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L2 Spelling Errors in Italian Children with Dyslexia

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 Journal Code Article ID Dispatch: 10.02.16 CE: Kristine Kate D. Gotual
D Y S 1 5 2 2 No. of Pages: 15 ME:

1 DYSLEXIA
2 Published online in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/dys.1522
3
4

■ L2 Spelling Errors in Italian Children with

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Dyslexia
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11 Paola Palladino1*, Dhebora Cismondo1, Marcella Ferrari2, Q1 Q2

12 Isabella Bellagamba3 and Cesare Cornoldi4

1
13 University of Pavia, Piazza Botta 6, Pavia27100, Italy
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14 Department of Psychology, University of Pavia, Piazza Botta 6, Pavia27100, Italy
3
15 University of Padova, Padova, Italy
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16 General Psychology Department, University of Padova, Via Venezia 8, Padova35131, Italy
17
18 The present study aimed to investigate L2 spelling skills in Italian children by administering an
19 English word dictation task to 13 children with dyslexia (CD), 13 control children (compa-
20 rable in age, gender, schooling and IQ) and a group of 10 children with an English learning
21 difficulty, but no L1 learning disorder. Patterns of difficulties were examined for accuracy
22 and type of errors, in spelling dictated short and long words (i.e. disyllables and three sylla-
23 bles). Notably, CD were poor in spelling English words. Furthermore, their errors were
24 mainly related with phonological representation of words, as they made more ‘phonologi-
cally’ implausible errors than controls. In addition, CD errors were more frequent for short
25
than long words. Conversely, the three groups did not differ in the number of plausible
26
(‘non-phonological’) errors, that is, words that were incorrectly written, but whose reading
27 could correspond to the dictated word via either Italian or English rules. Error analysis also
28 showed syllable position differences in the spelling patterns of CD, English learning difficulty
29 and control children. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
30
31 Keywords: dyslexia; children; spelling; writing; multilingualism
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33
34
The types of difficulties I have experienced are in keeping with the difficulties researchers have
35 reported when studying the foreign language learning experiences of students with dyslexia.
36 These problems include difficulty making sound/symbol connections, remembering and applying
37 spelling and grammar rules, “parsing” spoken language, and drawing on phonological working
38 memory to repeat words and phrases (Simon, 2000, p. 13).
39
40 Studies mentioned by Simon (2000) are unfortunately very few. Evidence that
41 school difficulties experienced by children with dyslexia (CD) also include a diffi-
42 culty in foreign language (FL) learning is indeed scarce, especially in the case of
43 transparent languages (e.g. Italian). This is surprising, given the fact that Italy is
44 one of the few countries where national law takes this particular aspect into con-
45 sideration. For example, on 8 October 2010, the Italian Parliament approved a law
46 (Law n. 170/, 2010) that established a series of policies in favour of CD. In partic-
47 ular, article 5 (point 2c) stated that schools must guarantee CD use of appropriate
48 tools to reduce writing and increase oral practice when they learn an opaque FL
49
50
51 *Correspondence to: Paola Palladino, University of Pavia, Piazza Botta 6, Pavia 27100, Italy. E-mail: paola.
52 palladino@unipv.it
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1 2 P. Palladino et al.
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3 (e.g. English). However, these policies were not grounded in empirical evidence,
4 and the first study on such difficulties in Italian children was only published 3 years
5 later (Palladino, Bellagamba, Ferrari, and Cornoldi (2013)). The results indicated
6 that Italian CD encountered difficulties in reading English words, but these difficul-
7 ties depended on the nature of the material. Therefore, the authors suggested a
8 compensative strategy, employing preserved skills for learning English rules. How-
9 ever, this case could be specific for reading words; further evidence is required to
10 understand whether specific difficulties can be found in the case of spelling also,
11 and whether performance is affected by linguistic properties of the words.
12 Few studies have specifically investigated individuals with dyslexia and their abil-
13 ities to learn an FL; even fewer have examined children (Crombie, 2000). In one
14 such study, Miller-Guron and Lundberg (2000) found a clear and expected advan-
15 tage in L2 reading skills for adults with dyslexia, who claimed to prefer reading in
16 their second language (English preference). In fact, they were as fluent in English
17 reading as adults without any L1 reading difficulty. A study by Downey, Snyder
18 and Hill (2000) compared a group of college students with dyslexia, enrolled in a
19 special foreign language programme, with a control group, enrolled in a regular
20 foreign language class. Here, the group with dyslexia was significantly worse in a
21 test of foreign language aptitude. However, the results concerned an aptitude,
22 rather than an authentic L2 skill. Furthermore, the group with dyslexia was com-
23 parable with controls in the level of academic proficiency, suggesting that college
24 students with dyslexia had acquired appropriate skills or had been able to compen-
25 sate for their cognitive deficits adequately during schooling. In a more recent
26 study, Soroli, Szenkovits and Ramus (2010) examined a group of adults with dys-
27 lexia to investigate whether their phonological deficit could affect their FL learning.
28 They found that the dyslexic group was significantly impaired in discrimination and
29 production of lexical stress, compared with the control group, but there were no
30 performance differences in other measures. This seems to suggest that weak pho-
31 nological skills affect the FL acquisition of adults with dyslexia (see also Service,
32 1992), although the specific characteristics of the task may play a role (Ramus &
33 Szenkovits, 2008).
34 Taken together, these results indicate that adults with dyslexia may encounter
35 difficulties in learning a foreign language. However, few studies also suggest that
36 English may not represent a learning problem and, for adults with dyslexia, learning
37 English as an FL may be more interesting and successful than literacy learning in L1
38 (Miller-Guron & Lundberg, 2000; Miller-Guron & Lundberg, 2000). Therefore, it Q3
39 would be important to unravel the degree and pattern of difficulties CD may show
40 in various L2 skills such as reading or, more specifically, spelling. Several weak-
41 nesses of CD, mentioned in the literature, and also listed by Simon (2000), are
42 likely to affect spelling in a foreign language: for example, phonological awareness,
43 object naming and discrimination of speech sounds. But CD spelling in L2 has sel-
44 dom been the focus of research.
45
46
Children with Dyslexia Learning a Foreign Language
47
48 Chung and Ho (2010) focused on specific cross-linguistic and transfer aspects from
49 L1 to L2, in Chinese CD learning English as L2. Results showed worse perfor-
50 mance for CD than controls in almost all measures of L1 and L2 (e.g. word read-
51 ing, rapid naming, visual orthographic skills and phonological and morphological
52
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1 L2 Spelling Errors in Dyslexia 3
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3 awareness). These findings are consistent with the hypothesis of a deficit with var-
4 ious language components (e.g. orthography, phonology and morphology) that can
5 affect L2 learning. However, any conclusion on the relationship between difficul-
6 ties in L1 and L2 derived from Chung and Ho’s (2010) results has limited general-
7 izability, because the relationship between the Chinese and English languages
8 appears unique. For example, English is an alphabetic language with correspon-
9 dence between graphemes and phonemes, but an arbitrary mapping between
10 orthography and meaning. Chinese is a logographic (or meaning-based) language,
11 as the mapping between orthography and meaning is consistent (Perfetti & Zhang,
12 1995). Therefore, the pattern of difficulties found by Chung and Ho (2010) in CD
13 should be clarified by comparing English to other such as alphabetic languages
14 (Goswami, 1999), and in particular, to highly transparent ones.
15 Preliminary evidence in this direction was collected by a series of studies. For
16 example, a study by van der Leij and Morfidi (2006) suggested that different CD
17 groups should be distinguished. They found that Dutch seventh and eighth graders
18 had higher competence in English reading and spelling than same-age students
19 selectively impaired in reading. Helland and Kaasa (2005) compared English learn-
20 ing in Norwegian seventh and eighth graders with dyslexia (with or without a read-
21 ing comprehension impairment) and a control group. They found that reading and
22 spelling in English were poorer for CD than controls. However, if reading compre-
23 hension was sufficient, CD were able to learn oral English language as effectively as
24 control children. Lindgren and Laine (2011) compared students with dyslexia and
25 controls on reading and writing proficiency in domestic (Swedish and Finnish) and
26 foreign (English) languages. They found impairment for CD in reading accuracy,
27 single word writing to dictation and free writing, most markedly in English. An im-
28 portant result, relevant to the goals of the present study, was that phoneme-to-
29 grapheme errors were the most frequent errors in the writing productions of
30 CD, especially in English, suggesting a crucial role of phonological representations.
31 In sum, there is evidence that non Anglophone CD encounter difficulties in
32 spelling, not only in L1, but also in English. However, the case of Italian CD’s spell-
33 ing errors in English and the effects of word properties have never been consid-
34 ered systematically. In order to investigate spelling difficulties in an opaque L2,
35 made by children with reading difficulties in a transparent L1, the present study
36 examined the specific case of Italian CD, studying English at school (i.e. which rep-
37 resents the second basic language for more than 90% of Italian students).
38 Reading and writing are acquired more rapidly in regular than irregular orthog-
39 raphies (Seymour, Aro, & Erskine, 2003). In fact, English and Italian are classified as
40 low and high consistency languages, respectively. According to Venezky (1970),
41 the English alphabet has only three consonants with one sound only: n, r and v.
42 None of these sounds are ever produced by other letters, or combination of let-
43 ters. The five vowels (six; with ‘y’ as vowel-consonant) correspond to 48 pho-
44 nemes, but there are many homophones, rather than homographs. In contrast,
45 in Italian, a particular letter or letter combination is almost always associated with
46 the same sound. Every written letter is pronounced, in addition to pronunciation
47 of double consonants; with the sole exception of h, which is always silent. In Italian,
48 there are no vowel digraphs and no homophones (De Mauro, 2000). Further-
49 more, it should be noted that English is irregular in both grapheme-to-phoneme
50 and phoneme-to-grapheme directions, whereas Italian is almost completely regu-
51 lar in one direction (i.e. reading aloud is highly predictable, but writing is less
52
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1 4 P. Palladino et al.
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3 regular; Ziegler & Goswami, 2005). Thus, the peculiarities of Italian, and its sub-
4 stantial differences from English, may emphasize Italian CD’s spelling difficulties
5 in English and may affect their pattern of errors.
6
7
Aims of the Study
8
9 The general aim of the present study was to test the hypothesis that Italian CD Q4
10 face difficulties in English spelling. In addition, we examined whether spelling errors
11 of CD mainly involved phonological representation of words, and if these were
12 affected by word length and syllable position within the word.
13 However, developmental models of reading acquisition and writing competence
14 have also provided a basis for many distinctions between spelling errors (see, e.g.,
15 Ehri, 1986, 1995; Frith, 1985; Gentry, 1982; Treiman, 2000), according to the
16 nature and features of each language. A basic classification of writing errors may
17 make reference to phonological plausibility; given some spelling errors are totally
18 implausible, with substantial changes to the word sound. Other errors are such
19 that, if the written word is read aloud, its sound appears similar or identical to
20 the actual word sound. In developmental models of spelling acquisition, this dis-
21 tinction alludes to a widely accepted classification and is particularly effective for
22 the Italian language, based on the difference between phonological and non-
23 phonological errors (see Re & Cornoldi, 2015; Tressoldi & Cornoldi, 2000).
24 This is related to a classical model for learning to read and write, which involves
25 a series of learning stages (Frith, 1985). In the first logographic stage, a child can
26 associate only the overall graphic configuration with a certain concept. In the
27 alphabetic stage, the concept of phoneme is acquired, and the child learns to asso-
28 ciate every phoneme with its specific graphic pattern. Phonological-type errors are
29 typical at this stage, because of incorrect associations between a grapheme and
30 corresponding phoneme. The knowledge of syntactic and orthographic rules is
31 developed in the third stage (i.e. orthographic), and the child starts to work with
32 syllables or other sub-lexical units, enabling the writing process to become more
33 rapid and accurate. The final stage is the lexical stage, in which children learn reg-
34 ular and irregular words, and are able to read and write even when words do not
35 follow phonological rules. In Italian, typical writing errors are illegal fusions and
36 separations at this stage.
37 In the case of L2, because younger children may not yet have developed suffi-
38 cient familiarity with the L2 lexicon, one could suggest that production of an L2
39 word cannot necessarily be based on complete access to orthographic represen-
40 tation of that word alone. Instead, it must also rely on its phonological properties,
41 when the word is dictated. Because of their phonological difficulties, CD could be
42 poorer in this respect than their peers without reading problems, and especially,
43 may produce more phonological errors. Therefore, in studying Italian CD L2 spell-
44 ing errors, we have compared the number of phonological and non-phonological
45 errors between groups.
46 The study also considered the effects of word length and error position within
47 the word. This is important given that one feature of CD difficulty seems to be
48 represented by phonological analysis of the auditory stimulus (Soroli et al., 2010)
49 and its recognition, when the word is dictated. In this respect, an increase in pho-
50 nological and morphological cues (i.e. present in long familiar words more often
51 than short familiar words) could support recognition and integration of cues
52
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3 (Service, Maury, & Luotoniemi, 2005). In turn, this would lead to better word rep-
4 resentation and reduction of spelling difficulty for CD. For example, dictated disyl-
5 lable words like ‘stories’ or ‘people’ should offer fewer cues for word recognition
6 than three-syllable words, like ‘calendar’ or ‘uniform’. In the present study, further
7 analysis on error position within the word was driven by whether CD difficulty
8 was due to a phonological problem; in this case, the last syllable of longer words
9 should present particular difficulty. Indeed, issues with the last syllable imply
10 greater discrimination difficulty, because phonological representation of English
11 words (and non-words; Service et al., 2005) is typically focused on the first syllable.
12 Here, it should be noted that the word list used included three-syllable words,
13 mostly with stress on the first syllable, and in few cases, on the second syllable
14 (i.e. as is typical for English).
15 Furthermore, studies on short-term phonological memory show that if a
16 sequence of speech sounds must be remembered serially, individuals with poor
17 phonological memory frequently miss the last elements of a series (Service,
18 Ferrari, & Palladino, 2011). Therefore, we predicted that CD would be more likely Q5
19 to forget final, rather than initial, word phonemes when writing a word – and hold-
20 ing its phonemes in mind (i.e. because of their poor phonological memory).
21 A methodological issue examined in the present study concerned non-
22 phonological errors. For L2, one could predict that children would make errors
23 through use of their L1 phonological rules. For example, the dictated word ‘ele-
24 phant’ could be written by an Italian child as ‘elefant’, because ‘f’ in Italian sounds like
25 ‘ph’ in English; this type of error would be considered plausible for English phonol-
26 ogy. However, the case of a non-transparent L2 is intriguing, because in some cases,
27 the child could rely on either L1 or L2 orthography/phonology. It is possible that
28 when a child experiences a difficulty, he or she performs both operations, either try-
29 ing to predict spelling using L2 rules, or simply trying to reproduce the phonemes
30 according to the native language. For example, in Italian, the word ‘people’ could
31 be written in a phonologically plausible form as ‘pipol’, but in English as ‘peeple’
32 or ‘peple’, producing a phonologically plausible or implausible error, according to
33 each language’s characteristics. Thus, here, we considered Italian children’s spelling
34 based on the distinction between phonologically plausible (‘phonological’) and non-
35 plausible (‘non-phonological’) errors (Tressoldi & Cornoldi, 2000). This distinction
36 is widely accepted in Italy and most appropriate when the quantity of dictated
37 materials (and the resulting corpus of errors) is relatively small. We examined
38 whether errors could be considered phonologically plausible, both from the per-
39 spective of their native (Italian) language and L2 (English). At the same time, the role
40 of other variables in influencing spelling errors was also considered. We are aware
41 that this classification may be somewhat problematic in some respects (e.g. forced
42 choice elicitation and oversimplification, but also interpretation and consistency).
43 We evaluate this limitation of the study (phonological vs non-phonological spelling,
44 syllable number, etc.) more fully in the Discussion section.
45 In the study, a third group of children was also tested in order to clarify specific
46 patterns of errors in the CD group more effectively. Children could be unsuccess-
47 ful in learning L2 English for many reasons, not necessarily associated with a read-
48 ing disability in L1 (for the specific case of Italian children with difficulty learning
49 English as a foreign language, see Ferrari & Palladino, 2007, 2012; Palladino &
50 Cornoldi, 2004; Palladino & Ferrari, 2008). Children with an English learning diffi-
51 culty (ELD) would be expected to be poor in both oral and written English, but for
52
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3 different reasons than CD. In fact, their L2 difficulty could also be due to poor
4 motivation, leading to reduced motivation, weak attention skills and poor working
5 memory (Ferrari & Palladino, 2007, 2012; Cornoldi & Palladino, 2004). Compari- Q6
6 son between a CD group and an ELD group (i.e. with difficulty only in L2), and sub-
7 sequent error analyses, could clarify the specific nature of the English learning
8 problem in CD. In addition, the ELD group represents a group with poor perfor-
9 mance at school, which controls partially for non-specific psychological and envi-
10 ronmental variables related to learning failures.
11
12
13 METHOD
14
15 Participants
16 A group of 13 CD participated in the present study (seven boys; mean Q7
17 age = 13.44 years, standard deviation (SD) = 0.75; six girls; mean age = 13.8 years,
18 SD = 0.55); each had received a diagnosis of dyslexia from a Clinical Developmen-
19 tal Centre for Dyslexia. Diagnosis was made on the basis of standard Italian
20 criteria, which require a child to perform 2 SDs below the mean (or in the fifth
21 percentile) of the normative sample, in reading speed and accuracy, excluding a
22 primary role of external factors (i.e. low intelligence, sensory handicap, family
23 problems, emotional disorders, sociocultural problems and poor teaching). They
24 were compared with a control group, matched for age, schooling, gender (seven
25 boys; mean age = 13.43 years, SD = 0.69; six girls; mean age = 13.66 years,
26 SD = 0.82) and level of nonverbal intelligence (measured with Raven’s Coloured
27 Progressive Matrices; Belacchi, Scalisi, Cannoni, & Cornoldi, 2008). Table 1 T1
28
29
30 Table 1. Descriptive statistics of the principal measures
31 Measures Control Group with dyslexia Group with ELD
32
33 M (SD) M (SD) M (SD)
34
Age (years) 13.53 .73 13.6 .66 13.2 4.5
35 Raven 105.38 9.67 105.38 9.67 — —
36 L1 reading skills
37 Speed (syllable/s) 5.02 .51 2.98 .77 On average On average
38 Speed Z scores -.17 .55 -2.10 .74 — —
39 Accuracy (number 3.0 2.12 8.96 4.64 On average On average
of errors)
40 Accuracy Z scores -.44 -.43 .86 1.04 — —
41 Comprehension 9.0 2.0 8.62 2.66 On average On average
42 (correct responses)
43 Comprehension Z .36 .88 .19 1.04 — —
44 scores
FL spelling (number of 17.31 4.21 9.69 4.00 12.6 2.17
45 correctly spelled words)
46 FL spelling Z scores -.31 .73 -1.5 .65 -.78 -0.58
47 PMA vocabulary — — — — 13.8 3.65
48 PMA visuospatial — — — — 32.1 4.45
49 reasoning
50 Q8 ELD, English learning difficulties; FL, foreign language; PMA, Primary mental Aptitude battery Thurstone and Thurstone (1963); L1,
51 native language.
52
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1 L2 Spelling Errors in Dyslexia 7
2
3 presents the mean ages, Raven’s and reading scores in L1 for each group. Some
4 scores are standardized in order to take difference in children’s grades into
5 account. The two groups were similar in levels of general nonverbal reasoning.
6 All children were native Italian speakers who regularly attended public schools
7 in northern and central Italy and were studying English through a standard L2
8 school teaching programme. A further control group, with similar characteristics,
9 was tested, including 10 children (mean age = 13.2 years, SD = 0.26), comparable
10 with the CD for low achievement in written English (lower than the 20th percen-
11 tile in the English learning task; Ferrari & Palladino, 2007), but without any specific
12 learning disabilities or broader learning disorders according to teachers’ evalua-
13 tion. All children participated in the study as volunteers (with parental consent),
14 without payment or reward.
15
16
Material and Procedure of the English Dictation Task
17
18 English dictation task
19 The dictation task was taken from the only available standardized battery for L2 com-
20 petence in English for Italian children (The ‘English Learning Test’, Bellagamba et al.,
21 2011; Ferrari & Palladino, 2007). The reliability of the task is good (Cronbach’s al-
22 pha = .84). The task includes 30 non-related concrete words (15 short and 15 long
23 words). The ‘short word’ list includes 14 disyllable words and the ‘long word’ list,
24 14 three-syllable words. In order to reduce word length predictability, an additional
25 one-syllable and four-syllable words are included in the short and long word lists,
26 respectively. Words are semantically unrelated and selected to have similar character-
27 istics. In particular, they are selected from a larger pool of words, all being rated as
28 highly familiar in the ‘English as L2 school curriculum’ for seventh to eighth grades;
29 no words could be correctly written following Italian sound-to-spelling rules (the com-
30 plete list of words is presented in the Appendix). Words were tape-recorded by an
31 experimenter (proficient in English) and presented at a pace of approximately one
32 disyllable word every 4 s and a three-syllable word every 6 s. This task lasted about
33 10 min, including a 2-min instruction phase. In order to present a standardized proce-
34 dure for the test, orders of lists and words were both held constant. Children were
35 tested individually.
36
37
Results
38
39 First, we considered the overall number of completely correctly spelled words (max-
40 imum score of 30). CD spelled fewer English words correctly (Tables 3 and 4), with
41 errors classified according to the distinction between phonological and non-phonological
42 errors (Tressoldi & Cornoldi, 2000), taking into account Italian phonology. As a further
43 control, we also examined errors that, on the basis of the English phonology, could be
44 considered both phonological or non-phonological. Classification was made on the
45 basis of a predefined grid, prepared by a group of Italian teachers, expert in English
46 instruction. An error was considered non-phonological if the written word sounded
47 the same as the dictated word, according to Italian spelling-to-sound correspondence,
48 or a plausible spell-to-sound English correspondence, respectively. For example, the
49 word ‘breakfast’ was associated with an Italian phonological error if written ‘bracfast’,
50 or to an Italian non-phonological error if written ‘brecfast’. According to English pho-
51 nology of the word ‘people’, if written ‘piple’, this represented a phonological error
52
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1 8 P. Palladino et al.
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3 and a non-phonological error if written ‘peple’. The same error was therefore classi-
4 fied according to both Italian and English phonological rules (see Table 2 for examples T2
5 of non-phonological errors).
6 Statistical analysis focused on comparison between the CD group and controls
7 and was based on ANOVAs and planned comparisons, following our hypotheses.
8 In order to simplify presentation of these analyses, we report important ANOVA
9 findings across all three groups here. In particular, we report a repeated-measures
10 ANOVA on mean number of errors, with word length (two vs three syllables) and
11 type of error (phonological vs non-phonological) as within subject factors. Group
12 was included as a between subject factor (controls, ELD and CD), for each lan-
13 guage phonology separately.
14
15
16 Italian phonology
17
18 T3 Table 3 presents the mean errors, distinguished according to Italian phonology. Results
19 showed a significant main effect of group, F(2, 33) = 7.21, p < .05, ƞ2 = .32, because of
20 higher performance of the control group, compared with CD and ELD groups. These
21 two latter groups did not differ in the number of errors, according to planned compar-
22 ison, p = .18. A main effect of error type was also significant, F(2, 33) = 75.09, p < .001,
23 ƞ2 = .69, illustrating the high number of phonological errors (M = 4.94, SD = 0.25) in
24 comparison with non-phonological errors (M = 2.01, SD = 0.22).
25 Furthermore, these effects were qualified by a significant three-way interaction
26 (group × type of error × word length), F(2, 33) = 4.08, p < .05, ƞ2 = .19. Planned com-
27 parisons showed that all three groups demonstrated significantly different patterns
28 of error. In fact, although all children produced more phonological than non-
29 phonological errors, this effect was particularly evident in the case of CD (especially
30 for disyllabic words). CD also appeared to be more affected by word length. Table 3
31 shows that CD produced a higher phonological error rate with disyllable words,
32 compared with three-syllable words (p < .05). However, the ELD group showed
33 the opposite pattern, with marginally better performance with disyllable than
34 three-syllable words, although this did not reach significance (p = .28). The control
35
36
Table 2. Examples of non-phonological errors distinguished according to the English versus Italian
37 phonological rules
38
39 Non-phonological Phonetic coding Non-phonological Phonetic coding
40 errors according errors according
to English (original to Italian
41 word)
42
43 STOREES (stories) ˈstɔ:ri:ʒ STORYS ’stɔriʒ
44 PEAPOL (people) ’pi:pәl PIPOL ’pi:pәl
BREACKFAST (breakfast) ˈbrekfəst BREKFAST brɛkfast
45 WHINTER (winter) ’hwɪntɚ WINTAR wintar
46 RUBBIT (rabbit) ’rʌbɪt RABIT rabit
47 UMBRELA (umbrella) ʌmˈbrelə AMBRELLA ambrɛlla
48 HOLLIDAY (holiday) ˈhɑ:llədeɪ OLIDEY ɔlidej
49 TOMMOROW(tomorrow) təˈmɑ:roʊ TUMMOROU tumɔrrow
TELEVISHION (television) ˈteləvɪʃən TELEVISHION televiʃiɔn
50 SINEMA (cinema) ˈsɪ nə mə SINEMA sinema
51
52
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1 L2 Spelling Errors in Dyslexia 9
2
3 Table 3. Mean number of errors distinguished according to the Italian phonological rules
4 Control CD ELD Sample comparison
5
6 Word length M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) F-value p
7
Disyllable word
8 Phonological error 3.02 1.08 7.15 2.07 5 2.04 13.71 <.001
9 Non-phonological error 2.03 2.07 1.08 1.05 1.06 1.26 <1 n.s.
10 Three-syllable word
11 Phonological error 3.06 1.08 5.02 2 6 1.15 5.10 <.05
12 Non-phonological error 1.06 1.14 2.07 1.04 2 1.33 <1 n.s.
13 CD, children with dyslexia; ELD, English learning difficulties.
14
15
16 group’s performance did not show any particular difference between the two word
17 lengths, for either phonological or non-phonological errors (Table 3).
18
19 English phonology
20
21 When errors were considered according to English phonology, similar patterns
22
T4 emerged (Table 4). Indeed, a 3 × 2 × 2 ANOVA found a significant main effect of
23 group, F(2, 33) = 4.93, p < .05, ƞ2 = .23, although no significant difference was found
24 subsequently between CD and ELD groups. A main effect of type of error F(2, 33)
25 = 126.48, p < .001, ƞ2 = .79 was also significant, pertaining to a higher number of pho-
nological errors (M = 5.65, SD = 0.34) than non-phonological errors (M = 1.53, Q9
26
27 SD = 0.11). A significant interaction between group and type of error, F(2, 33)
28 = 4.98, p < .05, ƞ2 = 0.23, confirmed the difference between groups being significant
29 only for the phonological errors (Table 4). In fact, planned comparison showed a
30 higher number of phonological errors for the CD group than the other two groups.
31 As Table 4 shows, word length produced similar effects in English phonology to those
32 observed according to Italian phonology. An increase of errors was seen in the CD
33 group, when short words were dictated; but here again, the difference was small.
34
35
Location of the Phonological Errors Within the Word
36
37 Further analysis concerned the location of phonological errors within a word, because
38 these were both more frequent and critical in between-group comparisons. Each
39
40
Table 4. Mean number (and SDs) of errors distinguished according to English phonological rules
41
42 Word length Control CD ELD Sample comparison
43
44 M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) F-value p
45 Disyllable words
46 Phonological 3.09 2.46 7.38 1.85 5.04 2.56 8.59 <.01
47 Non-phonological error 1.06 1.00 1.61 .86 1.26 .63 1.08 n.s.
48 Three-syllable words
Phonological error 3.09 2.07 6.03 2.52 6.04 1.88 3.54 <.05
49 Non-phonological error 1.04 1.14 1.61 1.04 2.00 .94 1.59 n.s.
50
51 CD, children with dyslexia; ELD, English learning difficulties.
52
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1 10 P. Palladino et al.
2
3 error was classified according to its position (i.e. in first, second or third syllable) for
4 each protocol, and individually, for disyllable and three-syllable words. Words added
5 to prevent word length predictability in each list were excluded from analysis. We
6 considered errors separately for each syllable, so that a single word could imply more
7 than one error. Two mixed ANOVAs were conducted; one for disyllable words, with
8 two levels (e.g. first vs second syllable), and one with three levels for three-syllable
9 word, with group as a between subjects factor for both.
10 Analysis of disyllable words showed a main effect of position, F(1, 33) = 3.93,
11 p = .05, ƞ2 = .11, but no interaction between position and group, F < 1. As shown
12 in Table 5, the second (i.e. final) syllable in disyllabic words produced more errors T5
13 than the first syllable, across all three groups. With three-syllable words, the main
14 effect of position was also significant, F(2, 66) = 21.86, p < .001, ƞ2 = .40. This effect
15 was qualified by a significant position × group interaction, F(4, 132) = 2.68, p < .05,
16 ƞ2 = .14. As can be seen in Table 5, this interaction is due to a substantial increase
17 in the final syllable errors for CD. Notably, the increase of errors in the last sylla-
18 ble is specific to the CD group, whereas the other two groups showed a compa-
19 rable error rate in all syllables (controls) or a small, but non-significant, increase
20 (ELD group).
21
22
23 DISCUSSION
24
25 In the present study, children with and without a reading disorder were tested on
26 their L2 spelling skills. They were Italian children, all learning English as a foreign
27 language at school, either with fully acquired literacy in their L1 transparent lan-
28 guage, included in a control group (if achievement was good in L2), supplementary
29 control ELD group (if achievement in L2 was poor) or a CD group, with severe
30 problems in L1 reading. CD and ELD groups were either ‘expected’ or ‘selected’
31 to be poor in English learning, but differed in Italian reading competence: CD were
32 impaired, whilst ELD children did not present serious difficulties in L1, according
33 to school records. Therefore, the comparison between CD and ELD groups
34 was critical to discern whether English learning difficulties observed in CD were
35 specific in nature (i.e. with a defined pattern), when compared with a generic poor
36 English learning (ELD) group. The latter group’s difficulty seems to derive from
37
38
39 Table 5. Mean number (and SD) of phonological errors in different positions; first and second for
40 disyllable and first, second and third for three-syllable words
41 Word length Control CD ELD Sample comparison
42
43 M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) F-value p
44 Disyllable words
45 First syllable 3.08 1.71 6.54 1.71 4.80 2.82 9.07 <.01
46 Second syllable 4.31 4.00 8.15 3.55 5.70 3.82 3.41 <.05
47 Three-syllable words
48 First syllable 3.08 2.10 4.15 2.19 4.30 1.42 1.4 n.s.
Second syllable 1.15 .80 3.31 1.93 2.50 1.35 7.34 <.01
49 Third syllable 3.00 2.27 7.08 3.33 5.00 2.87 6.53 <.01
50
51 CD, children with dyslexia; ELD, English learning difficulties.
52
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1 L2 Spelling Errors in Dyslexia 11
2
3 more general, less severe and less homogeneous reasons; at least partially different
4 from those expected to cause English learning problems in CD.
5 In general, the results of the present study are in line with findings from previ-
6 ous research (Chung & Ho, 2010; Lindgren & Laine, 2011; Palladino et al., 2013),
7 indicating that CD also have difficulties in learning L2. In this instance, they make
8 a substantial number of errors in writing dictated L2 words, even when words
9 are highly familiar. Results also showed that CD differ in their pattern of errors
10 from controls, but also from ELD. In fact, although CD and ELD both showed
11 poor L2 spelling performance, analysis of error type indicated that CD produce
12 mainly phonological-type errors; certainly, to a greater extent than other groups.
13 Furthermore, presence of both phonological cues (comparing short and long
14 words) and syllable position affected CD performance in a specific way. In fact,
15 CD’s performance was significantly affected by the low availability of phonological
16 cues as appeared by specific impairment with short words. These differences seem
17 to suggest that difficulty with English spelling has a more substantial phonological
18 basis for CD than ELD. In addition, CD’s selective impairment with the last syllable
19 in long words may be associated with a general difficulty in processing syllables
20 from a phonological point of view.
21 Comparison of phonological errors, according to either Italian or English pho-
22 nology, offered further relevant insights. In general, results showed similar pat-
23 terns of non-phonological errors between groups, when both Italian and English
24 phonology were considered. All children, and CD in particular, showed reliance
25 on both Italian and English phonology when spelling English words. In some cases,
26 CD and ELD generated Italian phonological-orthographical matching, and in other
27 cases, when children may have been more confident, they tried to predict how the
28 word could be spelled – using L2 rules. Several cases of mixed errors (i.e. both
29 phonological and non-phonological errors within the same example) seem to indi-
30 cate that children even tried to rely on the phonology of both languages for differ-
31 ent sections of the word.
32 It is worth noting here that qualitative analysis of mixed errors indicates that a
33 non-phonological error, classified in one phonology, would often be a phonological
34 error in the converse, as well as a non-phonological error in the original. In other
35 words, here, an Italian non-phonological error would be an English phonological
36 error – in addition to being an Italian non-phonological error. Therefore, it
37 appears that children struggling to find the correct spelling of a word may refer
38 to both Italian and English language (orthography/phonology). For example, writing
39 ‘pepol’ (for the word ‘people’) was scored according to the Italian phonology
40 (where ‘pipol’ is the phonological plausible form) as a mixed error (‘pe’ is a pho-
41 nological error, ‘pol’ is a non-phonological one). However, from the English per-
42 spective, both syllables should be scored as non-phonological errors, as the
43 word is phonologically plausible in English. It is likely that when a child experiences
44 difficulty, he or she makes an effort to predict, according to English rules, how the
45 word could be spelled, whilst trying to reproduce the phonemes he or she was
46 able to recognize.
47 It should be emphasized that, in all groups, there was a low number of non-
48 phonological errors in comparison with phonological ones. According to the
49 stages (Frith, 1985) described in L1 learning, the prevalence of phonological errors
50 suggests that children are still in the alphabetic stage, where they learn to associate
51 every phoneme or group of phonemes with a particular graphic pattern. In fact,
52
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1 12 P. Palladino et al.
2
3 phonological type errors are due to incorrect associations between graphemes
4 and their corresponding phonemes. This result shows that Italian seventh and
5 eighth graders, despite many years of English teaching, are still in the early phases
6 of English acquisition. This differs from L1 acquisition (Sprenger-Charolles, Siegel,
7 & Bonnet, 1998; Treiman & Bourassa, 2000), where children, especially those
8 learning to use a transparent L2, may shift more easily between use of phonolog-
9 ical and non-phonological lexical processes. The latter processes may also be bet-
10 ter supported by other cues. In fact, the literature shows that, even from their
11 very earliest learning experiences, children also exhibit sensitivity to different lin-
12 guistic information, including certain graphotactic or morphological regularities,
13 via implicit learning (Pacton & Deacon, 2008; Pacton, Fayol, & Perruchet, 2005).
14 In addition, effects of word length and syllable position offer important information
15 about the specific weaknesses of Italian CD in spelling English words. These results are
16 open to different explanations, but in our view, represent two different implications
17 of a common underlying phonological deficit of people with dyslexia (e.g. Hulme &
18 Snowling, 2009). Facilitation offered by long words may be due to CD’s difficulties
19 in recognizing short words, because of the low number of phonological elements. It
20 should also be noted that short words differ from long words in many respects other
21 than length (including stress, predictability, etc.), and these variables could have
22 affected difficulty in creating phonological (and orthographic) representations of
23 words. Regarding specific CD impairment with final syllables, we think that the effect
24 could be due to a phonological memory problem. It is well established that dyslexia is
25 associated with poor phonological memory (e.g. Hulme & Snowling, 2009), and it has
26 also been demonstrated (Palladino & Ferrari, 2008) that individuals with poor phono-
27 logical memory miss final elements of a series in particular. In other words, we
28 hypothesize that when writing a word, CD hold the series of component phonemes
29 in mind, overlooking final phonemes more easily.
30 In conclusion, these results offer a first systematic view of L2 spelling difficulties
31 for CD. These children have specific characteristics that distinguish them, not only
32 from children with good L2 achievement but also from children with L2 learning
33 difficulties, but no L1 reading disorder. These differences are related to the treatment
34 of the phonological aspects of L2 words and may be associated with phonological dif-
35 ficulties typically observed in CD (e.g. Hulme & Snowling, 2009). However, this
36 hypothesis, and the general pattern of results observed in the present study, should
37 be further supported by new studies including additional measures (e.g. measures
38 of phonological competence and L1 spelling skills), additional material (i.e. to con-
39 trol for other linguistic properties of the material, e.g., position of the stress,
40 word complexity) and larger samples. We acknowledge that the small number
41 of participants in each group constitutes a limitation of this study. Moreover,
42 we should also acknowledge potential limitations resulting from the errors classi-
43 fication system. For the sake of clarity and consistency with the literature, types of
44 errors examined were constrained to a forced choice between phonological and
45 non-phonological errors. Clearly, this could present an oversimplification of error
46 interpretation and words analyses, such as the syllable count (see, e.g., ‘the case of
47 chocolate’ – which could be broken in different numbers of syllables designated as
48 both two or three syllabic, according to different references, see, e.g., Syllable
49 Dictionary).
50 These results also suggest several possibilities for education and intervention.
51 First, they support the claim that CD are poor in writing words correctly (and
52
53
54 Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DYSLEXIA (2016)
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1 L2 Spelling Errors in Dyslexia 13
2
3 for L2 writing, this happens in a particular way). Therefore, teachers should follow
4 legal recommendations (Law n. 170/, 2010) to avoid curtailing L2 expression in
5 CD; for example, being tolerant with spelling errors or requesting oral produc-
6 tions more frequently. However, the aforementioned results also indicate some
7 caution in generalizing difficulties of CD (Miller-Guron & Lundberg, 2000 but see
8 also Crombie, 2000). For example, ‘the common assumption that native language
9 deficits will almost certainly result in failure to read a foreign language can lead to
10 negligence in L2 reading instruction or even an active and deliberate reduction in
11 L2 teaching resources for dyslexic pupils’ (Miller-Guron & Lundberg, 2000).
12 Evidence that the ELP phenomenon may exist (at least in languages with shallow
13 orthography like Italian and Swedish) suggests a need for more careful assessment
14 of L2 learning at school, so that any such attitude may be fully utilized in improving
15 literacy.
16 Our findings also suggest that in order to improve L2 spelling abilities in CD,
17 particular attention should be devoted to their phonological difficulties, starting
18 from basic procedures. For example, focus is needed on ‘whole word’ reliance,
19 not simply the first syllable. Further emphasis should also be applied to the phono-
20 logical cues in short words. Support of a non-phonological approach, based on
21 teaching direct whole word spelling (i.e. without stressing the need for phonolog-
22 ical analysis), may be useful; consistent with the observation of Palladino et al.
23 (2013) that Italian CD appear to feel comfortable if they can rely on general, stable Q10
24 principles. However, these educational suggestions remain tentative, because they
25 need to be supported by additional, specific research. This must be devoted to
26 studying effects of different teaching methods for basic English vocabulary writing,
27 to children with a transparent L1.
28
29
30 APPENDIX
31
Disyllable words Three-syllable words
32 parents hospital
33 stories afternoon
34 people uniform
35 (age; one-syllable word) calendar
36 pencil bicycle
student umbrella
37 picture tomato
38 flower elephant
39 garden holiday
40 bathroom tomorrow
41 breakfast (television; four-syllable word)
winter factory
42 rabbit cinema
43 concert theatre
44 guitar chocolate
45
46
47
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Inserts an icon linking to the attached file in the Inserts a selected stamp onto an appropriate
appropriate pace in the text. place in the proof.

How to use it How to use it

 Click on the Attach File icon in the Annotations
section.
 Click on the proof to where you’d like the attached
file to be linked.
 Select the file to be attached from your computer
or network.
 Select the colour and type of icon that will appear
in the proof. Click OK.
 Click on the Add stamp icon in the Annotations
section.
 Select the stamp you want to use. (The Approved
stamp is usually available directly in the menu that
appears).
 Click on the proof where you’d like the stamp to
appear. (Where a proof is to be approved as it is,
this would normally be on the first page).

7. Drawing Markups Tools – for drawing shapes, lines and freeform

annotations on proofs and commenting on these marks.
Allows shapes, lines and freeform annotations to be drawn on proofs and for
comment to be made on these marks..

How to use it
 Click on one of the shapes in the Drawing
Markups section.
 Click on the proof at the relevant point and
draw the selected shape with the cursor.
 To add a comment to the drawn shape,
move the cursor over the shape until an
arrowhead appears.
 Double click on the shape and type any
text in the red box that appears.

For further information on how to annotate proofs, click on the Help menu to reveal a list of further options:

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