Morphological knowledge and spelling acquisition

一年级末阅读和拼写能力差的孩子往往仍然阅读和拼写能力差。此外，拼写能力差似乎干扰了作文技能的发展。最重要的是，糟糕的识字能力会危及以后的学术成就。鉴于早期识字困难具有长期后果，必须更好地了解这些困难是如何产生的。这项拟议研究的长期目标是了解讲法语的儿童在识字表现上的个体差异的发展。与芬兰语这样的透明语言和英语这样的不透明语言相比，法语书面语言代表了词法的许多方面，而这些方面在语音上没有表现出来。例如，单词通常以表示形态信息的无声辅音结尾。考虑到复数在名词中最常以无声-S结尾，在规则动词中以无声-NT结尾，而某些名词中的无声尾辅音标志着与派生动词(如：咏/唱)的关系。因此，以沉默为主的词法意味着儿童必须在没有口头参照的情况下学习如何正确拼写单词，这会导致特定的困难，并可能导致对词法知识的更多依赖。因此，本提案侧重于幼儿的形态知识，因为它可能在法语拼写中发挥关键作用。作者提出了一系列研究来探讨词法意识、策略和分析对法语拼写的相对贡献。从这项研究中获得的知识将通过明确词法在法语拼写中的作用来完善识字习得的理论模型。此外，拟议研究的累积结果应该会导致关于形态知识如何提高识字能力的更成功的干预研究。鉴于最近的新闻报道，魁北克25%的讲法语的儿童面临识字失败的风险，这一信息是非常需要的。

Children who are poor readers and spellers at the end of Grade 1 tend to remain poor readers and spellers. In addition, poor spelling ability seems to interfere with the development of composition skill. Most important, poor literacy skills jeopardize later academic success. Given that early literacy difficulties have long term consequences, it is essential to understand better how these difficulties arise. The long-term goal of the proposed research is to understand the development of individual differences in literacy performance among French-speaking children. In contrast to transparent languages like Finnish as well as opaque languages like English, the French written language represents many aspects of morphology that are not represented phonologically. For instance, words often end with silent consonants that indicate morphological information. Consider that the plural is most often marked with a final silent -s in nouns and a silent -nt in regular verbs, and the silent final consonant in certain nouns marks the relation with derivatives such as derived verbs (e.g., chant/chanter). Hence, the predominantly silent morphology means that children must learn how to spell words correctly without an oral reference which results in specific difficulties and may result in an increased reliance on morphological knowledge. Hence, the present proposal focuses on young children's morphological knowledge because it may play a critical role in spelling in French. A series of studies are proposed to address the relative contribution of morphological awareness, strategies, and analysis to spelling in French. The knowledge gained from this research will lead to refinements of theoretical models on literacy acquisition by specifying the role of morphology in spelling in French. In addition, the accumulated findings from the proposed research should lead to more successful intervention studies on how morphological knowledge can enhance literacy. This information is badly needed given the recent news reports that 25% of French-speaking children in Québec are at risk of literacy failure.