The development of orthographic knowledge at school age from a psycholinguistic perspective of writing

Abstract

Ontogenetic studies of writing tend to omit the way in which spelling is acquired through schooling. This implies that the particularities of this type of knowledge are not clearly known, both with respect to its various components and the moments in which they are learned. On the contrary, descriptions tend to focus exclusively on the number of errors made with respect to the orthographic rules described in normative manuals, without considering that spelling knowledge is part of the development of literacy. In this framework, the aims of the present study are [a] to characterize the types of spelling errors, through a deductive categorization that takes into account their (psycho)linguistic nature; and, from there, [b] to characterize the acquisition of these spelling patterns, by analysing written texts produced by Spanishspeaking schoolchildren, at three points in their schooling: 3rd grade (8 years), 6th grade (11 years) and 1st year of secondary school (14 years). The participants had to produce three texts in different modalities: narrative, descriptive and explanatory; and the proposed categories of errors were applied to them: [1] direct transfer of orality, [2] indirect transfer of orality, [3] change of minimal graphic unit, [4] accent marks and [5] idiosyncratic rules of writing. With respect to text types, the results showed no differences in any of the three groups of participants, while with respect to error types, the same pattern of development was observed in [1], [2], [3] and [5], except for [4] which seems to have a later development. From there, it can be suggested that there are elements of faster acquisition than others, partially agreeing with the research assumptions that guided this work.