International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(2): 28-34 Published online June 15, 2015 (http://www.ijlal.ir) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) 2015 Khate Sefid Press 28 English Spelling Errors in Hindi Speaking Children Bornini Lahiri Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore, India Email: lahiri.bornini@gmail.com AbstractThepresentstudyreportsaninvestigationof EnglishspellingerrorsbythestudentsofnativeHindi speakers. The study was conducted on grade five students of anEnglishmediumschoolofIndia.Studentswithsimilar socio-economicbackground,studyinginthesameschool were given various tasks to test their English spelling skills. The errors were grouped into five categories. It was noticed that most of the wrong spellings were phonologically similar to the correct spelling. The students wrote what they heard. TheyknewthealphabetsofEnglishandrelatedthese alphabets to some sounds. This seems to be the influence of L1(Hindi)wherethereisonetoonecorrespondence betweensoundandorthographicsymbol.Butitisnotsoin English.MoreovermanyEnglishwordshavesilent alphabetsintheirspellingswhichalsocreatedproblemfor the students. Lack of knowledge of correct pronunciation of Englishwordsaddedtothespellingerrors.Thisstudyis important because as far as my knowledge, no such study on theeffectofHindiontheEnglishspellingerrorshavebeen done earlier. I ndex Terms Secondlanguagelearning,Spellingerrors, Erroranalysis,Englishspelling,Homophones, Orthographical representation I. INTRODUCTION Thestudyandanalysisofspellingerrorshelpto identifythestrategiesthatthestudentsuseinwriting spellings.Suchinformationcanhelpovercomesome commondifficultiesfacedbystudentswhichresultin faultygrapheme.Thepresentpaperlooksontheerrors committed by theprimaryschool students of India(New Delhi)inorthographicalrepresentationofEnglish spellings.Englishisthesecondlanguage(L2)forthese students. Hindi is their first language (L1). There is a trial to look into the errors and classify them and find out their possible reasons. Though there are many studies done on ESL but till now as per my knowledge, no work has been doneonspellingerrorsinEnglishbyHindispeakers learning English as L2. InmostschoolsofIndiaitiscompulsorytolearn Englishasasubject.Atprimarylevelthestudentsare taughttowritesimpleEnglishsentences.Itisimportant toknowthespellingsofthewordstowritecorrect English. Moreover as Ehri (2000) marks that, learning to spell is important as it is connected with learning to read. Towritecorrectspellingsthestudentsrequireknowing notonlythesound-symbolconnectionbutalsothe variousruleswithexceptions.Therearevariousrules likepluralofawordcanbemadebyaddings,esor iesdependingonthewordendingalphabet.These featuresofEnglishmakesEnglishspellinglearninga difficulttask,speciallysofornon-nativespeakerswho arenotaccustomedwiththelanguageandits pronunciation.Thesedifficultiesleadtovariousspelling errors. Therecanbevariousreasonsforfaultygraphemes; ignoranceofspellingrules,transferoftheL1spelling system,mispronunciation,overgeneralization,and unfamiliaritywithEnglishpronunciation.Errors attributedtoignoranceoftheEnglishspellingrulesare thoseinwhichorthographicandmorphologicalrulesare ignored.Itiscommontofinderrorswherewordending withyisalsomadepluralbyaddings.Another common error refers to overgeneralization where students addunnecessaryletterstospellingsinfluencedbyother similar spellings. Students may double a single consonant or add a silent vowel at the end of a word. An error due to unfamiliaritywithEnglishpronunciationisacommon causeforEnglishspellingerrorsforEnglishassecond languagelearners.Theytendtowritewhattheyspeak and being a non-native speaker they do not always speak the correct pronunciation. Moreover, in English the sound and the letter do not correspond always. English language hasabout40unitsofsoundwithonly26lettersusedto represent them (Treiman, 1993). Hindi speakers find this very disturbing as most of the Hindi spellings correspond withtheirsounds.HindiiswritteninDevanagariscript whichisbasedon phonetic principles.Thealphabets representthesoundstheysymbolize.So,theHindi speakershaveatendencytowritewhattheyhear.This ruleapplieswellwithHindispellingsbutnotwith English spellings and thus leads to spelling errors. Received April 24, 2015;Accepted June 4, 2015. 2015 Khate Sefid Press International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(2): 28-34 Published online June 15, 2015 (http://www.ijlal.ir) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) 2015 Khate Sefid Press 29 Thepresentstudygroupsthespellingerrorsofthe studentsintofivebasiccategorieshavingsub-divisions. Someofthebasicreasonsfoundfortheerrorswere absenceofonetoonemappingofgraphemeand phonemeinEnglishalphabets,presenceofsilent alphabets and overgeneralization. II. BACKGROUND The error analysis supplanted Contrastive Analysis and became a recognized part of Applied Linguistics owing to theworkofCorder(1967).InErrorAnalysis,theerror hasbeendefinedasadeviationfromthenormofthe target language and a distinction hasbeen made between errorsandmistakes.Theerroriswhattakesplacewhen thedeviationarisesasaresultoflackofknowledge whereasthemistakecomesupwhenlearnersfailto performtheircompetence.In(1957)Ladohypothesized thaterrorsinthesecondlanguagearecausedbythe interferenceofthestudent'snativelanguage.Otherslike Odlin (1989) and James (1980) pointed out that students errorsinL2arecausedbyseveralprocesses.These include transfer and overgeneralization. Transfer refers to the effect of L1 on the learning of L2. In transfer, patterns fromL1areborrowedasanexample;Sun-Alperinetal (2008)observedthatyoungnativeSpanishstudents EnglishspellingerrorswereinfluencedbytheirSpanish orthography.InOvergeneralization,patternsmaybe extendedfromL2byanalogy.Overgeneralizationisa process common in both L1 and L2 learning in which the student extends the use of a grammatical rule of linguistic itembeyonditsaccepteduses,generallybymaking words or structures follow a more regular pattern.Severalstudiesweredonetoinvestigatethespelling errorsbyESL.ManyofthemfocusonEnglishlearning bySpanishchildren(Zutell&Allen1988;Fashola,etal 1996; Ferroli & Shanahan 1993; Sun-Alperin et al 2008). Theeffect of L1 inL2 spelling errorswas studied vastly (Ferroli 1993; Ogorodnikova 1992 and Odisho 1994) and someofthecommonconclusionswerethatmostofthe spelling errors in L2 can be accounted for by interference from the transfer of phonological knowledge from L1. SpellingerrorsinEnglishtendtobeadirectresultof the phonology of English. It has many symbols with more thanonesound.ThisfactormakesEnglishdifficultfor learners of English as a second language learner. Some of thestudies(Arab-Moghaddam&Senechal,2001;Davis, Carlisle&Beeman,1999;Liow&Lau,2006)have shown that theorthographic depth andthe similarities of thelanguagesinvolvedaffecttheESL.Orthographic depthisdeterminedbythedegreeofcorrespondence between sounds and the letters that represent them. Deep orthographies such as English or French, in which sound-symbolcorrespondenceisinconsistent,wouldbeharder tolearnthanmoreshalloworthographies,suchas Spanish or German inwhichthecorrespondence ismore consistent(Joy2011,p.106).Phonologyplaysan important role in spelling writing. Many studies (Bruck & Treiman,1990;Treiman,1993;Vellutino,Fletcher, Snowling&Scanlon,2004)showthecorrespondenceof phonology and the orthography. It was seen that students usetheirphonologicalknowledgetoassistintheir spelling of words (Varnhagen, 1995; Fashola et al., 1996; Geva,Yaghoub-Zadeh & Schuster, 2000). It was also seen thatmanybeginningspellersusealetter-namestrategy (bforbee)tospellaword(Read,1971;Treiman& Bourassa,2000).Moreover,itwasalsoseenthatwords that have unstressed syllables, such as the second syllable inthewordinterest,areoftendeleted.Inthiscase,the word is spelled intrest by new learners of English. Treiman(1993)foundanumberofothercommon errorsamongbeginningspellers.Somecommonerrors thosewerefoundinESLwereomissionofaletter (naive=naiv),additionofaletter(dog=dogh),reversals of the letter order of a word (naive= niave), incorrect use of thefinal e and other final letters (gift=gifte) and the substitutionofcorrectletterinawordwithincorrect letter(race=rase).Someresearchers(Read,1971; Treiman,1985;Varnhagen,Boechler,&Steffler,1999) haveobservedthatstudentsencountermostdifficulty withvowelsandseparatingconsonantsblendsintotheir constituents. III. METHODOLOGY A. Participants Thepresentresearchisacrosssectionalstudyof16 children;7boysand9girls.Theywereaged10to11 years old and were students of grade five, studying in an English medium school of New Delhi, India. For all the studentsHindiwastheL1andEnglishL2.Theybelong tosimilarsocio-economicbackgroundlivinginsidethe JNU campus or nearby. Everyones mother was a house-makerandfatherworkedinJNUasnon-teachingstaff. Theparentsofthesechildrenhadnoknowledgeof English.ThechildrenusedHindiintheirhome.These childrenlearntEnglishonlyintheirschool.Theygot exposure of English only in the school.ThesechildrenwerelearningEnglishfromclassone. Atthislevel(inclassfive),accordingtotheschool syllabus,theywereexpectedtowritefullgrammatical sentencesinEnglish.Theywerealsoexpectedtowrite smallessaysonvarioustopics.Theyweremadetoread smallstoriesinEnglishandanswerthequestions regarding the stories in English. B. Instruments The students second language (English) spelling skills weretestedusingthedictationmethod.Dictation involvedspellingdictationandparagraphdictationfrom International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(2): 28-34 Published online June 15, 2015 (http://www.ijlal.ir) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) 2015 Khate Sefid Press 30 class-V, English Reader (the course book of English1). A word was read thrice and the students were asked to write itintheblanksheettheyweregiven.Someofthe paragraphs from the same book were also read aloud and the students were asked to write them. Thequestionnairemethodwasalsoadopted.The questionnairehadquestionsaskingdaysofweek,names ofmonth,singular-plural,fillintheblanksandessay writingonvarioustopicslikeMyfavouriteteacher, Grandparents day, Diwali (India festival)etc. C. Procedures Therewas1hoursittingfor4dayswiththestudents. Afterthedatacollection,numberoferrorswascounted. Thentheerrorswereclassifiedinto6groups.The percentageoferrorsofeachgroupwasalsotakenfor inter-group comparison. A comparison of errors made by boysandgirlswasalsodone.Allthewordswritten individuallybytheboysandthegirlswerecounted. Errorscommittedbytheboysandthegirlsweretaken individuallyandthepercentageofthesamewerealso takenforcomparingtheerrorscommittedbytheeach sex. IV. RESULTS Boththemajorerrorcategoriesandthesubcategories werederivedfromthedatacollected.Theerrorsare classifiedinthefollowingfivecategories.These categoriesfurtherhavesub-divisions.Theseerrorswere countedforallthecategoriesunderwhichtheywere entitled to come (Table 1). The number of overall wrong spellingsis122butaftercategorizingthemthenumber becomes 131 as in 9 spellings more than one type of error were found. TABLE 1. SHOWING THE PERCENT OF ERRORS UNDER VARIOUS CATEGORIES CategoryType of ErrorsPercentage of Errors 1 Consonant doubling: Failure to double Unnecessary doubling 17 2 Other consonant Single letter replacement Silent letter omitted 37 3 Errors of Silent e Omission Adding and replacing 14 4Other vowel24 5Homophones6 6Others2

1 Marigold, Book Five, Textbook in English for Class V (NCERT). A. Category 1: Consonant-Doubling Error Thetwomajorconsonant-doublingerrorswere includedinthiscategory.Acommonerrorfoundinall thestudentswasregardingthedoublingofconsonants. Sometimestheconsonantswerenotdoubledwhereit should be doubled. In some places there was unnecessary doublingoftheconsonants.Sothissectionhasbeen dividedintotwosub-groups;Failuretodoubleand Unnecessary doubling. Thetotal percent of errors of this category is 17. 1) Failure to double Someoftheexamplesforfailuretodoublearegirafe (giraffe),narate(narrate),botle(bottle),pasenger (passenger),disapointed(disappointed),scholl(school) and metting (meeting). 2) Unnecessary doublingUnnecessarydoublingcanbefoundinmanyplaces. Examples-Barbber(barber),sallesman(salesman),deff (deaf) and truthfull (truthful). B.Category 2: Other Consonant Errors Sincethiscategorycontainedallconsonanterrors,the number of errors is more than the other groups. There are 37 percent errors in this group. In this category errors are found where consonant letters are either replaced, omitted or clusters areretained. Theerrors arecategorized in the following two groups. 1) Letter replaced Thereareinstanceswheresingleletterhasbeen replacedbyotherletters.Examples-insident(incident), plazant(pleasant),passenzer(passenger),gracher (creature),nabber(neighbour),wishal(whistle),hump-bag(humb-backed),thosless(toothless),risite(recite) and hump (humb). 2) Letter omitted Thenumbersofomissionofsilentletterswerevery commonresultingtospellingerror.Examples-kindom (kingdom), wistle (whistle), felo (fellow), barbe (barber), lisen(listen),flok(flock),desend(descend),neihbour (neighbour) and pesent (pleasant). C. Category 3: Errors Involving "Silent " Thiscategorycontainstheerrorsconcerningtheletter e which is 14%. The category is specially made for e, becausemanyerrorswereseenwhichwereduetothe lettereasmanyoftheEnglishwordshavesilente whichareoftenleftoutorputinawrongplacebythe secondlanguagelearnersofEnglish.Followingarethe subcategories. International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(2): 28-34 Published online June 15, 2015 (http://www.ijlal.ir) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) 2015 Khate Sefid Press 31 1)a) Omission of silent The omission category was split in two sub-categories. a)i) Omission of an affix Examples:turnd(turned),askd(asked),crid(cried)and excitd (excited). b)ii) Non-affix omission Examples:stok(stroke),becaus(because),gees(geese), blong(belong),whistl(whistle)anddangrous (dangerous). 2)b) Adding and Replacing of In this category there are spellings where e was wrongly addedorithasbeenreplacedbysomeotherletter. Examples:streat(street),cride(cried),onec(once), sepread (spread), vere (very) and speach (speech). D.Category 4: Other Vowel Errors This category contains allvowel errors except thatof e.Thepercentofwhichis24.Inthiscategorythose wordsarekeptinwhichvowellettersarereplacedby otherletter,missedoutoraddedunnecessarily. Examples:plesent(pleasant),dangrious(dangerous), stud(stood),nater(nature),def(deaf),dyameter (diameter),aney(any),leafi(leafy),spred(spread), creater (creature), goad (God)and peass (piece). E. Category 5: Homophones Althoughalltheitemsinthiscategoryrepresented correctlyspelledEnglishwordsbuttheyarespelling errorsasthespellinguseddiffersfromthatofthetarget word.Thistypeoferrorscantbecheckedinspelling dictations. These errors came into light when the subjects weretoldtowriteessayandwhentheyweregiven paragraphdictations.Thepercentofsucherrorsare6. Examples:had(head),save(shave),there(their),met (made),peace(piece),self(save),by(buy),no(know) and down (dawn). F.Category 6: Others Inthiscategory,2%ofsuchwordsarekeptwhichwere hard to categorize. These words have unique errors. Some ofthewordsare:pasinazer(passenger),inthisword there are so many errors like failing of doubling the letter s,wrongvowelletterusedandwrongreplacementof theconsonant.Otherwordsaregracher(creature), iagrafi (geography) and gicfly (geography). V. DISCUSSION AstherearemoreconsonantsthanvowelsinEnglish alphabetssoitwasnaturaltofindthemaximumnumber oferrorsintheOtherConsonantcategory.Butthe interestingresultwasthattheerrorsfoundintheOther Vowelcategorywerequitehigh.Thereareonlyfive vowelalphabetsbutthenumberoferrorsfoundinthis category was second to the number of errors found in the OtherConsonantcategory.MoreovertheOtherVowel category does not include the Silent e category which is also a part of vowel error. If the categories, Other Vowel andSilentecategoryareputtogetherthenumbersof errors caused dueto vowels arequite large. But thetotal number of vowel-errors does not surpass the total number of consonanterrors. It is so because the consonant-errors includeboththecategories;OtherConsonantcategory and the Consonant Doubling category. It is interesting to note that vowels errors are so high in numberthoughthevowelalphabetsareonlyfivein number.Butitcanbeunderstoodwhyitisso.Thefive vowel alphabets stand for more than five sounds. Though therearemany conflicts about the English vowel sounds (seeDeterding2004)butthewidelyacceptednumberof vowel sounds in Standard English is taken as 20 by others includingpopular pronouncing dictionaries (Jones,et al., 2003;Wells,2000).ItisdifficultforHindinative speakerstorememberthecorrectuseofthevowel alphabetasbythepronunciationtheycannotpredictthe use of the correct alphabet.Hindispellingismainlyphoneticandthereisaclose relationshipbetweenphonemesandgraphemes.In StandardHinditherearetenvowelsoundsandeachof the ten sounds have one corresponding symbol.So, there isonetoonecorrespondencebetweenthesoundandits orthographicalrepresentation.ItiseasyinHindito predictthespellingofawordbyhearingits pronunciation. The Hindi native speakers have a tendency topredictthespellingofaword byjusthearingit.They writewhattheyhear.Sotheerrorlikeonec(once) where the student writes one + c to spell once can be found. This rule applies well with Hindi spellings but not withEnglishspellings.Thisisamajorcauseofspelling errorsinEnglishbyHindinativespeakers.Thiscauses errorsrelatedtobothvowelsandconsonants.InEnglish onesymbolrepresentsmorethanonesoundandone sound can be represented by more than one symbol. This againbecomesapointofconfusionforthelearnersof English.Thisledtoerrorslikeleafi(leafy),vere(very). Symbols like y i and e can be used for the sound /i/. S and c can be used sometimes for the same sound so there was error like risite (recite).Moreover,inEnglishspellingmanywordsarefound where some letters are silent like r and e at the end of aword.ThisagainbecomesaverydifficulttaskforL2 Englishlearnertoremember.So,theerrorslikebarbe( barber)wherethesilentrisdropped,lisen(listen) wherethesilenttisdroppedandbecaus(because) where the silent e is dropped can be found. SomestudentswereignorantoftheEnglishspelling rules.Like,somewereignorantofthepasttenseaffixed.Insuchinstancestheydroppedtheeandjustusedd,insteadofed,e.g.askd(asked),crid(cried)and International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(2): 28-34 Published online June 15, 2015 (http://www.ijlal.ir) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) 2015 Khate Sefid Press 32 excitd (excited). Students spelled some words by analogy. For example they added asilent (e) attheend of aword thatisnotspelledwithafinale.Inthewordtruthful thestudentspredictedthespellingbyusinganalogy wheretheyaddedtruth+full=truthfull.They doubledtheconsonantinwordsthatarespelledwitha singleconsonant.Thestudentsinabilitytohearor identify all the phonemes in the words they hear seems to be crucial in their spelling ability. This is probably related toastudent'sproficiencylevelinEnglish.Lackof exposuretothelanguageseemstobetheunderlying source of this problem. Anothermostimportantfactorthateffectedstudent's spellingerrorratewasunfamiliaritywiththeEnglish words.Thismaybeattributedtothelackofthecorrect semantic,phonologicalandorthographicassociations betweenthespokensoundsandtheprintedsymbols.In the essay writing the students were seen to make errors of homophones.Thispointsouttowardsthefactthatthe studentswerenotfamiliarwiththeformsandtheir meanings.Whenphoneticallytwowordsaresamebut their forms andmeanings aredifferent then it becomes a difficulttaskforthestudenttorememberwhichform relatestoaparticularsemantics.Duetothiserrorswere foundwherethestudentswrotethereinsteadoftheir or were instead of where. MoreoverthesoundsystemofHindiisdifferentfrom thatofEnglishsothestudentsattimesneithercan pronouncethewordcorrectlynorcanspellitcorrectly becausetheyspellwhattheypronounce.InHindisome consonantclusterscannotcomeinthewordbeginning positionsothenativeHindispeakerscannothearsuch soundcombinationandsocannotwritethem.This findingisconsistentwithfindingsofotherpriorstudies inthespellingerrors.ResultsofastudybySt.Pierre (1995)revealedthetendencyofgradethreetoemploy FrenchorthographytospellEnglishwords,atendency that decreases as words become familiar. By grade eight, this tendency diminished but remained evident for certain phonemes. Acomparisonbetweentheerrorsmadebyboysand girls were also studied. It was observed that out of all the wordswrittenbygirls3%ofitwasmisspelled.Inthe caseofboysitwasseenthatoutofthetotalnumberof wordswrittenbyboystotal5%ofwordshadspelling errorsinthem.Butthereisnosignificantdifference.It does not point out towards any specific conclusion. So, in thiscaseitwasseenthatthesexdoesnotaffectthe spellingserrorswhenbothsexesareundersame environment. VI. CONCLUION Non-nativespeakersofEnglishhavelotsoftrouble withvowelgraphemes.Thisisnotsurprisingtoanyone whohasconsideredthesymbol-soundcorrespondence patternsoftheEnglishlanguage,wherethe grapheme/phonemeratioforconsonantshasbeen calculated as 6.0, while that for vowels is 12.7 (i.e., there are,onaverage,almost12waysofspellingeachvowel sound) (Dewey,1970). Ifwelook in details attheindividualerror categories, someotherinterestingtrendscanbepicked outfromthe results.Forexample,acloselookatsomeofthedata indicatesthatcertainsoundsorletterscausedmore problemsthanothers.Ofthe44itemsinCategory2 whereasingleconsonantwasreplacedbyanother consonant,halfinvolvedconfusionsbetweenletterpairs inthegroupz,s,c,k,qandanotherthirdinvolvedthe voiced/unvoicedpairs.Thus,mostofthe errors involved letters that spell sounds that are related to articulation.Thedataalsopointtowardssomestrategies thatthestudentsmayhavebeenusing.Aprincipleof economyseemstohavebeenusedinCategory1,where moredouble-consonanterrorsinvolvedomissionthan unnecessaryaddition(thenumberoffailureofdoubling is 11 while unnecessary doubling is 6) and in Category 3, wherethemostfrequentsilent error was omitted. In Category 4, the letter most frequently used erroneously to spellschwawas;thisshowsamisperceptiononthe students'partofthefrequencyofspellingsforschwa, since and are actually about equal in English as representations of schwa. The sound /a/contributed many fewererrorsthanmighthavebeenexpectedfromits frequencyinthelanguage.Thestudentsappeartohave correctly recognized the fact that /ae/ has one of the most consistentspellingsinEnglish,beingrepresentedalmost exclusively by one symbol, i.e., . Onethingisworthnoticingthatismostoftheerrors werephonologicallysimilartothecorrectspelling.That istosaythatthestudentswrotewhattheyheard.They knowthe alphabets of English and relate these alphabets tosomesoundswhicharenottotallywrongbutthereis notalwaysonetoonecorrespondencebetweenthe alphabetsandthesoundswhichthelearnersareyetto know. Practicemakes that senseso apersonwho iswell learnt in English can easily write the correct spelling of a word which he or she has never heard before. Thisstudywasperformedonaverysmallnumberof students still it seems important because no such study on HindispeakingchildrenlearningEnglishhasbeendone. Thisstudyprovidessomeimportantreasonsforthe spellingerrorsfoundinL1Hindispeakerslearning English.Bylookingattheseerrorsitcanbesaidthata learner'serrorsprovideevidenceofthesystemofthe languagethatheorsheisusing.Theyaresignificantin three differentways. First to theteacher, in thatthey tell him/her,ifhe/sheundertakesasystematicanalysis,how fartowardsthegoalthelearnerhasprogressed.Second, theyprovidetheresearcherswithevidenceofhow languageislearnedoracquired.Thirdlytheyare indispensabletothelearnerhimselfbecausehecan regardthemakingoferrorasadeviceusedinorderto International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(2): 28-34 Published online June 15, 2015 (http://www.ijlal.ir) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) 2015 Khate Sefid Press 33 learn.Thisstudycanbefurtherdevelopedbyincreasing thenumber of subjects and also by introducing the study ofdevelopmentofspellingskillsofL1Hindispeakers learning English as L2. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Theauthorswishtotakethisopportunitytoexpress theirgratitudetotheanonymousreviewersfortheir invaluable comments on the first draft of this paper. REFERENCES Arab-Moghaddam, M., & Senechal, M. (2001). 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Liow,S.J.&Lau,L.H-S.(2006).Thedevelopmentof bilingualchildrensearlyspellinginEnglish.Journalof Educational Psychology, 98(4), 868-878. Odisho,EdwardY.(2004).Assyrian(Aramaic):ARecent Model for its Maintenance and Revitalization. In A. Panaino & A. Piras (eds). Melammu Symposia IV. Milano, 183-196. Odlin,T.(1989).Languagetransfer.Cambridge,UK: Cambridge University Press. Ogorodnikova,Kira.(1992).Orthographyinthetarget language:Doesitinfluenceinterlanguagephonology.Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, 8 (1), 57-68. Read, C. (1971). Pre-school children's knowledge of English phonology. Harvard Educational Review, 41, 1-34. Rhonda Joy (2011). The concurrent development of spelling skillsintwolanguages.InternationalElectronicJournalof Elementary Education, 3(2), 5-18. St. Pierre, L., Laing, D., & Morton, L. (1995). The influence ofFrenchontheEnglishspellingofchildreninearlyFrench immersion. Canadian Modern Language Review, 51, 330-347. International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics 2015; 1(2): 28-34 Published online June 15, 2015 (http://www.ijlal.ir) ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online) 2015 Khate Sefid Press 34 Sun-Alperin,M.K.,&Wang,M.(2008).Spanish-speaking childrensspellingerrorswithEnglishvowelsoundsthatare representedbydifferentgraphemesinEnglishandSpanish words. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 33(4), 932-948.Treiman, R. (1993). Beginning to spell. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Treiman,R.,&Bourassa,D.(2000).Thedevelopmentof spelling skill. Topics in Language Disorders, 20(3), 1-18. Varnhagen, C. K., Boechler, P. M., & Steffler, D. J. (1999). Phonologicalandorthographicinfluencesonchildrensvowel spelling. Scientific Studies of Reading, 3(4), 363379. Vellutino, F. R., Fletcher, J. M., Snowling, M. J., & Scanlon, D. M. (2004). Specific reading disability (dyslexia): What have welearnedinthepastfourdecades.JournalofChild Psychology and Psychiatry, 45, 2-40. Wells,J.(2000).Longmanpronunciationdictionary. Harlow: Longman. Zutell, J., & Allen, V. (1988). The English spelling strategies ofSpanish-speakingbilingualchildren.TESOLQuarterly, 22(2), 333-340. AUTHOR BorniniLahiriwasawardedDoctoraldegreeinApril2015. ShecompletedherPh.D.fromJawaharlalNehruUniversity, NewDelhi,India,inLinguistics.HerPh.D.thesisisa typologicalstudyofsevenEasternIndo-Aryanlanguages.Otherthantypologyherareaofinterestincludes sociolinguistics,minorandlesserknownlanguages,corpus linguistics, language documentation and description. At present sheisworkinginagovernmentfundedprojectforthe endangeredlanguages(Schemefor Protectionand Preservation ofEndangeredLanguages)atCentralInstituteofIndian Languages,Mysore,India.Shehaspresentedvariousresearch papersindifferentnationalandinternationalconferences.She has around ten publications.