Learning how to spell in Turkish:

Abstract

In comparison to the large body of research on reading and its underlying processes in the field of literacy acquisition, 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 nature of spelling may contribute to improvements in literacy instruction, in particular, for those who experience learning 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 work there appears to be a growing interest to investigate spelling patterns in relatively transparent orthographies such as German (Wimmer & Hummer, 1990) and Czech (Caravolas, Volin & Hulme, 2005). However, only few 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). The primary purpose of the present paper is to examine spelling development in Turkish across grades 1-3. We compared results obtained from different tasks (e.g., single word, sentence and text spelling tasks based on auditory and visual prompts) based on a comprehensive error categorization. Spelling performance in Turkish is analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively; and the findings are discussed in terms of development of spelling across grades and characteristics of error types according to varying spelling task demands. The most common error type was found to be grapheme substitution, followed by grapheme omission; and auditory prompts yielded more errors when compared to visual prompts, which was an expected outcome. Some implications are made regarding the role of universal processes and language specific characteristics in the emergence of spelling errors.

İlkokul Dördüncü Sınıf Öğrencilerinin Türkçe Yazım Hatalarının Sınıflandırılması

“…Ayrıca, bu iki çalışmanın öğrenci yazılarını irdeleme amacıyla kullandığı yöntemler de farklıdır. Sönmez, Babür ve Haznedar (2015), diktasyon ve metin kopyalama yöntemlerini kullanmaktadır. Babayiğit (2019) ise daha işlevsel bir yaklaşım benimsemiş ve kompozisyon çalışmalarındaki yazım hatalarını incelemiştir.…”

“…Spelling errors in Turkish made by school-aged children have been mostly categorized in terms of whether phonemes or syllables are omitted, added or substituted (Erden, Kurdoğlu, and Uslu, 2002;Sönmez, Babür, and Haznedar, 2015;Babayiğit, 2019). In the current study, on the other hand, the spelling errors in Turkish are categorized with respect to possible cognitive factors behind these…”