SPELLING ACQUISITION IN POLISH LANGUAGE Elżbieta Awramiuk University of Białystok, Poland

FIRST… …A SHORT COURSE OF POLISH LANGUAGE

BASIC UNIT OF WRITTEN LANGUAGE Dziecko czyta książkę i ogląda obrazki. [The child reads a book and looks at the pictures] Words may also occur as single morphemes the word – the basic unit Morphems obraz-k-i Words consist of significant and grammatical morphemes root word-formative inflectional

POLISH – AN ALPHABETIC SYSTEM Polish phonological system: about 40 phonemes; consonants: 75% Polish alphabet: 32 letters (44 graphemes) a ą b c ć d e ę f g h i j k l ł m n ń o ó p r s ś t u w y z ż ź

Relations between phonemes and graphemes one letter – one phoneme: a-/a/, k-/k/ two or three letters – one phoneme: cz-/č/ one letter – two phonemes: b-/b/, /p/ one phoneme – represented by different letters: /u/-u, ó; /ž/-ż, rz; /h/-h, ch

There are words in Polish in which each letter corresponds to one sound, but in most cases there are significant qualitative and quantitative differences between the pronunciation of a word and its orthographic version.

Spelling vs. reading Spelling is more difficult than reading because phoneme-grapheme relations are more inconsistent than grapheme-phoneme relations.

Teaching reading and writing in Poland “O” grade: 6 year-old children preschool stage/ prewriting children learn to recognize basic letters first grade: 7 year-old children children begin to learn how to write

Teaching methods in Poland Children begin from phonological training. They are familiarized with the phonetic value of each letter during an auditory analysis. The auditory analysis consists in pronouncing isolated sounds, which in the case of consonants can lead to isolation of the vocal element [y]: dom [dy] – [o] – [my]. The alphabet teaching (i.e. letter names) occurs relatively late in school curricula (second grade).

letter-name spelling IN ENGLISH children use the phonetic strategy they have many problems with phonological segmentation syllables are represented by single graphemes children write a letter to represent the sounds of the letter’s name: help as HLP they relate the phonetic value of L to the sound form of the letter name

IN POLISH MOTL motyl ‘butterfly’ DM dym ‘smoke’ WHY? * Polish children are not taught letter names, but they begin to learn how to read from phonological training...

QUESTION Do children starting to write in Polish and English omit the vowel letters for the same reason?

Experiment The participants: 60 children from three separate 0 grade classes. Task: writing 12 words, which were characterized by a simple structure and a consistent relation between a grapheme and phoneme. a movable alphabet. The words – 3 groups: group I: words that contained a sequence corresponding to the name of the letter (e.g. deska ‘board’ contains the name of the letter D [de]), group II: words containing the sequence Cy (e.g. lody ‘ice-cream’ contains the sequence [dy]) group III – with neutral phonological context (e.g. sequence [do] for the letter D in the word dom ‘house’).

If children equated the name of the letter with its phonetic value, then the words from the first group would be spelled without the vowels. If there were other reasons for omitted letters (e.g. weak visual memory), the number of omissions should not differ between groups. A greater number of misspellings in group II would prove that the problems with phonological segmentation are the result of the teaching method.

RESULTS

DISCUSSION The reason that Polish children omit vowel letters is due to problems with phonological segmentation, especially in the Cy sequence. This is a result of teaching methods used in Poland. When a Polish child asks the teacher: What letter is this? The answer is: [dy] and [my], and not de and em. Letter recognition is an introduction to acquisition of writing and reading skills, and for a Polish child the first letter (first, but not officially first) names are [dy] or [my].

DISCUSSION The surprisingly large number of omissions occurred in sequences corresponding to the letter names. This means that, since the alphabet teaching occurs relatively late in school curricula (second grade), children may acquire the letter names earlier through informal learning (at home) and informal instruction at school (teachers – often unwittingly – use the letter names).

Specific spelling errors in English and Polish DM dym ‘smoke’ the the sound value of the syllable [dy] does not correspond to the letter name WR war sound value of the syllable [ar] corresponds to the letter name children write down the letter keeping in mind the (first) letter name

CONCLUSION The method (alphabet learning vs. phonological training) of introducing children into the essence of writing is of fundamental importance for child's initial notions about grapheme-phoneme relations.