the role of phonology, morphology, and …...the role of phonology, morphology, and orthography in...

■ The Role of Phonology, Morphology, andOrthography in English and RussianSpellingRegina Boulware-Gooden1, R. Malatesha Joshi2* and Elena Grigorenko3

1Neuhaus Education Center, 4433, Bissonnet, Bellaire, TX 77401, USA2Texas A & M University, College Station, TX 77845, USA3Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

The purpose of the present study was to explore the role of phonology, morphology andorthography in predicting the spelling performance in English-speaking and Russian-speaking children. Tests that tap phonology, morphology and orthography were adminis-tered to students in grades 4 and 6 in the USA and Russia. Multiple regression analysesshowed that phonology and morphology contributed more for spelling of English wordswhile orthography and morphology contributed more to the spelling of Russian words.The results are explained in terms of the orthographic nature of English and Russian lan-guages as well as the instructional practices and the importance of morphology in spellingin both the languages. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: English spelling; morphology; orthography; phonology; Russian spelling

Our research on writing and spelling has lagged far behind our research on readingand the cognitive functions that mediate reading. There are considerably larger num-bers of research studies pertaining to how children learn to read than studies thathave explored how writing and spelling skills are acquired. For instance, accordingto the Social Sciences Citation Index, from 2003–2013, nearly 12387 articles werepublished on ‘reading’, but only 1553 articles on ‘spelling’. Nevertheless, experimen-tal studies examining the nature of spelling have shown that spelling in English is acomplex skill that involves the knowledge of phonology, letter knowledge,morphology and orthography. Much of what we know about the relationshipbetween phonology and spelling is based on the studies by Read and Treiman. Read(1975) analysed the data from spontaneous production of spelling by precociouspreschoolers and Treiman (1993) studied spelling production of normal first gradechildren. Error analyses of children’s spelling by Read and Treiman showed that pho-nological principles influenced spelling production of these two groups of children.Treiman, Goswami, Tincoff and Leevers (1997) studied the spelling performanceof speakers of different dialects of English such as American English and southernBritish English. They found that British elementary school children spelled car ascawhile American children spelled it cr. Interestingly, this was found to be true evenfor adults with different accents (American and Welsh) (Treiman & Barry, 2000).

*Correspondence to: R. Malatesha Joshi, PhD, Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture, Texas A & M Uni-versity, College Station, TX, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DYSLEXIA 21: 142–161 (2015)

DYSLEXIAPublished online 31 March 2015 in Wiley Online Library(wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/dys.1498

In addition to phonology, morphological knowledge also plays an important rolein spelling. According to Carlisle (1995), morphological awareness ‘… focuses onchildren’s conscious awareness of the morphemic structure of words and theirability to reflect on and manipulate that structure’ (p. 194). The importance ofmorphemic knowledge in English spelling can be illustrated by words such as ‘heal’and ‘health’. Even though the phonology of the first syllable is different in the twowords, the spelling pattern is the same in order to keep the morpheme ‘heal’ in theword ‘health’. Several studies have shown that students with better morphemicknowledge are also better spellers. Henry (1988) reported that fluent readersattended first to the morphemes, secondly to the syllables and only lastly to thephonemic breakdown of a word (p. 268). A series of studies by Deacon and hercolleagues has shown the importance of morphological knowledge not only inEnglish but also in French (Bryant, Deacon & Nunes, 2006; Casalis, Deacon &Pacton, 2011; Deacon & Bryant, 2006a, 2006b; Sangster & Deacon, 2011). For in-stance, children as young as 6 and 7years can explain that ‘turnip’ has one mor-pheme and ‘turned’ has two morphemes, if they recognized ‘turn’ is the root in‘turned’ but not in ‘turnip’. Based on their results, these authors concluded thatknowledge of morphemes may play a causal role in spelling. Carlisle (1987) re-ported that learning disabled children lagged behind normal spellers in learning der-ivational morphology but that the learning experience of the two groups was notnoticeably different. Although both groups knew more about morphological rela-tionships than they used in their spelling, the difference was larger for the learningdisabled children. Both groups were much better at linking the derived word to thebase word than they were at producing a derived word from a base word. Siegel(2008), after administering tasks that tapped phonological awareness, syntacticawareness and morphological awareness to over 1000 sixth grade students, foundthat morphological awareness made a greater contribution to spelling performancebeyond phonological awareness and syntactic awareness.

Along with the knowledge of phonology and morphology, orthographic knowl-edge also plays an important role in spelling. Shankweiler, Lundquist, Dreyer andDickinson (1996) noted, ‘Knowledge of how the orthography represents the pho-nology of words is taxed both in reading at the decoding stage and in writing at thespelling stage’ (p. 268). According to Henderson (1984), ‘Orthography is definedas graphemic patterns of a written language and their mapping onto phonology,morphology, and meaning’ (p. 1). The mapping of phonemes to graphemes differsin different writing systems, and when there is a closer mapping of phonemes tographemes, such as in shallow orthographies like Spanish, word reading may be eas-ier, and when there is not a closer mapping of phonemes to graphemes, such as inEnglish, word reading may be difficult and may take a longer time to master. Thisphenomenon is referred to as the orthographic depth hypothesis, proposed byKatz and Frost (1992). For instance, Seymour (2006), after comparing six differentEuropean orthographies concluded that linguistic differences, especially aspects ofsyllable structure and variations in orthographic depth, may be crucial in determin-ing the amount of learning necessary for successful progression through eachphase. Further, Seymour, Aro and Erskine (2003), after examining the speed andaccuracy of familiar word reading and nonword reading in eight orthographies(Finnish, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Portuguese, French, Danish and English), con-cluded that the establishment of an effective sight vocabulary and decoding abilityneeds about 2 years of reading experience in English compared with 1year in many

English and Russian Spelling 143


European languages. Similarly, Wimmer and Landerl (1997) reported that childrenacquiring reading and spelling skills in German did not show the same developmen-tal trend as did children acquiring these skills in English. Firstly, the authors notedthat because of the regularity of German orthography, German children were ableto more reliably decode words after grade one compared with their English coun-ter parts. Secondly, German children were not found to move through the samedevelopmental stages as were the English readers and spellers (also see Joshi andAaron, 2006). Further, literacy research especially spelling has generally beenmodelled after studies of the English language, which has sometimes been referredto as an ‘outlier orthography’ (Share, 2008). It was also tacitly believed, if notovertly stated, that what is true of English is also true of other writing systems.However, during the past 10 years or so, there has been a remarkable interestin literacy acquisition in orthographies other than English.

Shankweiler et al. (1996) investigated the relationship between phonologicalawareness and morphological awareness in normal ninth grade readers and learn-ing disabled ninth and tenth grade readers. Results from this study indicated thatphonological awareness contributed the most variance for both reading and spell-ing. For spelling, nonword reading accounted for 50% of the variance. If phonemedeletion was added first and morphological awareness second, morphologicalawareness predicted 13% of the variance for morphologically complex wordsand 8% for a mixed spelling test that used regular, irregular and morphologicalwords. Even though phonological awareness accounted for the most variance inspelling, morphological awareness did contribute additional variance especiallywhen the words are morphologically complex. If one considers that 60% of thenew words acquired by school children are morphologically complex (Nagy & An-derson, 1984), the results of Shankweiler et al. become even more noteworthy.

Spelling development has been examined in several orthographies such asFrench (Fayol, Hupet & Largy, 1999; Jaffré & Fayol, 2006; Pacton, Perruchet, Fayol& Cleeremeans, 2001), Spanish (Justicia, Defior, Pelegrina & Martos, 2002), Greek(Porpodas, 2006) and Kiswahili (Alcock, 2006). These studies basically examinedhow the orthographic inconsistencies influence spelling production in their respec-tive orthographies. A few studies have compared the spelling data from differentorthographies. For instance, in a series of studies conducted by Caravolas andher colleagues (Bruck et al., 1998; Caravolas, Bruck & Genesse, 2003), it wasshown that even though phoneme awareness is important for spelling developmentin both English and French, it was more important for English than it was forFrench. Similar results have also been reported for Czech (Caravolas, 2006),Turkish (Oney & Durgunoglu, 1997) and German (Wimmer & Landerl, 1997;Landerl, 2006). However, in a recent study by Caravolas et al. (2012) it was foundthat phoneme awareness contributed equally to spelling among English, Spanish,Slovak and Czech orthographies. The differences in the findings may be due tothe age of the participants; in the Caravolas et al (2012) study, participants werein the beginning stages of literacy acquisition, while their earlier study included par-ticipants who already had exposure to literacy instruction. However, Moll et al.(2014) also report similar findings in five orthographies of English, French, German,Hungarian and Finnish, even though the participants had exposure to literacy in-struction. The differences in the results might be due to the difficulties inconducting cross-linguistic studies as reported by Protopapas and Vlahou (2009).They outline the difficulty of placing the transparency on a continuum, matching

144 R. Boulware-Gooden et al.


the ages and exposure to literacy instruction, as well as matching the test materialsand test items. So, if there are fewer studies on spelling and it has been shown thatspelling production requires knowledge of phonology, morphology and orthogra-phy, would the same percentage of each of these factors contribute in differentorthographies and at different grade levels? This is the purpose of the present study.Specifically, the contribution of phonology, morphology and orthography tospelling was examined in English and Russian orthographies at grade levels 4 and 6.

A Brief Description of English and Russian Orthographies

English orthography has 26 letters, 45 phonemes and about 200 graphemes. Be-cause of the inconsistent relationship between graphemes and phonemes, Englishorthography is considered irregular or opaque. For example, the grapheme ‘c’ canhave two sounds /k/ and /s/ and the phoneme /k/ can be represented by differentgraphemes, c, k, ck and ke. Nevertheless, English orthography is considered ‘mor-phophonemic’ with the sound pattern depending on the meaning of the word. Ac-cording to Chomsky and Halle (1968), English is a ‘near optimal system for lexicalrepresentation’ (p. 49). For more information about English orthography, pleaserefer to Venezky (1999).

Russian orthography uses the Cyrillic script and has 21 consonants and 10vowels. Compared with English, Russian orthography is considered fairly regular,however, according to Grigorenko (2006), there is variability, and many Russianconsonants can transform from one to the other based on their surroundingletters, which can pose a challenge in spelling Russian words. This phonologicalcomplexity along with explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, includingphoneme blending and phoneme discrimination, has favoured mastering phonemicawareness at the first grade level (Kerek & Niemi, 2012; Zaretsky, 2002). Russianorthography is based on stress-timed properties of the language, and the Russiansyllable patterns are complex and can include as many as four consonants in onesyllable. Consonant–vowel and consonant–vowel–consonant are the simplest sylla-ble structure, and consonant, consonant, vowel, consonant, consonant (CCVCC)are the hardest. Similar to English, morphological knowledge plays an important rolein literacy acquisition in Russian. Russian words contain several morphemes andmostly they are monosyllabic and end in a consonant. Bogdanova (2001, cited inKerek, & Niemi, 2012) and Vinarskaya, Lepskaya, and Bogomazov (1977; cited inKerek, & Niemi, 2012) point out that beginning at second and third grades, intensivetraining is provided in morphemic analyses of Russian words. More information onRussian orthography and its role in literacy development in Russian can be found inGrigorenko (2006) and Rakhlin, Cardoso-Martins and Grigorenko (2014).

METHOD

Participants

Students in fourth and sixth grades from the USA and Russia were selected for thepresent study. Participants for the US sample came from an urban area in the Mid-western part of USA. They were predominantly from middle class families and theschool population was approximately 75% White, 15% Black, 5% Hispanic, 2%



American Indian and 3% Asian. All of the students for the present study came fromfamilies where the primary language spoken at home was English and had attendedschools where the medium of instruction was English. None had repeated a grade,and according to the teachers’ reports, none had any uncorrected hearing and vi-sion problems nor were referred to special education because of learning prob-lems. There were 46 fourth graders and 43 sixth graders comprised of 50.2%boys and 49.8% girls. Mean ages for fourth and sixth graders were 9.2, and 11.1,respectively.

Participants for the Russian sample were also from fourth and sixth grades froman urban area comparable to the city that the US participants came from. Familiesof these children could be considered middle class and none had repeated a gradeand also did not have any noticeable problems in audio, visual capabilities andlearning problems. There were 55 fourth graders and 51 sixth graders with 53%boys and 47% girls. The mean ages for the sample were 10.4 for fourth gradeand 12.2 for sixth grade, respectively. The difference of one year between theUS sample and the Russian sample is because of the age when the students startgrade 1; in the USA, which is about 6 years and in Russia, which is about 7 years.

Instruments

Tests for English Sample

Silent phonological choice task

A group-administered untimed test constructed by Olson, Forsberg, Wise andRack (1994) was used to assess knowledge of phonology. This was a paper-and-pencil test and participants were given three choices of pseudowords, one ofwhich sounded like a real word when pronounced, for example pake, kake anddake. Participants were asked to circle the word that sounds like a real word. Kakesounds like the real word cake, and participants were expected to circle kake asthe correct answer. The other two nonwords do not sound like a real Englishword when pronounced. To choose the correct nonword, the student shouldbe able to decode the word and recognize its relationship to a real word. Therewere five practice items and 60 test items. An ‘r’ of 0.80 has been reported be-tween this task and the nonword reading task (Olson et al., 1994). The reliabilitycoefficients for this study, as measured by Cronbach’s αs, were 0.93 and 0.94 atgrades 4 and 6, respectively.

Test of morphological structure

Each participant was given two morphological awareness tasks (Carlisle, 1995).The first task measured the ability to use a root word and change it to a new der-ivational form. For example, the participant read a priming word such as ‘farm’ andthen had to complete the sentence, ‘My uncle is a __________.’ The second taskmeasured the ability to decompose the derived form. For example, the participantread the word driver and had to complete the sentence, ‘Children are too young to_________.’ Each task contained 28 items. These tasks have been used by Carlisle(2000) and by Leong (1989) in previous studies. The Cronbach’s αs for this studywere 0.93 and 0.90 at grades 4 and 6, respectively.



Orthographic awareness test

This paper-and-pencil test was constructed by Joshi and Aaron and has been usedin previous studies (Aaron, Joshi & Williams, 1999). Participants were given threedifferent spellings for homophone words and were asked to circle the incorrectspelling. For example, one item was hear, here or heer, and the student was ex-pected to circle heer. There were 45 such items in this test and the Cronbach’sαs were 0. 84 and 0.93 at grades 4 and 6, respectively (please see Appendix Afor the test).

Spelling test

The corpus of words for the spelling test was taken from the published work ofRinsland (1947) who collected 6,012,359 words from children’s spontaneous writ-ings of stories, personal notes and compositions. These words were collectedfrom a nationwide sample of 100,212 children from grades one through eight. Tak-ing into consideration the trends seen in the development of skills, we preparedfour lists of words. The four lists of words were labelled as ‘regular’, ‘exceptional’,‘unique’ and ‘’morphophonemic’. ‘Regular words’ have a one-to-one grapheme–phoneme correspondence; ‘exception words’ are those whose pronunciation dif-fers from that of other words with similar spelling pattern. ‘Unique words’ arethose with a unique spelling pattern because there are no other words with thiskind of spelling pattern (e.g. egg). The spelling of ‘morphophonemic words’ isgoverned by morphemic factors in addition to the surface relationship betweengraphemes and phonemes. Examples of morphophonemic words from the spellingwords list are rehearsal and health. The classification of the words into the fourcategories was based on the works by Coltheart (1978); Fischer, Shankweiler &Liberman (1985) and Waters, Seidenberg & Bruck (1984).

Each category of spelling words in the list consisted of 14 words for a total of 56words, and the words were matched closely for frequency based on Zeno, Ivenz,Millard and Duvvuri (1995) across the four categories. This test has a content va-lidity of 0.74 across grade levels and a test–retest reliability of 0.97 (Joshi & Aaron,2002; Joshi & Aaron, 2003). The Cronbach’s αs for this sample were 0.90 and 0.75at grades 4 and 6, respectively. First, the examiner read the word and then used itin a sentence and then repeated the word again asking students to spell only theword. The number of correctly spelled words was used for further analyses (thecomplete test is provided in Appendix B).

Tests for Russian SampleFor the Russian students, similar measures for phonology, morphology, orthogra-phy and spelling were developed. Each test was prepared by a native speaker of theRussian language and was designed for consistency with the English tests for pho-nemic, morphemic and orthographic units. Also, number of items per task was thesame as the English versions. The items of all the tasks were judged by two re-searchers in Russian to verify the closeness to English tasks and the inter-rater re-liability was 0.93. Silent Phonological Choice Task was adapted to Russian where oneout of three choices could be pronounced like a real word. For example, in theitem, plep, xlet, xlep, participants were asked to circle the word that sounds likea real word; plep and xlet are nonsense words but xlep sounds like a real word,



meaning bread and participants were expected to circle xlep as the correct answer.The items and foils in this task were constructed to match the English version asclosely as possible for the number and types of syllables, and the Cronbach’s αsfor the sample were 0.87 and 0.84 for grades 4 and 6, respectively. There were fivepractice items to ensure that the participants understood the directions and a totalof 60 test items. Total number of correct responses was used for further analyses.

Test of morphological structure

The same principle used in adapting Silent Phonological Choice Task from English toRussian was also applied to measure morphological knowledge, keeping the lengthand number of syllables as close to the English as possible. The Cronbach’s αs forthis study were 0.79 and 0.85 at grades 4 and 6, respectively.

Orthographic awareness test

The same principle used in converting the English version to the Russian versionrelated to the length of the item and number of syllables in the item was also appliedto this task. For instance in the item, suma (bag), ssuma (pseudo-homophone) andsumma (sum), the student has to circle ssuma – the pseudo-homophone is not a realword. Similar to the English version, there were 45 items and the Cronbach’s αswere 0. 82 and 0.70 at grades 4 and 6, respectively. The number of correct re-sponses was used for further analyses. The complete test is provided in Appendix C.

Spelling test

Again, the test in Russian was constructed to resemble the English version asclosely as possible taking into consideration orthographic complexity, syllablestructure (simple or complex onsets and codas) and frequency. However, wecould not match the Russian words to the classes of regular, morphophonemic,unique and so on to the English words because of the difficulties with syllablestructure and word frequency. The Russian version of this test has been used inprevious studies (Rakhlin et al., 2014). Cronbach’s αs, for this sample were 0.85and 0.78 at grades 4 and 6, respectively. Please see Appendix D for the test.

The tests for English-speaking children were administered by one of the authorsof the study, and the tests for Russian children were administered in a similar for-mat by a student pursuing a doctoral degree in psychology who had experience inadministering similar tests. The items in each test were scored right or wrong bytwo individuals with an inter-rater reliability of 0.93, and the total number ofcorrect responses in all the tasks was computed.

RESULTS

The means and standard deviations were calculated for each subsample of bothAmerican and Russian students. The results are shown in Tables 1 and 2. As ex-pected, participants in higher grades performed better than participants fromlower grades.



In order to obtain the contributions by the three factors–phonology, morphol-ogy and orthography–multiple regression analyses were computed.

Results for the English-Speaking Participants

The beta weights and R values are given in Tables 3 and 4. At the fourth grade level,the multiple regression coefficients showed that 63% of the variance for spelling canbe explained by phonology, morphology and orthography. However, when theywere analysed individually using commonality analyses, phonology contributed34%, morphology 62% and orthography 18%. Similarly at the sixth grade level, themultiple regression coefficients showed that 55% of the variance for spelling canbe explained by the three independent variables. However, when they wereanalysed individually using commonality analyses, phonology contributed 37%, mor-phology 46% and orthography 14%. As can be seen from these results, both phonol-ogy and morphology contributed more to the overall variance in spelling at gradesfour and six with orthography contributing the least.

Table 2. Means and standard deviations for Russian students by grade level

Fourth gradeM (SD)

Sixth gradeM (SD)

Phonology 47.77 (8.07) 50.61 (6.15)Orthography 34.36 (6.04) 37.16 (4.28)Morphology 36.58 (6.18) 43.53 (4.43)Spelling 45.67 (3.49) 49.43 (2.42)

M, mean; SD, standard deviation.High possible scores are 60 for Phonology, 45 for Orthography, 56 for Morphology and 56 for Spelling.

Table 1. Means and standard deviations for US students by grade level

Fourth gradeM (SD)

Sixth gradeM (SD)

Phonology 44.50 (11.16) 47.98 (1.91)Orthography 41.17 (2.70) 42.76 (1.91)Morphology 29.63 (10.94) 39.55 (8.62)Spelling 40.48 (7.47) 46.57 (6.97)

M, mean; SD, standard deviation.High possible scores are 60 for Phonology, 45 for Orthography, 56 for Morphology and 56 for Spelling.

Table 3. Regression results for fourth grade US students

Source B β rs t p

Constant 18.484 1.592 0.119Phonology �0.060 �0.090 0.736 �0.593 0.557Orthography 0.192 0.070 0.436 0.657 0.515Morphology 0.566 0.829 0.993 5.089 0.0001

R = 0.795, R2 = 0.631. Dependent variable: spelling.



Results for the Russian-Speaking Participants

The beta weights and R values are given in Tables 5 and 6. At the fourth grade level,the multiple regression coefficients showed that 54% of the variance for spelling canbe explained by phonology, morphology and orthography. However, when theywere analysed individually using commonality analyses, phonology contributed 1%,morphology 45% and orthography 36%. Similarly at the sixth grade level, the multi-ple regression coefficients showed that 37% of the variance for spelling can be ex-plained by the three independent variables. However, when they were analysedindividually using commonality analyses, phonology contributed 2%, morphology15% and orthography 34%. As can be seen from the results, both morphologyand orthography contributed more to the overall variance in spelling at the fourthand sixth grade levels, and phonology contributed the least.

DISCUSSION

Even though beta weights were high for the morphology subtest for both the Englishand Russian samples, the structure coefficients for the Russian sample indicated thatorthography was as likely a predictor for much of the explained variance as mor-phology was. Similarly, for the English sample, morphology accounted for more var-iance than orthography. For both English and Russian, the three subtests taken

Table 4. Regression results for sixth grade US students

Source B β rs t p

Constant �6.511 �0.382 0.705Phonology 0.211 0.298 0.817 2.167 0.037Orthography 0.671 0.184 0.495 1.625 0.113Morphology 0.361 0.447 0.915 3.177 0.003


Table 5. Regression results for fourth grade Russian students

Source B β rs t p

Constant 29.374 10.536 0.0001Phonology �0.015 �0.035 0.112 �0.347 0.730Orthography 0.199 0.344 0.815 2.916 0.005Morphology 0.278 .493 0.922 4.339 0.0001

R = 0.731, R2= 0.539. Dependent variable: spelling.

Table 6. Regression results for sixth grade Russian students

Source B β rs t p

Constant 36.690 10.562 0.0001Phonology �0.001 �0.004 0.235 �0.029 0.977Orthography 0.318 0.561 0.656 3.693 0.001Morphology 0.032 0.043 0.998 0.286 0.776




together were more predictive in fourth grade than in sixth grade, even though theywere statistically significant for both the grade levels. Thus, there was considerablesimilarity across English and Russian groups, but also there were some differences.

In both orthographies, the morphology subtest was a good predictor of spelling,highlighting the important role of morphology in both English and Russian. However,structural coefficients showed differences between the two groups in the phonologyand orthography subtests. In addition to morphology, orthography was a betterpredictor for the Russian sample, while in English, phonology was a better predictor,in addition to morphology. This could be due to the differences in the nature oforthography; English is considered more opaque, and Russian is considered moretransparent (Joshi & Aaron, 2006). However, Russian may be transparent for graph-eme to phoneme conversion but not for phoneme to grapheme conversion becauseof a large number of phonological principles that change the spelling. For instance,Rakhlin et al. (2014) provide examples of homophones lisa can be lisa (fox) and lesa(woods) and in the words sdelka (deal) and zdes (here), the initial consonant clustersounds like /zd/ and require orthographic knowledge for spelling. Further, accordingto Kornev, Rakhlin and Grigorenko (2010), ‘The complex multidimensional natureof Russian morphology with its multiple sources of irregularity and inconsistency,may complicate the development of morphological awareness and make word rec-ognition more challenging’ (p. 47). Thus, in Russian, even though phonological mas-tery may help in decoding words, for spelling, students must have the mastery of thecomplex morphological and orthographic principles in Russian. Morphologicalknowledge is also important in English as English orthography is considered ‘mor-phophonemic’– the spelling-sound relationship is governed by morphological prin-ciples, as in ‘sign’ and ‘signal’. It should also be mentioned that morphologycontributed more at the fourth grade level than at the sixth grade level in Russian sam-ple. This might be due to the nature of Russian orthography as most of the words con-tain several morphemes, but they are mostly monosyllabic and end in a consonant.Additionally, explicit instruction of morphological structure begins in Russian schoolsaround grade 3 and so, students might have a good grasp of morphological structureby the time they come to grade 6 (Bogdanova 2001; Vinarskaya, et al., 1977).

Taken together, the results of the present study showed that morphology andorthography contributed more to Russian spelling, while morphology andphonology explained more variance in English spelling. Perhaps, both the natureof the language as well as instructional practices can influence spelling words. Aword of caution here: orthography might have contributed less in English as the stu-dents might have performed almost at the ceiling level. (The average correct scoreswere 41.17 and 42.76 for grades 4 and 6, respectively, out of a possible total of 45)

Some limitations of the study should be mentioned, which may be true for allcross-linguistic studies. As outlined by Protopapas and Vlahou (2009), there aredifficulties with exposure to literacy experiences. We selected the studentsbased on their grade levels and not on their chronological age, thus, Russian par-ticipants were about a year older than their English-speaking counterparts. Thisage difference was because children in the USA start grade 1 when they are about6 years of age, while Russian students start about a year later. Even though wetried to match the test items as closely as possible, we could not make themexactly the same because of differences such as frequency and the number ofsyllables between English and Russian orthographies. Further, US participantsperformed almost at the ceiling level on the orthography task, which might have



been a factor in the total contribution of orthography to the spelling task amongthe US children. Nevertheless, the present study is an attempt to examine thecontributions of different linguistic factors in spelling in such diverse orthogra-phies as English and Russian. Future studies should include different cross-orthographic comparisons.

APPENDIXA: ENGLISHORTHOGRAPHIC AWARENESS TEST (AARON, JOSHI& WILLIAMS, 1999)

In each of the following rows, circle the word that is NOT an English word.Example: see sea cee You need to circle cee, because there are no English words

spelled ceeNow you try these: to tou too buy bye bie

1. Hear here heer2. Knew new knwe3. No know knoe4. There their their5. Hole hoale whole6. Blew blue bloo7. Throu threw through8. Summ sum some9. Waigh weigh way10. Scent cent sent11. Sell cell scell12. Brake braek break13. Waek weak week14. Woode wood would15. Rose rows rwos16. Meet meat meate17. Bred braed bread18. Wone one won19. Plain plane plaine20. Reede reed read21. Pleas please plees22. Soe sow so23. Bete beet beat24. Rode roade road25. Peek peak peeck26. Roal roll role27. Nihgt knight night28. Wrote rote roat29. Steel stael steal30. Seen scene sceen31. Faire fare fair32. Rain rayn rein33. Peace piece peice34. Creack Creek Creak35. Root route ruote36. Haerd herd heard37. Wait waite weight38. Sole soul soal39. Syte sight site40. Idle idel idol



APPENDIX B: ENGLISH SPELLING TEST (JOSHI & AARON, 2002, 2003)

‘I would like for you to write some words from dictation and do the best you can. First, I will saythe word, then I will use that word in a sentence and say that word again. You are required towrite only the word and not the sentence. For example, I will say, “door”, please close the door,door. You should write door. Any questions? There are 56 words on the list’.

Example: Door Close the door, please now write doorFace Every morning, I wash my face with soap and water FaceIf you have any questions, please ask now

1. Job When I grow up, I want to find a summer job and make money. Job2. Past History tells us what happened in the past. Cage3. Cage Some pet birds are kept in a cage so that they won’t fly away. Cage4. Luck If I have much luck, I may win a million dollar in a lottery. Luck5. Tent When we camp out in the woods, we sleep in a tent. Tent6. Socks Before you put your shoes on, you wear the socks. Socks7. Distance The distance between New York and California is about 3000 miles. Distance8. Jail People who steal and rob are sent to jail. Jail9. Dim A dime has 10 cents. Dime10. Dock My friend lives on a lake, which has a wooden dock. Dock11. Napkin We use paper napkin to clean our hands. Napkin12. Cub The baby lion is called a cub. Cub13. Rust If you leave a knife in the yard for a long time, it can rust. Rust14. Break Parrots have strong beaks with which they break nuts Beak15. Island An island is surrounded by water. Hawaii is an island. Island16. Death The end of life is death. Death17. Grown Since last year, I have grown two inches taller. Grown18. Wool Baa, Baa, black sheep, have you any wool? Wool19. Break If a glass falls on the floor, it might break. Break20. Sew Needle and thread are needed to sew clothes. Sew21. None During an ice storm last year, none came to school. None22. Soap Campbell chicken soup is good for a cold. Soap23. lose In order to lose weight, one has to go on a diet. Lose24. Moth A moth is almost like a butterfly, but not as beautiful. Moth25. Cough People with cold, sneeze and also cough much. Cough26. Prove A person is innocent until the prosecutors prove that he is guilty. Prove27. Tomb A tomb is a grave, but is built up. Tomb28. Bomb The most dangerous bomb is the atomic bomb. Bomb29. Ghost During Halloween, many children wear ghost costumes. Ghost30. Egg Fried egg and omelet are breakfast foods. Egg31. Picnic A summer afternoon is a good time for a picnic in the park. Picnic32. Valley There is a valley between two mountains. Valley33. Eye We use the ear to hear and the eye to see. Eye34. Sign Sign your name on the check. Sign35. Juice Orange juice is a favourite drink of many people. Juice36. Key A key is useful for locking and unlocking the doors. Key37. Guard The crossing guard helps us cross the road safely. Guard38. Bacon Two fried eggs with bacon make a good breakfast. Bacon39. Ceiling The ceiling in most rooms is about eight feet high. Ceiling40. Doubt When you are not sure of a thing, you have a doubt. Dout41. Thorough A carefully done home work is a thorough job. Thorough42. Caution When you cross the street, you should go with caution. Caution43. Address Without correct address, the post office cannot deliver letters. Address44. Chief Sitting Bull was a famous Indian chief. Chief

(Continues)



45. Health Good food and plenty of exercise are needed for good health. Health46. Cute We call a beautiful baby a cute baby. Cute47. Bite Barking dogs generally do not bite. Bite48. Slipped The comedian slipped on a banana peel and fell down. Slipped49. Separate Oil and water do not mix; they keep separate. Separate50. Neighbor The person who lives next door to you is your neighbor. Neighbor51. Necessary Food and water are necessary to keep us alive. Necessary52. Hygiene Our teacher pays special attention to the hygiene of our classroom. Hygiene53. Grammar You should know grammar to write and speak correct sentences. Grammar54. Suggestible People who believe anything without asking questions are suggestible. Suggestible55. Thief A thief steals almost anything. Thief56. Rehearsal Before a drama or school play, many a rehearsal is necessary. Rehearsal

Thank you for your cooperation

APPENDIX C: ORTHOGRAPHIC AWARWNESS TEST IN RUSSIAN

APPENDIX B: (Continued)

(Continues)



APPENDIX C: (Continued)



APPENDIX D: SPELLING TEST IN RUSSIAN (RAKHLIN, CARDOSO-MARTINS,& GRIGORENKO 2014)

(Continues)



APPENDIX D: (Continued)

(Continues)




(Continues)



REFERENCES

Aaron, P. G., Joshi, R. M., & Williams, K. (1999). Not all reading disabilities are alike. Journal of Learn-ing Disabilities, 32, 120–137.Alcock, K. J. (2006). Literacy in Kiswahili. In R. M. Joshi, & P. G. Aaron (Eds.), Handbook of orthographyand literacy (pp. 405 – 420). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Bruck, M., et al (1998). Spelling skills of children in whole language and phonics classrooms. AppliedPsycholinguistics, 19, 669–684.Bryant, P., Deacon, H., & Nunes, T. (2006). Morphology and spelling. In R. M. Joshi & P. G. Aaron(Eds),Handbook of orthography and literacy (pp. 601–616). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Caravolas, M. (2006). Learning to spell in different languages: How orthographic variables might af-fect early literacy. In R. M. Joshi & P. G. Aaron (Eds.). Handbook of orthography and literacy (pp.497–511). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Caravolas, M., Bruck, M. & Genesee, F. (2003). Similarities and differences between English andFrench-speaking poor spellers. In N. Goulandris (ed.) Dyslexia in different languages (pp. 181–207).Whurr Publishers: London.Caravolas, M., Lervåg, A., Mousikou, P., Efrim, C., Litavsky, M., … Hulme, C. (2012) Common pat-terns of prediction of literacy development in different alphabetic orthographies. Psychological Science,23, 678–686. doi: 10.1177/0956797611434536Carlisle, J. (1987). Use of morphological knowledge in spelling derived forms. Annals of Dyslexia, 37, 90–108.Carlisle, J. (1995). Morphological awareness and early reading achievement. In L. Feldman (Ed.), Mor-phological aspects of language processing (pp. 189–209). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Carlisle, J. (2000). Awareness of the structure and meaning of morphologically complex words: Im-pact on reading. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 12, 169–190.Casalis, S., Deacon, S. H., & Pacton, S. (2011). How specific is the connection between morphologicalawareness and spelling? A study of French children. Applied Psycholinguistics, 32, 499–511.Chomsky, N., & Halle, M. (1968). The sound pattern of English. New York, NY: Harper and Row.Coltheart, M. (1978). Lexical access in simple reading tasks. In Underwood, G. (Ed.), Strategies of in-formation processing. London: Academic Press.Deacon, S. H., & Bryant, P. (2006a). Getting to the root: Young writers’ sensitivity to the role of rootmorphemes in the spelling of inflected and derived words. Journal of Child Language, 33, 401–417.Deacon, S. H., & Bryant, P. (2006b). This turnip’s not for turning: Children’s morphological awarenessand their use of root morphemes in spelling. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 24, 567–575.Fayol, M., Hupet, M., & Largy, P. (1999). The acquisition of subject–verb agreement in writtenFrench. From novices to experts errors. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 11, 153–174.Fischer, F. W., Shankweiler, D., & Liberman, I. Y. (1985). Spelling proficiency and sensitivity to wordstructure. Journal of Memory and Language, 24, 423–441.Grigorenko, E. L. (2006). If John were Ivan, would he fail in reading? In R. M. Joshi & P. G. Aaron(Eds.), Handbook of orthography and literacy (pp. 303–320). Mahwah, NJ: Laurence Erlbaum.Henderson, L. (Ed) (1984). Orthographies and reading: Perspectives from cognitive psychology, neuropsy-chology, and linguistics. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.




Henry, M. (1988). Beyond phonics: Integrated decoding and spelling instruction based on word originand structure. Annals of Dyslexia, 38, 258–274.Jaffré, J-P. & Fayol, M. (2006). Orthography and literacy in French. In R.M. Joshi & P.G. Aaron (Eds.),Handbook of orthography and literacy (pp. 81–104). Mahwah, NJ: Laurence Erlbaum.Joshi, R. M., & Aaron, P. G. (2002). Naming speed and word familiarity as confounding factors indecoding. Journal of Research in Reading, 25, 160–171.Joshi, R. M., & Aaron, P. G. (2003). A new way of assessing spelling and its classroom applica-tions. In R.M. Joshi, B. Kaczmarek, & C.K. Leong (Eds.). Literacy acquisition, assessment, andinstruction: The role phonology, orthography, and morphology, (pp 153–161). Amsterdam/Holland:IOS Press.Joshi, R. M., & Aaron, P. G. (Eds) (2006). Handbook of orthography and literacy. Mahwah, NJ: LawrenceErlbaum Associates.Justicia, F., Defior, S., Pelegrina, S., & Martos, F. J. (2002). The sources of error in Spanish writing. Jour-nal of Research in Reading, 22, 198–202. DOI:10.1111/1467-9817.00082.Katz, L., & Frost, R. (1992). The reading process is different for different orthographies: The ortho-graphic depth hypothesis. In R. Frost & L. Katz (Eds.), Orthography, phonology, morphology, and mean-ing (pp. 67–84). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier Science.Kerek, E., & Niemi, P. (2012). Grain-size units of phonological awareness among Russian first graders.Written Language & Literacy, 15, 80–103. DOI:10.1075/wll.15.1.05ker.Kornev, A. N., Rakhlin, N., & Grigorenko, E. L. (2010). Dyslexia from a cross-Linguistic and cross-cultural perspective: The case of Russian and Russia. Learning Disabilities: A Contemporary Journal, 8(1), 41–69.Leong, C. K. (1989). The effects of morphological structure on reading proficiency: A developmentalstudy. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 1, 357–379.Landerl, K. (2006). Reading acquisition in different orthographies: Evidence from direct comparison.R. M. Joshi P. G. Aaron (Eds.). Handbook of orthography and literacy (pp. 513–530). Mahwah, NJ:Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Moll, K., et al (2014). Cognitive mechanisms underlying reading and spelling development in fiveEuropean orthographies. Learning and Instruction, 29, 65–77. DOI:10.1016/j.learninstruc.2013.09.003.Nagy, W., & Anderson, R. (1984). The number of words in printed school English. Reading ResearchQuarterly, 19, 304–330.Olson, R. K., Forsberg, H., Wise, B. W., & Rack, J. (1994). Genes, environment and the developmentof orthographic skills. In V. Beringer (Ed.), The varieties of orthographic knowledge (pp. 27–72).Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.Oney, B., & Durgunoglu, A. Y. (1997). Beginning to read in Turkish: A phonologically transparent or-thography. Applied Psycholinguistics, 18, 1–15.Pacton, S., Perruchet, P., Fayol, M., & Cleeremeans, A. (2001). Implicit learning out of the lab: Thecase of orthographic regularities. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130, 401–426.DOI:10.1037/0096-3455.130.3.000.Porpodas, C. (2006). Literacy acquisition in Greek: Research review of the role of phonologicaland cognitive factors. In R. M. Joshi & P.G. Aaron (Eds). Handbook of orthography and literacy(pp. 356–374). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Associates.Protopapas, A., & Vlahou, E. L. (2009). A comparative quantitative analysis of Greek orthographictransparency. Behavior Research Methods, 41, 991–1008. DOI:10.3758/BRM.41.4.991.Rakhlin, N., Cardoso-Martins, C., & Grigorenko, E. L. (2014). Phonemic awareness is a more impor-tant predictor of orthographic processing than rapid serial naming: Evidence from Russian. ScientificStudies of Reading, 18, 395–414. DOI:10.1080/1088438.2014.918981.Read, C. (1975). Preschool children’s knowledge of English phonology. Harvard Educational Review,41, 1–33.Rinsland, H. D. (1947). A basic vocabulary of elementary school children. New York NY: Macmillan.Sangster, L., & Deacon, S. H. (2011). Development in children’s sensitivity to the role of derivationsin spelling. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65, 133–139.



Seymour, P. H. K. (2006). Theoretical framework for beginning reading in different orthographies. InR. M. Joshi & P. G. Aaron (Eds). Handbook of orthography and literacy (pp. 319–330). Mahwah, NJ:Erlbaum Associates.Seymour, P. H. K., Aro, M., & Erskine, J. M. (2003). Foundation literacy acquisition in European or-thographies. British Journal of Psychology, 94, 143–74.Shankweiler, D., Lundquist, E., Dreyer, L. G., & Dickinson, D. D. (1996). Reading and spelling difficul-ties in high school students: Causes and consequences. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal,8, 267–294.Share, D. L. (2008). On the Anglocentricities of current reading research and practice: The perils ofover-reliance on an “outlier” orthography. Psychological Bulletin, 134, 584–616.Siegel, L. S. (2008). Morphological awareness skills of English language learners and children with dys-lexia. Topics in Language Disorders, 28(1), 15–27.Treiman, R. (1993). Beginning to spell: A study of first-grade children. NewYork, NY:Oxford University Press.Treiman, R., & Barry, C. (2000). Dialect and authography: Some differences between American andBritish spellers. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26, 1423–1430.Treiman, R., Goswami, U., Tincoff, R., & Leevers, H. (1997). Effects of dialect on American and Brit-ish children’s spelling. Child Development, 68, 229–245.Venezky, R. L. (1999). The American Way of spelling: The structure and origins of American English orthog-raphy. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.Waters, G. S., Seidenberg, M. S., & Bruck, M. (1984). Children’s and adults’ use of spelling-sound in-formation in three reading tasks. Memory and Cognition, 12, 293–305.Wimmer, H., & Landerl, K. (1997). How learning to spell German differs from learning to spell En-glish. In C. Perfetti, L. Rieben, & M. Fayol (Eds.), Learning to spell: Research, theory, and practice acrosslanguages (pp. 81–96). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Zaretsky, E. (2002). Effects of oral language on sound segmentation skills. In F. M. Windsor M., LouiseKelly & N., Hewlett (Eds.), Investigations in clinical phonetics and linguistics (pp. 201–212). Mahwah, NJ:Lawrence Erlbaum.Zeno, S. M., Ivenz, S. H., Millard, R. T., & Duvvuri, R. (1995). The Educator’s word frequency guide.Brewster, NY: Touchstone Applied Science Associates.



Copyright of Dyslexia (10769242) is the property of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and its contentmay not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyrightholder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles forindividual use.

the role of phonology, morphology, and …...the role of phonology, morphology, and orthography in...

Documents