Spelling Performance of Portuguese Children: Comparison Between Grade Level, Misspelling Type, and Assessment Task

Abstract

There is consensus among researchers that misspellings are something to avoid. However, misspellings also convey relevant information for researchers and educators. The present study is a first effort toward the analysis of misspellings produced by Portuguese children. Specifically, we aimed to examine the association between misspellings in dictation and composing tasks; compare misspellings across grade, type, and task; and test the contribution of different misspellings produced in dictation and in composition to text quality. For that, 933 Portuguese pupils in Grade 2 (n = 297), Grade 4 (n = 302), and Grade 6 (n = 334) performed a spelling-to-dictation task and wrote an opinion essay. Misspellings were categorized into phonetically inaccurate, phonetically accurate, and stress mark errors. Results showed correlations between the same type of misspellings across tasks for phonetically inaccurate errors in Grades 2 and 4, and phonetically accurate errors in Grade 2. Moreover, pupils produced more misspellings in dictation than composing tasks, and there was a progressive decrease in phonetically inaccurate and phonetically accurate misspellings across schooling, though stress mark errors were more frequent in Grade 4 than in other grades. Finally, spelling errors predicted text quality, particularly in younger children. Overall, these findings are aligned with extant results on spelling development and support current voices claiming for fine-grained analyses of misspellings. As they may vary across grade and task, and impact text quality differently, a detailed approach to spelling errors can provide valuable information on the development of this skill.

The Contribution of Word-, Sentence-, and Discourse-Level Abilities on Writing Performance: A 3-Year Longitudinal Study

“…This is in line with previous research (Bahr et al, 2012) and suggests that sound-based spellings are learned in the earliest phases of spelling development (Treiman and Bourassa, 2000). Third, stress mark errors were the most frequent misspelling in both timepoints and cohorts, also corroborating past findings with younger Portuguese students (Magalhães et al, 2020). Stress mark errors indicate poor lexical knowledge of stress and difficulties in prosodic and orthographic mapping (Defior et al, 2012).…”

“…Findings from POMAS revealed that from Grades 1 to 9 there was a decrease in phonological errors coupled with an increase in morphological ones, with most errors across grades being orthographic (Bahr et al, 2012). Despite not assessing morphological errors, Magalhães et al (2020) found a similar pattern in Portuguese children from Grades 2, 4, and 6. The authors also found that stress marks errors-largely underexplored in Portuguese studies-were present equally in the assessed grades.…”

Promoting Third Graders’ Executive Functions and Literacy: A Pilot Study Examining the Benefits of Mindfulness vs. Relaxation Training

“…We measured transcription abilities through student's handwriting fluency skills in an alphabet task (Limpo and Alves, 2018), and spelling skills through a dictation task (Magalhães et al, 2020). To measure students' written composition skills, we asked two trained judges to rate the quality of their opinion essays, using a holistic scale ranging from 1 (low quality) to 7 (high quality) (based on Limpo and Alves, 2018).…”

“…The mindfulness-related improvements on attention and EFs are expected to generalize to academic achievement (Maynard et al, 2017). Past research already showed that these cognitive skills are related to teacher-rated literacy grades (Magalhães et al, 2020) as well as to specific, writing-related indicators of literacy abilities (Cordeiro et al, 2019). In primary grades, two of these indicators are transcription, which is the externalization of language into written text through the basic processes of handwriting and spelling; and written composition, that is, the production of texts with good and coherently organized ideas, conveyed in well drafted sentences with rich vocabulary.…”

Kan førekomsten av nokre spesielle feiltypar predikere den samla førekomsten av rettskrivnings- og bøyningsavvik i nynorsktekstar? Ein statistisk analyse

“…Sjølve grunntanken om å sjå etter empiriske samanhengar mellom ord og ordval og i vårt tilfelle avvik, kjenner vi også frå forsking innan liknande fenomen som bruken av konservative/radikale former i nynorsk (Helset, 2016), og som nemnt er han nokon gonger utgangspunktet for val av kategoriar (Finbak, 2004(Finbak, , 2005. Magalhães et al (2020) har undersøkt avvik hjå portugisiske barn og mellom anna sett på om avvika er ulike i ulike klassesteg. Samanlikningane er på kategorinivå, dei byggjer altså på ideen om at det er samanheng mellom avvik som fell i same kategori.…”