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Master's Thesis The spelling of phonemes An Error Analysis of Norwegian pupils’ L2 English spelling with emphasis on phoneme–grapheme correspondences Haakon Valen Hume Simpson Master’s Thesis in English Linguistics Department of Foreign Languages University of Bergen May 2019 Summary in Norwegian Denne masteroppgaven i engelsk lingvistikk undersøker hvordan fonemene (lydene) bak ulike grafemer (sammensetninger av bokstaver) påvirker elevers evne til å stave grafemene. Forholdet mellom fonemer og grafemer i engelsk er komplekst. En norsk elev som tilegner seg andrespråklig engelsk bruker ofte fonologiske strategier når ukjente ord skal staves, som eksempelvis å bruke andre engelske grafemer for det samme fonemet, et lignende engelsk grafem for et annet fonem, eller norske grafemer. Denne oppgaven tar for seg åtte ulike fonemer i engelsk og undersøker om de kan utløse forskjellige typer skrivefeil, om noen av dem er tydelig vanskeligere å stave enn andre, og om det er noen synlige mønstre i hva som eventuelt gjør noen vanskeligere å stave enn andre. Data fra CORYL (en samling av nasjonale prøver gjennomført av 12/13-åringer og 15/16-åringer) og en diktatprøve gjennomført i en 10. klasse danner grunnlaget for analysen. Funnene i oppgaven viser at det er stor forskjell i hvor ofte elever feilstaver ulike fonemer. Den tydeligste forklaringen for ulikheten mellom fonemer funnet her var korrelasjonen mellom hvor mange grafem et fonem kan bli stavet med, at jo færre og mer regulere grafemer som utgjør et fonem, dess sjeldnere blir fonemet feilstavet. I tillegg peker noen av funnene mot at det kan være av betydning om fonemet finnes i både førstespråket og andrespråket, eller om det kun finnes i andrespråket. Det kan også hende at elevers feilstavelser som oftest tar formen av et annet grafem som kan tilsvare det tilsiktede fonemet, men disse to indikasjonene trenger et bredere datagrunnlag enn det som foreligger her før konklusjoner kan trekkes. iii Acknowledgements I am grateful for all the people who have inspired, assisted, or diverted me from the project when needed. First of all, I want to thank the student I tutored, whose eagerness to learn from sound-based spelling instruction inspired me to take on this topic for the present thesis. I would like to extend my sincere thanks to Greg Brooks for helpful conversations and insightful comments, and for taking the time to meet and discuss the project in its infancy. I am also grateful for the level of interest that Angela Hasselgreen and Kari Telstad Sundet gave the project and for the helpful instructions in maneuvering CORYL. Thanks to the principal and the teachers of the lower and upper secondary schools who allowed me to borrow their time and to the pupils who participated in the study. I very much appreciate the helpful feedback given to me by the members of faculty along the way, and especially Bente Hannisdal for help with assessing the validity of my RP accent and transcription thereof. Special thanks go to my supervisor Dagmar Haumann, who trusted in the potential of the project and whose sharp eye I admire and who told me exactly what I needed to hear during the course of writing. The cooperative spirit of my fellow writing group members is unrivaled, and I am indebted to all the great feedback you have given me and the hours you spent giving them. I cannot begin to express my thanks to my parents and siblings, who have given me so much this past year, I would never have come this far without you. I extend my deepest gratitude to my dear Lise, without whom this project would not have been possible, and to our John Edvard, without whom it would have been written much quicker! iv Table of contents SUMMARY IN NORWEGIAN ..................................................................................... III ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................... IV ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS ............................................................... VIII 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1 2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND PREVIOUS STUDIES .......................... 3 2.1 THE ENGLISH SPELLING SYSTEM ......................................................................... 3 2.2 SPELLING IN ERROR ANALYSIS ............................................................................ 8 2.3 ACQUISITION OF LITERACY ............................................................................... 10 2.4 ACQUISITION OF SPELLING ................................................................................ 13 2.5 ERROR CATEGORIES .......................................................................................... 18 2.6 L2 ENGLISH SPELLING ...................................................................................... 20 2.7 PRONUNCIATION ............................................................................................... 26 2.8 SUMMARY ......................................................................................................... 27 3 METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................. 29 3.1 CORYL ............................................................................................................ 29 3.2 PHONEMES & GRAPHEMES ............................................................................... 31 3.3 DEFINING ERRORS ............................................................................................. 33 3.4 CORPUS DATA ................................................................................................... 38 3.5 FIELD WORK ...................................................................................................... 41 3.6 SIGNIFICANCE TESTING ..................................................................................... 46 3.7 SUMMARY ......................................................................................................... 46 4 RESULTS & DISCUSSION .................................................................................. 47 4.1 CORPUS DATA RESULTS .................................................................................... 47 4.2 FIELD WORK RESULTS ....................................................................................... 56 4.3 HYPOTHESES ..................................................................................................... 60 4.4 SUMMARY ......................................................................................................... 75 5 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................... 77 APPENDICES ................................................................................................................ 79 REFERENCE LIST ........................................................................................................ 82 v List of tables Table 2.1: Graphemes of /v/ and /ʃ/ ................................................................................. 5 Table 3.1: Graphemes of the phoneme selection ........................................................... 33 Table 3.2: Unanalysable words by category and phoneme ........................................... 37 Table 3.3: Frequency of correct spellings of /eə/ by grapheme ..................................... 40 Table 3.4: Phonemes and graphemes present in the field work tests ............................ 42 Table 4.1: Errors and total use of the phonemes in CORYL, sorted by total use .......... 48 Table 4.2: Number of CEFR rated texts per age group ................................................. 53 Table 4.3: Number of errors per phoneme according to CEFR level ............................ 54 Table 4.4: Spelling errors by phoneme and error category ............................................ 55 Table 4.5: Erroneously pronounced target phonemes.................................................... 59 Table 4.6: Errors of the same phoneme in spelling and pronunciation by the same pupil ........................................................................................................................................ 61 Table 4.7: Error rates of L1 phonemes and L2 phonemes ............................................. 62 Table 4.8: Error rates of the graphemes of /ʃ/ ................................................................ 65 Table 4.9: Error rates of the graphemes of /ʧ/ ............................................................... 66 Table 4.10: Error rates of the graphemes of /v/ ............................................................. 66 Table 4.11: Error rates of the graphemes of /w/ ............................................................ 67 Table 4.12: Error rates of the graphemes of /e/ ............................................................. 67 Table 4.13: Error rates of the graphemes of /eə/ ............................................................ 68 Table 4.14: Error rates of the graphemes of /ɪə/ ............................................................ 69 Table 4.15: Rate of phonetically accurate spellings per phoneme................................. 72 Table 4.16: Rate of phonetically accurate spellings per phoneme, excluding irregular graphemes and /æ/, and including homophone errors .................................................... 73 Table 4.17: Graphemes used in the spelling of nonwords ............................................. 74 vi List of figures Figure
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