One of the main differences between English monolinguals and English language
learners is that the latter use their knowledge of their first language in spelling in
English. Previous studies have shown that the nature of first language affects spelling in
English. One of the factors which influence spelling in English is the phonology of first
language. The main aim of this study was to examine the spelling performance in
English among students whose first language was Arabic in two novel phonemes (/p/
and /v/) and their phoneme pairs (/f/ and /v/).
The analyses were based on a dictation task. There were eight target words for
each phoneme. Each word had a target phoneme embedded in the initial or the final
position. There were 99 Arabic speaking participants from fourth grade whose
performance was compared with 40 monolingual English speaking participants.
Findings of the present study indicated that the Arabic participants had particular
difficulty in spelling the novel phonemes /p/ and /v/ with large effect size. The
participants mostly confused these two phonemes with their phoneme pairs and spelled
/p/ as b and /v/ as f. The Arabic participants also had some difficulty in spelling the phoneme pairs /p/ and /v/, and spelled /b/ as p and /f/ and v. This finding had a medium
effect size. Finally, both groups of participants generally performed better when the
target phoneme was in the initial position.
The present study is a contribution to the current literature about the effect of
first language on spelling in English. In order to establish a universal theory about how
language learners acquire the English spelling and to compare and contrast the
acquisition of spelling of native speakers of English and English language learners, it is
fundamental to examine the world's various languages and their effect on second
language spelling acquisition. Additionally, the findings of this study can provide
practical implications for language literacy classes which are designed for Arabic
students.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2009-05-528 |
| Date | 2009 May 1900 |
| Creators | Allaith, Zainab A. |
| Contributors | Joshi, R. Malatesha |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
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