'Reading, spelling, it is so easy!'

Preface

'Reading, spelling, it is so easy!'

Exclamation of a procient reader showing his surprise at the fact that research is carried out in the area of literacy acquisition. A skilled reader can read between 400 and 500 words per minute (De- haene, 2007). To some degree reading and spelling becomes an au- tomatic process such as tying a shoe lace, riding a bicycle or driving a car and a procient reader/speller tends to forget the enduring learning process. The ease with which the majority of literate peo- ple read/spell throws a shadow over those struggling to acquire this skill. Script is used as a medium of communication and the acqui- sition of literacy skills are important to create and participate in societal life as well as succeed professionnally. Literacy skills have such crucial function that society members are compelled to attend school to learn how to read/spell (Klicpera & Gasteiger-Klicpera, 1998).

Alphabetic writing systems of languages are characterized as be- ing transparent or opaque according to the regularity of phoneme to grapheme correspondences, i.e. how sounds match letters or letter combinations. Italian, Finnish or German have a more transparent orthography whereas French or English have a more opaque orthog- raphy. This transparency of the orthographic writing system is not necessarily symmetric for reading and spelling (Seymour, Aro, Ersk- ine, 2003). Although German is more transparent than French over-

xiii

xiv PREFACE all, German and French show the same asymmetry between read- ing and spelling. Reading German and French, that is mapping phonemes to graphemes, is more regular than spelling, which in- volves mapping graphemes to phonemes (Wimmer & Landerl, 1997;

Sprenger-Charolles & Cole, 2003).

The present study focuses on children who are learning to read and spell in two languages in primary school, thus acquiring biliter- acy at an early age. In Luxemburg, children acquire literacy skills in German from grade 1 on and start French classes two years later.

The native language of the children renders the linguistic situation even more complex as they either speak a Germanic (e.g. Luxembur- gish) or Romanophone (Portuguese) language at home. Although German has a transparent writing system children are confronted with orthographic diculties such as for example the phoneme / S / which is generally spelled 'sch' but 's' before 't' of 'p' in the beginning of words. The orthography is also used to semantically dierentiate between words which sound the same such as the homophones 'Wal' (wale) and 'Wahl' (choice). Vowel length markings such as adding a silent 'h', or doubling the vowel to mark long vowels or doubling the following consonants to indicate short vowels are another diculty of German. After two years of German, written French classes are added to the educational curriculum in third grade with a commu- nicative teaching method. French has the same alphabetic writing system but a dierent and more opaque orthography than German.

To illustrate the diculty of acquiring a second language, imag-

ine you start learning Russian, which has an alphabetic writing sys-

tem however uses the Cyrillic alphabet. You are exposed to a new

language, a stream of unusual sounds and you have to learn how to

read and spell in this language. Some letter-sound correspondences

are easy to learn such as 'ò', 'ì' or 'o' which sound the same as in

German or French. Letters such as ' à ', ' Ë ' or 'ð' look the same as

in the Roman alphabet but sound dierently, /v/, /n/, /r/ respec-

tively. Other letters are presented dierently in Cyrillic, but their

sounds exist in German or French such as 'ä' - /d/, 'ë' - /l/ or 'ï' -

/p/. Finally, some sounds / C /, /

o/ do not exist in German or French

xv and are represented with specic Cyrillic letters 'ù' or resembling Roman letters 'e'.

French script uses the same alphabet as German, but children are confronted with similarities and dierences of two orthographic writ- ing sytems when they start to acquire literacy skills in French after two years of German classes. The children have to adapt phoneme to grapheme correspondences from German to French. Some corre- spondences are similar in German and French, whereas others are dierent such as the phoneme / S / which exists in both languages but is spelled 'sch' in German and 'ch' in French. Graphemes such as 'an' are pronounced /an/ in German but /a/ in French. More- over, children have to learn correspondences of phonemes which do not exist in German such as the nasals/a/, / E /, / O /. Children have to get used to the dierences between French and German, such as spelling nouns with lower-case letters in French as opposed to capital letters in German as well as acquire the specic orthographic rules of French. An example would be French inections such as marking gender on adjectives, where endings are altered to indicate the fem- inine (e.g. La lle est grandE - the girl is tall). Across languages, gender of nouns can dier such as for the noun 'die Butter' (butter) which is feminine in German but masculine in French 'le beurre'. A specic diculty of French for reading and spelling are silent end- ings (e.g. 't', 's', 'ent' or 'e'). Also, due to the more opaque writing system French includes numerous homophones such as 'cent' (hun- dred), 'sang' (blood), 'sans' (without), and 'sent' (smells). Opacity refers to the fact that in French a number of phoneme can be tran- scribed by multiple graphemes. This concept will be dened in more detail in the general introducion (on page 23). Concerning seman- tics, some words are similar across languages, such as 'Lampe' in German which is 'lampe' in French (lamp), however, some words constitute false friends, such as 'art' in French means 'Kunst' (art) in German whereas 'Art' in German means 'facon' (kind) in French.

In other words, children have to learn another orthography but also

another syntax, and semantics for which knowledge of German can

be an advantage or interference.

xvi PREFACE Children acquiring literacy with ease can succeed an educational system in which two languages are learnt. However, for children with specic reading or spelling problems, having to acquire these skills in two languages is an extremely laborious task. To an adult procient (biliterate) reader this heavy emphasis on language learning has obvious reasons, namely the country's small size and internationalization(Baetens-Beardsmore, 2002), which do not nec- essarily make sense to children yet especially those with specic reading/spelling problems. Children with specic reading/spelling problems usually remain in their school and might receive additional support from their teacher or an external specialist during some lessons, but the language load remains.

The present work tries to identify abilities and inabilities of poor spellers compared to good spellers in reading, spelling and literacy related tasks in German and in French. The purpose of identify- ing competencies or specic problems of poor spellers compared to good spellers is to adequately encourage them on their capacities and remediate their deciencies. In research specic problems are distin- guished by analysing errors children produce, in practice however it is important to keep the function of script as means of communica- tion in mind.

¾L'erreur [...] est chargee, gonee, degordante de sig- nication. Pourquoi nous priver de cette richesse? [...]

Blessons la langue pour sauver l'esprit! Guerre aux vils correcteurs, aux protes attentifs et aseptiques! Leurs rectications tuent les vitamines de la pensee.¿

Jean Tardieu (1951), Un mot pour un autre, p. 23.