The Role of Phonology, Morphology, and Orthography in English and Russian Spelling

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

■ The Role of Phonology, Morphology, and Orthography in English and Russian Spelling

Regina Boulware-Gooden1, R. Malatesha Joshi2* and Elena Grigorenko3 1Neuhaus Education Center, 4433, Bissonnet, Bellaire, TX 77401, USA 2Texas A & M University, College Station, TX 77845, USA 3Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

The purpose of the present study was to explore the role of phonology, morphology and orthography in predicting the spelling performance in English-speaking and Russian- speaking children. Tests that tap phonology, morphology and orthography were administered to students in grades 4 and 6 in the USA and Russia. Multiple regression analyses showed that phonology and morphology contributed more for spelling of English words while 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 languages as well as the instructional practices and the importance of morphology in spelling in 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 reading and the cognitive functions that mediate reading. There are considerably larger num- bers of research studies pertaining to how children learn to read than studies that have explored how writing and spelling skills are acquired. For instance, according to the Social Sciences Citation Index, from 2003–2013, nearly 12387 articles were published on ‘reading’, but only 1553 articles on ‘spelling’. Nevertheless, experimental studies examining the nature of spelling have shown that spelling in English is a complex skill that involves the knowledge of phonology, letter knowledge, morphology and orthography. Much of what we know about the relationship between phonology and spelling is based on the studies by Read and Treiman. Read (1975) analysed the data from spontaneous production of spelling by precocious preschoolers and Treiman (1993) studied spelling production of normal first grade children. Error analyses of children’s spelling by Read and Treiman showed that phonological principles inﬂuenced spelling production of these two groups of children. Treiman, Goswami, Tincoff and Leevers (1997) studied the spelling performance of speakers of different dialects of English such as American English and southern British English. They found that British elementary school children spelled car as ca while American children spelled it cr. Interestingly, this was found to be true even for 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]

In addition to phonology, morphological knowledge also plays an important role in spelling. According to Carlisle (1995), morphological awareness ‘… focuses on children’s conscious awareness of the morphemic structure of words and their ability to reﬂect on and manipulate that structure’ (p. 194). The importance of morphemic 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 two words, the spelling pattern is the same in order to keep the morpheme ‘heal’ in the word ‘health’. Several studies have shown that students with better morphemic knowledge are also better spellers. Henry (1988) reported that ﬂuent readers attended first to the morphemes, secondly to the syllables and only lastly to the phonemic breakdown of a word (p. 268). A series of studies by Deacon and her colleagues has shown the importance of morphological knowledge not only in English but also in French (Bryant, Deacon & Nunes, 2006; Casalis, Deacon & Pacton, 2011; Deacon & Bryant, 2006a, 2006b; Sangster & Deacon, 2011). For instance, children as young as 6 and 7 years can explain that ‘turnip’ has one morpheme 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 that knowledge of morphemes may play a causal role in spelling. Carlisle (1987) reported that learning disabled children lagged behind normal spellers in learning der- ivational morphology but that the learning experience of the two groups was not noticeably different. Although both groups knew more about morphological rela- tionships than they used in their spelling, the difference was larger for the learning disabled children. Both groups were much better at linking the derived word to the base word than they were at producing a derived word from a base word. Siegel (2008), after administering tasks that tapped phonological awareness, syntactic awareness and morphological awareness to over 1000 sixth grade students, found that morphological awareness made a greater contribution to spelling performance beyond phonological awareness and syntactic awareness. Along with the knowledge of phonology and morphology, orthographic knowledge also plays an important role in spelling. Shankweiler, Lundquist, Dreyer and Dickinson (1996) noted, ‘Knowledge of how the orthography represents the phonology of words is taxed both in reading at the decoding stage and in writing at the spelling stage’ (p. 268). According to Henderson (1984), ‘Orthography is defined as graphemic patterns of a written language and their mapping onto phonology, morphology, and meaning’ (p. 1). The mapping of phonemes to graphemes differs in different writing systems, and when there is a closer mapping of phonemes to graphemes, 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 in English, word reading may be difficult and may take a longer time to master. This phenomenon is referred to as the orthographic depth hypothesis, proposed by Katz and Frost (1992). For instance, Seymour (2006), after comparing six different European orthographies concluded that linguistic differences, especially aspects of syllable structure and variations in orthographic depth, may be crucial in determin- ing the amount of learning necessary for successful progression through each phase. Further, Seymour, Aro and Erskine (2003), after examining the speed and accuracy of familiar word reading and nonword reading in eight orthographies (Finnish, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Portuguese, French, Danish and English), concluded that the establishment of an effective sight vocabulary and decoding ability needs about 2 years of reading experience in English compared with 1 year in many

European languages. Similarly, Wimmer and Landerl (1997) reported that children acquiring reading and spelling skills in German did not show the same developmental trend as did children acquiring these skills in English. Firstly, the authors noted that because of the regularity of German orthography, German children were able to more reliably decode words after grade one compared with their English coun- ter parts. Secondly, German children were not found to move through the same developmental stages as were the English readers and spellers (also see Joshi and Aaron, 2006). Further, literacy research especially spelling has generally been modelled after studies of the English language, which has sometimes been referred to as an ‘outlier orthography’ (Share, 2008). It was also tacitly believed, if not overtly 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 interest in literacy acquisition in orthographies other than English. Shankweiler et al. (1996) investigated the relationship between phonological awareness and morphological awareness in normal ninth grade readers and learning disabled ninth and tenth grade readers. Results from this study indicated that phonological awareness contributed the most variance for both reading and spelling. For spelling, nonword reading accounted for 50% of the variance. If phoneme deletion was added first and morphological awareness second, morphological awareness predicted 13% of the variance for morphologically complex words and 8% for a mixed spelling test that used regular, irregular and morphological words. Even though phonological awareness accounted for the most variance in spelling, morphological awareness did contribute additional variance especially when the words are morphologically complex. If one considers that 60% of the new 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 as French (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 examined how the orthographic inconsistencies inﬂuence spelling production in their respec- tive orthographies. A few studies have compared the spelling data from different orthographies. For instance, in a series of studies conducted by Caravolas and her colleagues (Bruck et al., 1998; Caravolas, Bruck & Genesse, 2003), it was shown that even though phoneme awareness is important for spelling development in both English and French, it was more important for English than it was for French. 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 found that phoneme awareness contributed equally to spelling among English, Spanish, Slovak and Czech orthographies. The differences in the ﬁndings may be due to the age of the participants; in the Caravolas et al (2012) study, participants were in the beginning stages of literacy acquisition, while their earlier study included participants 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 instruction. The differences in the results might be due to the difficulties in conducting cross-linguistic studies as reported by Protopapas and Vlahou (2009). They outline the difficulty of placing the transparency on a continuum, matching

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DYSLEXIA 21: 142–161 (2015) English and Russian Spelling 145 the ages and exposure to literacy instruction, as well as matching the test materials and test items. So, if there are fewer studies on spelling and it has been shown that spelling production requires knowledge of phonology, morphology and orthography, would the same percentage of each of these factors contribute in different orthographies and at different grade levels? This is the purpose of the present study. Specifically, the contribution of phonology, morphology and orthography to spelling 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, English orthography is considered irregular or opaque. For example, the grapheme ‘c’ can have two sounds /k/ and /s/ and the phoneme /k/ can be represented by different graphemes, c, k, ck and ke. Nevertheless, English orthography is considered ‘morphophonemic’ 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 lexical representation’ (p. 49). For more information about English orthography, please refer to Venezky (1999). Russian orthography uses the Cyrillic script and has 21 consonants and 10 vowels. Compared with English, Russian orthography is considered fairly regular, however, according to Grigorenko (2006), there is variability, and many Russian consonants can transform from one to the other based on their surrounding letters, which can pose a challenge in spelling Russian words. This phonological complexity along with explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, including phoneme blending and phoneme discrimination, has favoured mastering phonemic awareness at the first grade level (Kerek & Niemi, 2012; Zaretsky, 2002). Russian orthography is based on stress-timed properties of the language, and the Russian syllable patterns are complex and can include as many as four consonants in one syllable. Consonant–vowel and consonant–vowel–consonant are the simplest syllable structure, and consonant, consonant, vowel, consonant, consonant (CCVCC) are the hardest. Similar to English, morphological knowledge plays an important role in literacy acquisition in Russian. Russian words contain several morphemes and mostly they are monosyllabic and end in a consonant. Bogdanova (2001, cited in Kerek, & Niemi, 2012) and Vinarskaya, Lepskaya, and Bogomazov (1977; cited in Kerek, & Niemi, 2012) point out that beginning at second and third grades, intensive training is provided in morphemic analyses of Russian words. More information on Russian orthography and its role in literacy development in Russian can be found in Grigorenko (2006) and Rakhlin, Cardoso-Martins and Grigorenko (2014).

METHOD

Participants Students in fourth and sixth grades from the USA and Russia were selected for the present 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 the school population was approximately 75% White, 15% Black, 5% Hispanic, 2%

American Indian and 3% Asian. All of the students for the present study came from families where the primary language spoken at home was English and had attended schools 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 problems. 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 from an urban area comparable to the city that the US participants came from. Families of these children could be considered middle class and none had repeated a grade and also did not have any noticeable problems in audio, visual capabilities and learning 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 grade and 12.2 for sixth grade, respectively. The difference of one year between the US sample and the Russian sample is because of the age when the students start grade 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 and Rack (1994) was used to assess knowledge of phonology. This was a paper-and- pencil test and participants were given three choices of pseudowords, one of which sounded like a real word when pronounced, for example pake, kake and dake. Participants were asked to circle the word that sounds like a real word. Kake sounds like the real word cake, and participants were expected to circle kake as the correct answer. The other two nonwords do not sound like a real English word when pronounced. To choose the correct nonword, the student should be able to decode the word and recognize its relationship to a real word. There were five practice items and 60 test items. An ‘r’ of 0.80 has been reported between this task and the nonword reading task (Olson et al., 1994). The reliability coefficients for this study, as measured by Cronbach’s αs, were 0.93 and 0.94 at grades 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’ and then had to complete the sentence, ‘My uncle is a ______.’ The second task measured the ability to decompose the derived form. For example, the participant read 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 study were 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 used in previous studies (Aaron, Joshi & Williams, 1999). Participants were given three different spellings for homophone words and were asked to circle the incorrect spelling. For example, one item was hear, here or heer, and the student was expected to circle heer. There were 45 such items in this test and the Cronbach’s αs were 0. 84 and 0.93 at grades 4 and 6, respectively (please see Appendix A for the test).

Spelling test

The corpus of words for the spelling test was taken from the published work of Rinsland (1947) who collected 6,012,359 words from children’s spontaneous writ- ings of stories, personal notes and compositions. These words were collected from 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 prepared four 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 differs from that of other words with similar spelling pattern. ‘Unique words’ are those with a unique spelling pattern because there are no other words with this kind of spelling pattern (e.g. egg). The spelling of ‘morphophonemic words’ is governed by morphemic factors in addition to the surface relationship between graphemes and phonemes. Examples of morphophonemic words from the spelling words list are rehearsal and health. The classification of the words into the four categories 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 56 words, 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 0.75 at grades 4 and 6, respectively. First, the examiner read the word and then used it in a sentence and then repeated the word again asking students to spell only the word. The number of correctly spelled words was used for further analyses (the complete test is provided in Appendix B).

Tests for Russian Sample For the Russian students, similar measures for phonology, morphology, orthography and spelling were developed. Each test was prepared by a native speaker of the Russian language and was designed for consistency with the English tests for phonemic, morphemic and orthographic units. Also, number of items per task was the same 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 reliability was 0.93. Silent Phonological Choice Task was adapted to Russian where one out of three choices could be pronounced like a real word. For example, in the item, plep, xlet, xlep, participants were asked to circle the word that sounds like a real word; plep and xlet are nonsense words but xlep sounds like a real word,

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DYSLEXIA 21: 142–161 (2015) 148 R. Boulware-Gooden et al. 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 as closely as possible for the number and types of syllables, and the Cronbach’s αs for the sample were 0.87 and 0.84 for grades 4 and 6, respectively. There were five practice items to ensure that the participants understood the directions and a total of 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 to Russian was also applied to measure morphological knowledge, keeping the length and number of syllables as close to the English as possible. The Cronbach’s αs for this 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 version related to the length of the item and number of syllables in the item was also applied to this task. For instance in the item, suma (bag), ssuma (pseudo-homophone) and summa (sum), the student has to circle ssuma – the pseudo-homophone is not a real word. Similar to the English version, there were 45 items and the Cronbach’s αs were 0. 82 and 0.70 at grades 4 and 6, respectively. The number of correct responses 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 as closely as possible taking into consideration orthographic complexity, syllable structure (simple or complex onsets and codas) and frequency. However, we could not match the Russian words to the classes of regular, morphophonemic, unique and so on to the English words because of the difficulties with syllable structure and word frequency. The Russian version of this test has been used in previous studies (Rakhlin et al., 2014). Cronbach’s αs, for this sample were 0.85 and 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 authors of 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 in administering similar tests. The items in each test were scored right or wrong by two individuals with an inter-rater reliability of 0.93, and the total number of correct responses in all the tasks was computed.

RESULTS

The means and standard deviations were calculated for each subsample of both American and Russian students. The results are shown in Tables 1 and 2. As expected, participants in higher grades performed better than participants from lower grades.

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

Fourth grade Sixth grade M (SD) M (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 2. Means and standard deviations for Russian students by grade level

Fourth grade Sixth grade M (SD) M (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.

In order to obtain the contributions by the three factors–phonology, morphology 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 can be explained by phonology, morphology and orthography. However, when they were analysed individually using commonality analyses, phonology contributed 34%, morphology 62% and orthography 18%. Similarly at the sixth grade level, the multiple regression coefficients showed that 55% of the variance for spelling can be explained by the three independent variables. However, when they were analysed individually using commonality analyses, phonology contributed 37%, morphology 46% and orthography 14%. As can be seen from these results, both phonology and morphology contributed more to the overall variance in spelling at grades four and six with orthography contributing the least.

Table 3. Regression results for fourth grade US students

Source B β rs tp Constant 18.484 1.592 0.119 Phonology À0.060 À0.090 0.736 À0.593 0.557 Orthography 0.192 0.070 0.436 0.657 0.515 Morphology 0.566 0.829 0.993 5.089 0.0001

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

Table 4. Regression results for sixth grade US students

Source B β rs tp Constant À6.511 À0.382 0.705 Phonology 0.211 0.298 0.817 2.167 0.037 Orthography 0.671 0.184 0.495 1.625 0.113 Morphology 0.361 0.447 0.915 3.177 0.003

R = 0.744, R2 = 0.553. Dependent variable: spelling.

Table 5. Regression results for fourth grade Russian students

Source B β rs tp Constant 29.374 10.536 0.0001 Phonology À0.015 À0.035 0.112 À0.347 0.730 Orthography 0.199 0.344 0.815 2.916 0.005 Morphology 0.278 .493 0.922 4.339 0.0001

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

Table 6. Regression results for sixth grade Russian students

Source B β rs tp Constant 36.690 10.562 0.0001 Phonology À0.001 À0.004 0.235 À0.029 0.977 Orthography 0.318 0.561 0.656 3.693 0.001 Morphology 0.032 0.043 0.998 0.286 0.776

R = 0.588, R2 = 0.346. 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 can be explained by phonology, morphology and orthography. However, when they were analysed individually using commonality analyses, phonology contributed 1%, morphology 45% and orthography 36%. Similarly at the sixth grade level, the multiple regression coefficients showed that 37% of the variance for spelling can be explained by the three independent variables. However, when they were analysed individually using commonality analyses, phonology contributed 2%, morphology 15% and orthography 34%. As can be seen from the results, both morphology and orthography contributed more to the overall variance in spelling at the fourth and sixth grade levels, and phonology contributed the least.

DISCUSSION

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

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DYSLEXIA 21: 142–161 (2015) English and Russian Spelling 151 together were more predictive in fourth grade than in sixth grade, even though they were statistically significant for both the grade levels. Thus, there was considerable similarity 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 phonology and orthography subtests. In addition to morphology, orthography was a better predictor 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 of orthography; English is considered more opaque, and Russian is considered more transparent (Joshi & Aaron, 2006). However, Russian may be transparent for grapheme to phoneme conversion but not for phoneme to grapheme conversion because of 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 cluster sounds like /zd/ and require orthographic knowledge for spelling. Further, according to Kornev, Rakhlin and Grigorenko (2010), ‘The complex multidimensional nature of 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 mastery may help in decoding words, for spelling, students must have the mastery of the complex morphological and orthographic principles in Russian. Morphological knowledge is also important in English as English orthography is considered ‘morphophonemic’–the spelling-sound relationship is governed by morphological principles, as in ‘sign’ and ‘signal’. It should also be mentioned that morphology contributed more at the fourth grade level than at the sixth grade level in Russian sample. This might be due to the nature of Russian orthography as most of the words contain several morphemes, but they are mostly monosyllabic and end in a consonant. Additionally, explicit instruction of morphological structure begins in Russian schools around grade 3 and so, students might have a good grasp of morphological structure by the time they come to grade 6 (Bogdanova 2001; Vinarskaya, et al., 1977). Taken together, the results of the present study showed that morphology and orthography contributed more to Russian spelling, while morphology and phonology explained more variance in English spelling. Perhaps, both the nature of the language as well as instructional practices can inﬂuence spelling words. A word of caution here: orthography might have contributed less in English as the students might have performed almost at the ceiling level. (The average correct scores were 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 all cross-linguistic studies. As outlined by Protopapas and Vlahou (2009), there are difﬁculties with exposure to literacy experiences. We selected the students based on their grade levels and not on their chronological age, thus, Russian participants were about a year older than their English-speaking counterparts. This age difference was because children in the USA start grade 1 when they are about 6 years of age, while Russian students start about a year later. Even though we tried to match the test items as closely as possible, we could not make them exactly the same because of differences such as frequency and the number of syllables between English and Russian orthographies. Further, US participants performed almost at the ceiling level on the orthography task, which might have

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DYSLEXIA 21: 142–161 (2015) 152 R. Boulware-Gooden et al. been a factor in the total contribution of orthography to the spelling task among the US children. Nevertheless, the present study is an attempt to examine the contributions of different linguistic factors in spelling in such diverse orthographies as English and Russian. Future studies should include different cross- orthographic comparisons.

APPENDIX A: ENGLISH ORTHOGRAPHIC 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 cee Now you try these: to tou too buy bye bie 1. Hear here heer 2. Knew new knwe 3. No know knoe 4. There their their 5. Hole hoale whole 6. Blew blue bloo 7. Throu threw through 8. Summ sum some 9. Waigh weigh way 10. Scent cent sent 11. Sell cell scell 12. Brake braek break 13. Waek weak week 14. Woode wood would 15. Rose rows rwos 16. Meet meat meate 17. Bred braed bread 18. Wone one won 19. Plain plane plaine 20. Reede reed read 21. Pleas please plees 22. Soe sow so 23. Bete beet beat 24. Rode roade road 25. Peek peak peeck 26. Roal roll role 27. Nihgt knight night 28. Wrote rote roat 29. Steel stael steal 30. Seen scene sceen 31. Faire fare fair 32. Rain rayn rein 33. Peace piece peice 34. Creack Creek Creak 35. Root route ruote 36. Haerd herd heard 37. Wait waite weight 38. Sole soul soal 39. Syte sight site 40. 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 say the word, then I will use that word in a sentence and say that word again. You are required to write 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 door Face Every morning, I wash my face with soap and water Face If you have any questions, please ask now 1. Job When I grow up, I want to find a summer job and make money. Job 2. Past History tells us what happened in the past. Cage 3. Cage Some pet birds are kept in a cage so that they won’t fly away. Cage 4. Luck If I have much luck, I may win a million dollar in a lottery. Luck 5. Tent When we camp out in the woods, we sleep in a tent. Tent 6. Socks Before you put your shoes on, you wear the socks. Socks 7. Distance The distance between New York and California is about 3000 miles. Distance 8. Jail People who steal and rob are sent to jail. Jail 9. Dim A dime has 10 cents. Dime 10. Dock My friend lives on a lake, which has a wooden dock. Dock 11. Napkin We use paper napkin to clean our hands. Napkin 12. Cub The baby lion is called a cub. Cub 13. Rust If you leave a knife in the yard for a long time, it can rust. Rust 14. Break Parrots have strong beaks with which they break nuts Beak 15. Island An island is surrounded by water. Hawaii is an island. Island 16. Death The end of life is death. Death 17. Grown Since last year, I have grown two inches taller. Grown 18. Wool Baa, Baa, black sheep, have you any wool? Wool 19. Break If a glass falls on the floor, it might break. Break 20. Sew Needle and thread are needed to sew clothes. Sew 21. None During an ice storm last year, none came to school. None 22. Soap Campbell chicken soup is good for a cold. Soap 23. lose In order to lose weight, one has to go on a diet. Lose 24. Moth A moth is almost like a butterfly, but not as beautiful. Moth 25. Cough People with cold, sneeze and also cough much. Cough 26. Prove A person is innocent until the prosecutors prove that he is guilty. Prove 27. Tomb A tomb is a grave, but is built up. Tomb 28. Bomb The most dangerous bomb is the atomic bomb. Bomb 29. Ghost During Halloween, many children wear ghost costumes. Ghost 30. Egg Fried egg and omelet are breakfast foods. Egg 31. Picnic A summer afternoon is a good time for a picnic in the park. Picnic 32. Valley There is a valley between two mountains. Valley 33. Eye We use the ear to hear and the eye to see. Eye 34. Sign Sign your name on the check. Sign 35. Juice Orange juice is a favourite drink of many people. Juice 36. Key A key is useful for locking and unlocking the doors. Key 37. Guard The crossing guard helps us cross the road safely. Guard 38. Bacon Two fried eggs with bacon make a good breakfast. Bacon 39. Ceiling The ceiling in most rooms is about eight feet high. Ceiling 40. Doubt When you are not sure of a thing, you have a doubt. Dout 41. Thorough A carefully done home work is a thorough job. Thorough 42. Caution When you cross the street, you should go with caution. Caution 43. Address Without correct address, the post office cannot deliver letters. Address 44. Chief Sitting Bull was a famous Indian chief. Chief (Continues)

APPENDIX B: (Continued) 45. Health Good food and plenty of exercise are needed for good health. Health 46. Cute We call a beautiful baby a cute baby. Cute 47. Bite Barking dogs generally do not bite. Bite 48. Slipped The comedian slipped on a banana peel and fell down. Slipped 49. Separate Oil and water do not mix; they keep separate. Separate 50. Neighbor The person who lives next door to you is your neighbor. Neighbor 51. Necessary Food and water are necessary to keep us alive. Necessary 52. Hygiene Our teacher pays special attention to the hygiene of our classroom. Hygiene 53. Grammar You should know grammar to write and speak correct sentences. Grammar 54. Suggestible People who believe anything without asking questions are suggestible. Suggestible 55. Thief A thief steals almost anything. Thief 56. 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

(Continues)

APPENDIX C: (Continued)

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

(Continues)

APPENDIX D: (Continued)

(Continues)

APPENDIX D: (Continued)

(Continues)

APPENDIX D: (Continued)

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