-linguistic differences in spelling accuracy proved to be more persistent than the corresponding ones in reading accuracy. Orthographic consistency produced not only quantitative, but also qualitative differences, with larger frequency and regularity effects in English than in Italian children.
منابع مشابه
The Role of Sociolinguistics in Second Language Acquisition
Learning a new language also involves learning a broad system of norms for social relations.This study broadly showed how EFL learners’ speech act is conveyed from their nativecultures when they are communicating in English and demonstrated that there are somepossibilities of cross-cultural misunderstanding when interlocutors are engaged in the speechact of complimenting with native speakers of...
متن کاملTextual Enhancement across Linguistic Structures: EFL Learners' Acquisition of English Forms
The benefits of textual input enhancement in the acquisition of linguistic forms have produced mixed results in SLA literature. The present study investigates the effects of textual enhancement on adult foreign language intake of two English linguistic forms-subjunctive mood and inversion structures-to explore the role of the type of linguistic items in input enhancement studies. It also invest...
متن کاملCross-linguistic Influence at Syntax-pragmatics Interface: A Case of OPC in Persian
Recent research in the area of Second Language Acquisition has proposed that bilinguals and L2 learners show syntactic indeterminacy when syntactic properties interface with other cognitive domains. Most of the research in this area has focused on the pragmatic use of syntactic properties while the investigation of compliance with a grammatical rule at syntax-related interfaces has not received...
متن کاملAcquisition of English Unergative and Unaccusative Structures by Persian EFL Learners
The acquisition of argument structures has been studied by a variety of second language acquisition scholars within the past two decades (Atay, 2010; Can, 2009; Chay, 2006, & Kras, 2007, among others). In the present study, ‘Predicate’ as the most substantial element of a sentence is investigated. There are three English verb-types which seem to be more problematic for Persian EFL learners: (a)...
متن کاملIncorporating Cognitive Linguistic Insights into Classrooms: the Case of Iranian Learners’ Acquisition of If-Clauses
Cognitive linguistics gives the most inclusive, consistent description of how language is organized, used and learned to date. Cognitive linguistics contains a great number of concepts that are useful to second language learners. If-clauses in English, on the other hand, remain intriguing for foreign language learners to struggle with, due to their intrinsic intricacies. EFL grammar books are ...
متن کامل