Irish orthography: what do teachers and learners need to know about it, and why?

Hickey, Tina; Stenson, Nancy

doi:10.1080/07908318.2010.527347

Cited by 13 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 18 publications

(21 reference statements)

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“…(Principal-Scoil-M) an interesting point Irish has a very large number of sounds [ … ] if children are exposed to Gaeilge and good sounding of the words it's a huge benefit when they're then trying to produce some of the sounds correctly and accurately in French [ … ] or German or Italian whatever. (Principal-Scoil-C) (see Hickey & Stenson [2011] for observations on Irish orthography.) they tend to perform very well [ … ] but maybe have a little something on children who are in English-speaking schools in that they learn Interviewer: An advantage?…”

Section: Immersion By Design: Gaelscoileannamentioning

confidence: 98%

The feel good factor: comparing immersion by design and immersion by default models

Gallagher

Leahy

2014

Language, Culture and Curriculum

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This article presents findings from an exploratory research project entitled Gaelscoileanna and Multicultural classrooms: the potential for transfer to enhance L2 learning experiences. The project focussed on two language immersion contexts in Ireland which, despite obvious differences, share a range of significant commonalities. One context was that of the Gaelscoil, where instruction is through the medium of Irish, and the other that of the mainstream English-medium school, where learners from migrant backgrounds often experience a form of language immersion which is referred to here as 'immersion by default'. The views of teachers and principals are described in this article. Data from this cohort illustrate how each school type approached the celebration of language per se in relation to learners for whom the language of instruction is not the L1. This raises two key issues: (1) the extent to which the school can see itself as a site of and for multilingualism, and (2) the extent to which learners in all immersion contexts can also be affirmed as language learners. Findings point to how immersion contexts, regardless of whether they are 'design' or 'default' in nature, can inform each other. We argue that each has the potential to approach Language in additive ways.

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Section: Immersion By Design: Gaelscoileannamentioning

confidence: 98%

The feel good factor: comparing immersion by design and immersion by default models

Gallagher

Leahy

2014

Language, Culture and Curriculum

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“…Since learners encountering new words in text cannot be expected to know which unfamiliar monosyllables have stressed vowels and which do not, the unstressed vowels must be learned individually. As discussed in Hickey and Stenson (2011), however, even these irregularities of word stress are patterned to a large extent, and can therefore be taught.…”

Section: Phonological Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite using a subset of the same letters as English, the Irish system is, as we will show below, quite different, and would benefit from being taught explicitly in conjunction with the significant phonological differences between the two languages. Hickey and Stenson (2011) showed that spelling of the most frequent 100 words in a corpus of Irish children's books (excluding textbooks) is fairly regular, and therefore decodable to a large extent. We compared the findings for Irish with the similar English corpus described by Stuart, Dixon, Masterson and Gray (2003), finding 71% regularity in Irish as opposed to 54% in the English corpus.…”

Section: Reading In L1 and L2 -Irish Outcomesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this paper we expand the analysis in Hickey and Stenson (2011) and explore the interaction between regularity and other aspects of the orthographic system that contribute to opacity in Irish orthography and the attendant difficulties that learners of Irish face in processing the written language. We will argue that orthographic regularity, at least as defined in terms of consistency of grapheme-phoneme correspondences, cannot be equated with transparency.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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When regular is not easy: Cracking the code of Irish orthography

Stenson

Hickey

2016

Writing Systems Research

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Irish is well-known to be a threatened minority language, which has a number of underresearched features. This article presents an analysis of Irish orthography, based on the most frequent words in a corpus of children's literature in Irish. We identify both basic orthographic rules and a few phonological rules that systematically alter pronunciations from those expected based on the orthographic norms. Comparison of Irish spelling patterns with those in a similar corpus for English confirms a widespread belief that the orthography of Irish is more regular than that of English, the L1 of most beginning readers of Irish. However, this analysis refutes the commonly accepted corollary assumption that explicit decoding instruction in Irish is unnecessary for learners already literate in English, based on further examination of other features differentiating the two languages. We argue that despite its greater regularity, Irish spelling is sufficiently complex and distinct from English to challenge learners and require explicit instruction.

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“…Morphological issues (see Section 3.1 above), VSO word order and the orthographical issues with the language (Hickey and Stenson, 2011) make it difficult for the students to be comfortable with learning the language, let alone becoming proficient in it.…”

Section: Irish In the Classroommentioning

confidence: 99%

Quizzes on Tap: Exporting a Test Generation System from One Less-Resourced Language to Another

Maritxalar

Donnchadha

Foster

et al. 2014

Human Language Technology Challenges for Computer Science and Linguistics

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It is difficult to develop and deploy Language Technology and applications for minority languages for many reasons. These include the lack of Natural Language Processing (NLP) resources for the language, a scarcity of NLP researchers who speak the language and the communication gap between teachers in the classroom and researchers working in universities and other centres of research. One approach to overcoming these obstacles is for researchers interested in Less-Resourced Languages (LRLs) to work together in reusing and adapting existing resources where possible. This article outlines how a multiple-choice quiz generator for Basque was adapted for Irish. The Quizzes on Tap (QOT) system uses Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) to automatically generate multiple choice test items. Adapting the Basque application to work for Irish involved the sourcing of suitable Irish corpora and a morphological engine for Irish, as well as the compilation of a development set. Various integration issues arising from differences between Basque and Irish needed to be dealt with. The QOT system provides a useful resource that enables Irish teachers to produce both domain-specific and generalknowledge quizzes in a timely manner, for children with varying levels of exposure to the language.

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Irish orthography: what do teachers and learners need to know about it, and why?

Cited by 13 publications

References 18 publications

The feel good factor: comparing immersion by design and immersion by default models

The feel good factor: comparing immersion by design and immersion by default models

When regular is not easy: Cracking the code of Irish orthography

Quizzes on Tap: Exporting a Test Generation System from One Less-Resourced Language to Another

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