2.4.1
Orthography
Test your knowledge with free interactive questions on Seneca — used by over 10 million students.
Orthography and Orthographic Mistakes
Orthography is all about spelling. When a child learns to write, this is one of our core language levels which we use for analysis.
Orthographic analysis
- There a number of errors which you may wish to look for when analysing the data in the exam:
- Substitution – one letter is swapped for another letter.
- Omission – unstressed sounds get missed out.
- Insertion – spurious letter is added.
Orthographic analysis cont.
- Transposition (or a transposed letter) – the letter is the wrong way around.
- Note: dyslexic children will often get the letters < b >, < p > and < d > mixed up.
- Grapheme cluster substitution – a combination of letters are swapped for a different set of letters.
Read
- Read states that children’s spellings are creative because they notice distinctions that adults are no longer aware of.
- For example, a child may spell ‘cruise’ as ‘crews’, as adults, as experienced writers, may have over-exposure to the word that we no longer think of the irregular spelling of the word.
Ferreiro
- Ferreiro believes that children think that words must have several letters.
- For example, QWE could be a word, but QW could not.
- In addition, he states that children believe that words should have different letters.
- As a result, you may often see double letters in words missed out.
Biancardi
- Biancardi believes that children think that the bigger the object, the bigger the word should be.
- For example, they may include more letters in ‘whale’ than in ‘ladybird’.
‘Statistical Learning’
Psychologists believe ‘statistical learning’ is key for children learning to read.
‘Statistical learning’
- Psychologists believe ‘statistical learning’ is key for children learning to read.
- This theory essentially states that children find patterns in spelling from exposure to forms of writing.
- In this sense, you can link reading development to written development.
Seidenberg
- The psycholinguist Seidenberg believes that pattern finding is all a part of finding connections between words.
- For example, a child may notice that lots of words end in ‘ed’ when we’re talking about things in the past.
Treiman
- Treiman says that the child’s own name can have an influence on their orthography.
- He states that quite often, the child will use a capital when there is no need because it is drilled into them that their name needs a capital.
Whole Word vs Phonic
As with reading, there is an argument over whole word or phonic in writing too.
Phonics
- Reyner believes that children should be taught to write from ‘sounding out’ the word and writing down what they hear.
Issues
- However, this method does not work well for words which do not have phoneme-grapheme correspondence or homonyms (everything the same, like ‘right’ in the sense of a direction and in the sense of being correct).
Whole word
- On the opposite view, Curtis believes that children should be taught to write as whole words as this is more fluent and adult-like.
- Curtis says that this aids comprehension over pronunciation.
Issues
- However, if the child has not seen the word before, then this can make it very difficult to write, even if the word has phoneme-grapheme correspondence.
1Language Levels
1.1Assessment Objectives
1.2Lexis
1.2.1Introduction1.2.2Common, Proper, Abstract & Concrete Nouns1.2.3Collective Nouns1.2.4Adjectives1.2.5Main, Auxiliary & Copular Verbs1.2.6Dynamic & Stative Verbs1.2.7Transitive, Intransitive, Active & Passive Verbs1.2.8Mood of Verbs1.2.9Adverbs1.2.10Personal, Possessive & Reflexive Pronouns1.2.11Relative & Demonstrative Pronouns1.2.12Determiners1.2.13Conjunctions1.2.14Synonyms, Antonyms & Phonological Features1.2.15End of Topic Test - Lexis
1.3Grammar
1.4Semantics & Pragmatics
1.5Discourse Structure, Graphology & Orthography
2Language, The Individual & Society
2.1Children’s Language Development
2.2Children's Language Development - Theories
2.3Literacy Development: Reading
3Language Diversity & Change
3.1The Importance of Gendered Language
3.2Social Groups
3.3Occupational Groups
3.4Accents & Dialects
3.5Language Change
Jump to other topics
1Language Levels
1.1Assessment Objectives
1.2Lexis
1.2.1Introduction1.2.2Common, Proper, Abstract & Concrete Nouns1.2.3Collective Nouns1.2.4Adjectives1.2.5Main, Auxiliary & Copular Verbs1.2.6Dynamic & Stative Verbs1.2.7Transitive, Intransitive, Active & Passive Verbs1.2.8Mood of Verbs1.2.9Adverbs1.2.10Personal, Possessive & Reflexive Pronouns1.2.11Relative & Demonstrative Pronouns1.2.12Determiners1.2.13Conjunctions1.2.14Synonyms, Antonyms & Phonological Features1.2.15End of Topic Test - Lexis
1.3Grammar
1.4Semantics & Pragmatics
1.5Discourse Structure, Graphology & Orthography
2Language, The Individual & Society
2.1Children’s Language Development
2.2Children's Language Development - Theories
2.3Literacy Development: Reading
3Language Diversity & Change
3.1The Importance of Gendered Language
3.2Social Groups
3.3Occupational Groups
3.4Accents & Dialects
3.5Language Change
Practice questions on Orthography
Can you answer these? Test yourself with free interactive practice on Seneca — used by over 10 million students.
- 1Orthographic errors to analyse in the exam:Fill in the list
- 2Which letters will dyslexic children often get mixed up?Multiple choice
- 3
- 4Treiman's theory:Fill in the list
- 5
Unlock your full potential with Seneca Premium
Unlimited access to 10,000+ open-ended exam questions
Mini-mock exams based on your study history
Unlock 800+ premium courses & e-books