The English Spelling Performance of Dutch University Students of
English
On Inflected and Uninflected Targets
Marieke Hoeijmakers
3367126
Humanities Faculty Utrecht University
Master Thesis: Language, Mind and Society
Supervisors:
Dr. E.H. de Bree – Department of Social Sciences (Pedagogical Sciences)
Dr. M.C.J. Keijzer – Department of Modern Languages (English)
Second Reader:
Dr. S. Unsworth – Department of Modern Languages (English)
July 6th 2012
Abstract
Aim: To investigate whether it is possible to master an L2 spelling system that is different
than the entrenched L1 spelling system. Furthermore, it was assessed whether manipulated
lexical status, morphology, phonology, and orthography would contribute to spelling capacity.
Thirdly, it was reviewed whether the results could be interpreted within a usage-based
framework.
Method: 19 Dutch University students had to complete a spelling task including
English real words and pseudowords further divided in uninflected and inflected targets,
which were controlled for phonological and orthographical complexity (taken from Kemp et
al., 2008). Furthermore, participants completed an English spelling selection task, in which
these same targets had to be selected from a two-choice option.
Results: Students found spelling real words less challenging than spelling
pseudowords. The higher scores on spelling real words could indicate that participants made
use of their mental lexicon when spelling words. The mental lexicon stores knowledge based
on frequency, input and usage. Furthermore, the students found base word forms easier to
spell than derived word forms. This could indicate that participants struggled with adding the
correct ambiguous suffix, which means they found it difficult to connect suffixes to
contextual cues that signal the intended orthographic spelling pattern. Finally, the students
appeared to have less difficulty with spelling English phonological words, like botherbothersome, than with spelling orthographic words, e.g. scarce-scarcity that required
knowledge about the English spelling system. The results from the selection task showed that
students had a better perception on English spelling than production. Especially the perception
of orthographic ambiguous spelling patterns was better than their production.
Keywords: L2, spelling, Dutch, English, words, pseudowords, Usage-Based Theory
2
Acknowledgements
So…this is it. From the moment I started writing my Bachelor’s thesis I dreamed about
starting to write my Master’s thesis but at the same time, like a two-edged sword, the very
prospect of writing my Master’s thesis seemed quite daunting. As a university student this
Master’s thesis is the crown on my student-career and because of the fascinating and
interesting topic of this thesis, which builds on my Bachelor’s thesis, I was very eager and
excited to start. On the other side, as it is the cherry on the cake, I really wanted this to be the
best piece I have ever written...not only for me but also because I really wanted to make both
of my supervisors proud. The amount of guidance, help and wisdom they put in the process
went far beyond their call of duty and I could not have done any of this without them. Now
that it is done I feel a little sad and lost in a way because with the finishing of this
acknowledgements section my student career comes to an end. Therefore, I really want to take
this moment to show my deepest gratitude to those who helped, stood by me by motivating,
stimulating and supporting me and also the students that participated in this investigation.
So, first of all I want to thank the 19 English Language and Culture students from
Utrecht University who kindly participated in this investigation as test subjects. These
students gave me more than two hours of their spare time and without them I would not have
been able to perform the tests and collect the data necessary for this investigation.
Consequently, without these 19 participants I could not have written this thesis. Although I
cannot name you one by one because of privacy regulation I really want to thank you all and I
wish you the best of luck when writing your very own Bachelor’s and Master’s theses.
I would also like to express my gratitude towards Nenagh Kemp for sending us, Elise
de Bree, Merel Keijzer and myself, the original stimuli and sound files and allowing us to use
them in our investigations. These original stimuli and sound recording enabled us to conduct
3
the experiment within a short period of time. Without these stimuli this thesis could not have
been completed within the required time span.
On an academic level I want to acknowledge and thank my two supervisors, Elise de
Bree and Merel Keijzer, from the bottom of my heart. This thesis would not have been
possible without their stimulating, enthusiastic and wise supervision. Elise de Bree also
supervised my Bachelor’s thesis and the fascinating topic of the investigations from both my
Bachelor’s and Master’s thesis were her brilliant ideas. Merel Keijzer acted as the second
reader for my Bachelor’s thesis and I was very honoured that she agreed to supervise me
during my Master thesis process. The knowledge that Elise de Bree and Merel Keijzer would
be there to help me throughout this project made me even more eager to start because I really
enjoyed working with them and I hold both of them in very high regard. They guided and
helped me throughout the entire process from recruiting participants, planning, booking rooms
for test sessions to helping with analysing the experimental data and always providing me
with prompt and detailed and useful feedback on all my writings. I was always allowed to
walk in, mail or call when I needed their advice or opinion on something. Thank you both so
much for all the time, effort and energy you put into this project and also for believing in me
and encouraging me whenever I felt uncertain; that really meant a lot to me.
I would also like to thanks Dr. Unsworth in advance for agreeing to function as the
second reader for my Master’s thesis and for taking the time to read this work and discuss it
with my supervisors. I hope you enjoy reading it.
On a personal level, I would like to thank my Mum for her social support, for giving
me that hug only Mothers can give, your motherly advice and for providing me with my
favourite ‘study snacks’…strawberries and carrots. Mum, you have always been interested in
my study progress and writings. You always made time in your busy schedule to read my
Bachelor’s thesis and other pieces, in English, and listen to my over-enthusiastic stories,
4
which were incomprehensible most of the time because I always want to tell too much within
a very short period of time. For all these things I want to say ‘Thank you Mum!’.
Furthermore, I want to thank my best friend, Saskia Goudsmit, who has always been
there for me with serious, and not so serious, advice, and an intelligent point of view. It was
always nice to meet over coffee and talk about each others’ projects, offer each other advice
and support when needed.
Finally, although it is quite ironic that the most important person is always mentioned
last, I really want to express my deepest gratitude to my Love. I would not have been able to
complete this work, or my study for that matter, without the everlasting support of my
boyfriend, Jeroen. Words cannot describe how much you mean to me and how much I
appreciate all the things you have done for me. Throughout the years you have always
supported me, comforted me and stood by me. When I was being too serious you made me
laugh, if I was stressing out you would try to calm me down or give me a firm lecture about
the pointlessness of stressing ‘as it was not going to make things better’. These lectures
weren’t very effective at that time but I could always see your point when I was done
stressing. Especially the past two years, during times of uncertainty, you were the ground
underneath my feet and the shoulder I could lean on both at the same time. Thank you…for
everything…
Marieke Hoeijmakers
Zevenhuizen, July 2012
5
Contents
Contents
6
Chapter 1: Introduction
8
Chapter 2: Theoretical Framework
● 2.1 Usage-Based Theories of Language Acquisition
○ 2.1.1 First Language Acquisition
○ 2.1.2 Second Language Acquisition
◦ 2.1.2.1. Transfer from L1 to L2
○ 2.1.3 Differences between L1 and L2 acquisition
◦ 2.1.3.1 Quality and Quantity of Language Learning
◦ 2.1.3.2 Explicit and Implicit Language Learning
◦ 2.1.3.3 Reading and Writing
● 2.2 The Dutch and English Spelling Systems
○ 2.2.1 Dutch Spelling System
○ 2.2.2 English Spelling System
● 2.3 Orthographic Perception and Production
● 2.4 Previous Research on L2 Spelling Capacities
● 2.5 Hypotheses
12
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19
20
21
22
24
27
27
28
31
33
38
Chapter 3: Method
● 3.1 Participants
● 3.2 Materials
○ 3.2.1 English Dictation
○ 3.2.2 Orthographic Selection Task
○ 3.2.3 Dutch Dictation
○ 3.2.4 Dutch Timed Word Reading
○ 3.2.5 Dutch Timed Pseudoword Reading
○ 3.2.6 Brief Questionnaire
● 3.3 Procedure
● 3.4 Data Processing
41
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47
48
48
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48
52
Chapter 4: Results
● 4.1 English Spelling Task: Words and Pseudowords
● 4.2 English Spelling Task: Base Words
● 4.3 English Spelling Task: Derived Words
● 4.4 Correct Real Base Word Scores
● 4.5 Orthographic Selection Task: Words and Pseudowords
● 4.6 Orthographic Selection Task: Base Words
● 4.7 Orthographic Selection Task: Derived Words
● 4.8 Problem Words
● 4.9 Dutch Proficiency Tasks
54
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55
57
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59
60
63
Chapter 5: Discussion
64
Chapter 6: Conclusion
74
6
Works Cited
77
Appendices:
●
A: Sequence Orthographic Selection Task
●
E: Orthographic Selection Task Stimuli
●
F: Brief Questionnaire
81
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84
87
7
Chapter 1: Introduction
Within the field of foreign language (FL) learning the recent focus has been on developing
efficient communication skills with which an individual can convey an intended message to
another (group of) individual(s). The aim of learning another language has been on the ability
to understand (listen), produce (speak) and also perceive (read) the target language (Richards
& Schmidt, 2002, Van Berkel, 1999 and Van Berkel, 2005). Active proficiency (writing) in
the target language has not been a priority in FL learning because it is not considered to be a
necessary skill for successful communication. Students are more or less expected to acquire
writing skills by themselves (Van Berkel, 1999, Van Berkel, 2005 and NaB-MVT, 2004).
However, as a result of the shifted focus to written communication the ability to be able to
write in the L2 is becoming increasingly important as well.
Since the rise of the Internet the world is increasingly becoming a global village, and
this has had a major impact on the business and social environment of companies but also of
individuals all over the world. English is usually employed as a lingua franca, and because
modern communication is increasingly being handled in written form, such as in e-mails and
on Facebook, Twitter, Ping and What’s-App (N.C. Ellis, 2008). This written global
communication calls for an ability to communicate in written English.
Taking into account that the Netherlands is a small country and Dutch only spoken by
approximately 23 million people1 (Nederlandse Taalunie, 2011), the importance of mastering
English as a second language is becoming inevitable for employees of Dutch businesses in
order for them to commerce with international companies but also for individuals who wish to
communicate with other individuals who do not speak Dutch (Ellis, 2008). As a result of the
shifted focus to written communication, investigating the spelling proficiency of Dutch
1
The exact numbers are unknown, but this is an approximation produced by De Nederlandse Taalunie.
8
learners of English becomes relevant from a social perspective, because in written
communication an individual’s writing is a personal representation and being able to spell
correctly would make a positive impression (Cook & Bassetti, 2005 and Cook, 1997). From a
scientific perspective it would be interesting to find out if it is possible for late Dutch learners
of English, who have been introduced to the English language from secondary school
onwards, to master the English orthographic system. Furthermore, if students are able to
demonstrate a high spelling proficiency in English this could indicate they are able to
comprehend, adopt and correctly apply a spelling strategy that is different from the
entrenched L1 spelling strategy they apply in their first language.
Several studies have investigated the spelling proficiency of Dutch English Second
Language (ESL) learners. For instance, Schijf (2009) investigated the spelling capacities of
Dutch first-year secondary school students. Students belonged to one of the six educational
levels of the Dutch secondary schools and stood at the beginning of their English language
learning process. Another study on the spelling capacities among Dutch secondary school
students was conducted by Van Berkel (2005). This study set out the investigate if Dutch first
and second year secondary school students transfer their L1 spelling strategy, spelling-tosound, to English when spelling English words. Finally, Hoeijmakers (2011) focused on the
English spelling capacities of final-year grammar school students, the highest level of Dutch
secondary school, who had arrived at the end stage of their English language acquisition
process. The purpose of the latter study was to investigate the English spelling capacities of
these students by asking them to spell real and pseudowords and the factor of word
complexity was also added to the test design by including base and derived words. The words
could either be spelled by listening to the phonology of the words, a spelling-to-sound
relation, or by applying English spelling conventions, which are so-called orthographic
spelling patterns. So, the researchers all investigated different levels of English among Dutch
9
L2 learners of English, from the beginning stage of FL learning to the spelling capacities of
FL learners at the final stage of FL learning in grammar school.
As a next step, it might be interesting to look at the English spelling capacity of Dutch
test subjects who have undergone intensive training in all aspects of the English language.
The first aim of the present study is to investigate the spelling capacity of English real and
pseudowords of Dutch university students studying English. The results obtained from this
investigation can be compared to the results of native English university students from the
study by Kemp, Parilla & Kirby (2008) that investigated the spelling outcome of native
English university students and high functioning dyslexics. The former group is of interest
here, as it allowed for a comparison between the spelling skills of Dutch students of English
and native speakers’ spelling skills. In addition, the results from the present study can also be
compared to the results from the final-year grammar school students by Hoeijmakers (2011)
to determine if the Dutch University students reached higher proficiency levels in English.
The test procedure and stimuli from the investigation by Hoeijmakers (2011) and the current
investigation is identical to the investigation performed by Kemp et al. (2008), who gave
permission for the use of the test materials. In short, the present study seeks to determine
whether Dutch university students of English are able to apply English orthographic
conventions when asked to spell English real and pseudowords.
An addition to this study compared to that of Hoeijmakers (2011) is that in the present study
participants have to complete an active knowledge task (spelling), similar to Hoeijmakers
(2011), as well as a passive knowledge task, in which the correct spelling pattern has to be
selected from a two-choice option recognition task. This is done to ascertain whether there is
a difference between the recognition of a correct spelling pattern and the production, writing,
of a correct spelling pattern (see also Kahn-Horwitz, Sparks & Goldstein, 2012). The
theoretical framework of this study, Usage-Based theory of language learning, which focuses
10
on constructs such as the influence of input, frequency, chunking of sound streams,
entrenchment, competition and pre-emption will be presented in Chapter two (see also
Tomasello (2003) and Lieven (2005 and 2008)). This will be followed by an overview of the
difference between the Dutch and English language. As a next step, relevant literature of L2
writing acquisition and spelling perception and production will be summarized and the
previous investigations briefly touched upon above will be described in more detail. The
second part will elaborate on the participants and describe the test materials and method
before turning to the results of the Dutch university students of English. Thirdly, the findings
will be discussed and compared to the data obtained in the studies of Kemp et al. (2008) and
Hoeijmakers (2011). Finally, the major findings will be summarized and, subsequently,
conclusions can be drawn from these findings, leading to implications for future research and
also teaching practices.
11
Chapter 2: Theoretical Framework
2.1 Usage-Based Theories of Language Acquisition
In recent years, an increasing amount of interest, recognition and attention has been paid to
Usage-Based (UB) theories of language acquisition, associated with researchers such as
Tomasello (2003) and Lieven (2005 and 2008). In contrast to the Universal Grammar (UG)
approach that has dominated acquisition theories and which argue that input does not facilitate
language learning (poverty of stimulus) the UB approach takes input to be the foundation of
language acquisition (Tomasello, 2003, p. 2-3). That is not to say that UB and UG have
nothing in common. For one, both theories argue that the ability to acquire a language is a
species-specific feature. Secondly, they both plead that children come equipped for the task of
language acquisition, but where UG proponents believe humans to have a language blueprint
and a Language Acquisition Device (LAD) that guide them through the language acquisition
process, UB researchers postulate that the reason only humans are able to acquire a language
lies within the interaction of cognitive and social-cultural skills unique to the human race
(Tomasello, 2003, p. 3-4). When applied to the development of new features in the symbolic
use of language these skills can result in successful language acquisition (Tomasello, 2003, p.
3-4). There are two collective skills that are particularly important for enabling language
acquisition; intention reading (generally perceived as ‘theory of mind’) and pattern finding,
also called categorization (Tomasello, 2003, p. 3). Children participate in sharing attention
regarding objects or events with another person; these objects or events can be of mutual
interest and relevance of the joint attention, such as mummy pointing to a toy that needs
cleaning where ‘cleaning toys’ is the goal of the discourse (Tomasello, 2003, p. 21-29). The
object or event interest can also fall outside the purpose of the interaction, for instance, daddy
coming in and pointing to a toy but daddy had nothing to do with the ‘mummy and I are
12
cleaning toys’ discourse (Tomasello, 2003, p. 21-29 and Tomasello, Carpenter and
Liszkowski, 2007, p. 710-711). These skills are essential for the acquisition of linguistic
symbols, expressions and constructions (Tomasello, 2003, p. 3). As a next step, children try to
form categories and create analogies based on similarities between objects and events (pattern
finding), a necessary skill for the formation of a grammar (Barlow & Kemmer, 2000, p. XIVXV and Tomasello, 2003, p. 4). According to N.C. Ellis (2002, 2005, 2006&2008) and
Eskildsen (2008) UB language acquisition is exemplar-based, item-based and frequencybased. Children acquire all aspects of a language by the piece-meal learning of numerous
constructions in which frequency and salience determine the acquisition order of items and
constructions. Items that are used regularly are acquired before items with a lower input, and
the frequently used items and constructions are also better entrenched than the infrequently
used items and constructions (Keijzer, 2007, p. 27).
2.1.1 First Language Acquisition
According to Tomasello (2003) children start acquiring a language around their first birthday
but even before that, from nine months onwards, they lay out the foundations necessary to
start acquiring a language. They do this by participating in attention-sharing and initiating
attention-sharing, by pointing, with other individuals (Tomasello, 2003, p. 21). As a next step,
children have to understand that the sounds adults produce and the gestures adults make have
the intention to convey a message to the child (intention reading). So, children start to chunk
up speech streams into identifiable pieces that they can associate with a, initially, holistic
intention by connecting them to entire objects of events (N.C. Ellis, 2005, p. 315 and
Tomasello, 2003 p. 91). Then children start their attempt to produce these sounds (babbling
stage) and gestures (imitation) themselves based on input and salience (Tomasello, 2003, p.
23-36). Furthermore, children start to recognize the speech patterns of their native language
13
around their first birthday and they lose the ability to discriminate between sounds that are not
in complementary distribution in their native language. Dutch infants, for example, learn that,
unlike Chinese children, the l and the r are two distinctive sounds. They also learn to ignore
tonal differences, which carry no meaning in Dutch, but would in Chinese (e.g. mà means
warn and má means cannabis) (Cook, 1997, p. 474, China Cross Culture, 2012, and
Tomasello, 2003, p. 59). The first utterances a child produces can thus be defined as
‘holophrases’, as the conveyed meaning is holistic and these are typically single-word
utterances with an undifferentiated intention (Tomasello, 2003, p. 36). The kind of words
children utter as their first words depend on the salience of the words in adult communication
in their direct environment but typically include words like doggy, Mommy, drink, etc.
(Tomasello, 2003, p. 48). Mastering the holophrases is a necessary condition for evolving into
producing two-word utterances as the mastering of one feature feeds the acquisition of the
next feature of language acquisition (Keijzer, 2007, p. 11). Two-word utterances usually have
one constant word that determines the intention of the speech act, such as more (desire to
receive more of something) and where’s (initiates a question) the child than adds another
word to fill in the empty slot and this leads to utterances like more cookie and where’s
Daddy? (Tomasello, 2003, p. 95). These pivot grammar schemas can be represented as slotand-frame constructions like more-X or Where’s-X (Tomasello, 2003, p. 95-99). These
utterances do not contain any syntax yet because they do not hold morphological marking of
participant roles in the interaction (Tomasello, 2003, p. 101-112). As children’s utterances
develop into multi-word expressions the verbs in these utterances receive syntactic marking
but remain item-based. This means that a child may say he breaks it but this does not mean
the child will also produce he makes it because the child has only perceived the grammatical
marking –s applied to this one verb, break, (verb-island) and children are unable to make a
generalization, or draw the analogy, and do the same for the verb makes. Children only start to
14
connection the –s to make when they hear an adult doing so (Kemp & Bryant, 2003, p. 63 and
Tomasello, 2003, p. 120-121). Thus, children acquire their item-based constructions based on
the input they receive from their surroundings and by making use of their cognitive and
social-cognitive abilities (Tomasello, 2003, p. 122).
This linking process is referred to as analogy drawing and it is the next step in the
language development process as it helps children to notice and comprehend the similarities
and interrelation between items or constructions and to form analogies (Tomasello, 2003, p.
169-174). Just like item-based constructions can be represented as schemas, analogies can
also be represented as schemas but these schemas are much more abstract and take the form
of A loves B or D hates C (Tomasello, 2003, p. 174, 280). In order for children to start
drawing analogies they need to have learned a sufficient number of items to draw analogies
from and to base the abstractions on. Children start out by using unmarked verb forms, but
after a while they also produce tense verbs such as come-came but they do not perceive a
connection or see a pattern between these verbs and only apply the tense form to known
words (item-based) (Marchman & Bates, 1994, p. 341). After the mastering of an unknown
number of these item exemplars and verb-islands children start to extract a general pattern, for
instance the past tense suffix –ed, and apply this pattern to all forms, yielding
overgeneralization errors such as comed (Marchman & Bates, 1994, p. 341-343).
Furthermore, children also start to apply this past tense rule to novel verbs to create past tense
forms (Marchman & Bates, 1994, p. 341-343). The number of lexical items children need to
have mastered before being able to see patterns and draw analogies is referred to as critical
mass (Marchman & Bates, 1994, p. 341-343). Tomasello (2003) explains that children base
their analogies on the input they receive from their environment, resulting in analogies that
are always appropriate in the target language (p. 175-178). The further children come in their
language acquisition process, the better their obtained knowledge becomes rooted inside the
15
children’s mind as habit formations (Langacker, 2000, p. 3-5). Specifically, the more a child
hears a construction or a verb being successfully used in a certain construction, the more
deeply the usage of this verb in this construction becomes entrenched in the mind of the child
(Tomasello, 2003, p. 300). However, if adults start to use other verbs, with a similar meaning,
in an identical context then the child may come to realize that the current generalization is not
conventional and may reconstruct, or pre-empt, the generalization (Tomasello, 2003, p. 178).
For example, a child has made the marked generalization that in a construction like He
disappeared the rabbit the verb disappeared can be used in a simple transitive construction.
However, when the child notices that adults try to avoid this construction by phrasing the
construction like He made the rabbit disappear the child might conclude that his or her own
generalization was incorrect and subsequently pre-empts it (Tomasello, 2003, p. 178). Input
also helps children to realize that overgeneralization of, for instance the past tense suffix –ed,
are not conventional for irregular verbs and they will pre-emt this generalization as well
(Marchman & Bates, 1994, p. 342-358). Thus entrenchment and pre-emption work together
and are guided by the input the child receives from the surroundings.
As a final step in the language acquisition process children start to read, write and
spell when they enter primary school. Children receive extensive formal instruction on
reading and writing that explains how the constructions of their language are structured and
why the constraints that limit these constructions exist. When children start to read and write
they already have a thorough knowledge about the phonological system of their language
(Hulme, Snowling & Quilan, 1991, p. 159-162). So, children start to learn their first language
from the womb onwards. Their cognitive and social-cognitive skills help them by developing
their intention-reading and pattern-finding capacities and because of these abilities children
learn every aspect of their first language in a gradual, piece-meal fashion (Eskildsen, 2008, p.
335-336 and Tomasello, 2003, p. 320-321).
16
2.1.2 Second Language (L2) Acquisition
The UB theory of language acquisition can also be applied to L2 learning. In L2 acquisition
the starting point differs from that of L1 because L2 learners have an almost matured brain, at
least in adolescent learning, which is the most common form of L2 learning. This means that
L2 learners are fully capable of reading the intention of a discourse partner. Furthermore, the
skill of attention-sharing is also mastered, so the foundations for acquiring a new language are
in place because L2 learners can build upon pre-existing conceptual knowledge. However, the
pattern-finding and the chunking of sound streams into sentences, words and word parts might
need some adjustment, based on the pattern difference between the first and second language.
L2 learners do not start from scratch as the foundation is already there: the rest of the L1
acquisition process described above from formulas, through low-scope patterns, to
constructions could be applied to L2 learning as well (N.C. Ellis, 2002, p. 170, N.C. Ellis,
2006, p. 101, Lowie, Verspoor & Seton, 2010, p. 139, MacWhinney, 2007, p. 3 and
Nakamura, 2005, p. 464).
The L2 learning process thus begins by segmenting the sound streams into words. The
stress pattern of a language might help to identify word boundaries, which calls upon the
pattern-finding skills of the language learner (MacWhinney, 2007, p. 3 and Williams, 2009, p.
328-339). When an L2 learner succeeds in chunking the speech stream up into single-word
units the job of assigning meaning to words begins, and this stage can be compared to the
holophrase stage of L1 acquisition. This comparison can be made because L2 learners also
start by trying to find a required reference when they hear a word being used. L2 learners link
words using their attention-focusing skills, so they can associate this word with an object or
event (N.C. Ellis, 2005, p. 315 and Williams, 2009, p. 329-339). If an L2 learner has only
been able to assign meaning to a small number of words, utterances are just one-word speechacts that convey a holistic meaning. As the language learner acquires more words based on
17
the input, exposure they receive and associations they make, the learning process becomes
easier as the number of words with no assigned meaning decreases and learners start to form
slot-and-frame constructions like Where’s X? As a result, comprehension also increases and
item-based utterances start to be formed based on the input and frequency of the perceived
items (N.C. Ellis, 2002, p. 166-167 and N.C. Ellis, 2005, p. 315). Language learners initially
only pick up the most salient features of the language such as verb(-islands), participant roles,
objects and personal pronouns (MacWhinney, 2007, p. 12). When learners have reached a
critical mass of item-based constructions they tend to start drawing analogies based on
similarities and interrelations between items and constructions (N.C. Ellis, 2002, p. 166-167,
Marchman & Bates, 1994, p. 341-358 and Tomasello, 2003, p. 174, 280). L2 learners do this
by creating more abstract construction schemas like B kicks C and A kisses D (N.C. Ellis,
2002, p. 166-167, Marchman & Bates, 1994, p. 341-358 and Tomasello, 2003, p. 174, 280). If
the L2 learner progresses and L2 proficiency increases the learner starts to notice and learn
the less salient aspects of the L2 as well. The L2 learner may come to realize that the
previously drawn analogies, which have been engrained into the learner’s form-function
mappings, might not be conventional based on recasts such as Oh! She brought you here,
didn’t she? (on the bases of overgeneralized utterances such as She bringed me here) and need
to be revised (MacWhinney, 2007, p. 3-29, Marchman & Bates, 1994, p. 341-358 and
Tomasello, 2003, p. 180). As a result, the language learner pre-empts the entrenched
construction to form a new more conventional analogy and starts to form even more complex
constructions. The input of the language learner’s surroundings is of significant importance as
the input and usage of words, constructions and utterances by the language learner and his or
her environment shapes the learner’s mental lexicon, grammatical knowledge and proficiency
(N.C. Ellis, 2002, p. 166-167 and MacWhinney, 2007, p. 2-3). With the usage of each
utterance the activation threshold for this utterance, and words in the utterance, are lowered.
18
As a result, the activation bar that needs to be surpassed in order to activate the target word or
utterance is lowered and the target words, or utterance, becomes more readily available for
usage (N.C. Ellis, 2006, p. 102). So, with every usage event, words are primed again and
become more readily available for future usage (N.C. Ellis, 2006, p. 102).
The final step of the L1 acquisition process, learning to read and write, often develops
alongside the acquisition of vocabulary and the acquisition of speaking and listening during
L2 acquisition (N.C. Ellis, 2002, p. 170 and Van Berkel, 1999, p. 14-15). The reason for this
is that formal instruction for reading, and speaking and listening starts simultaneously and L2
learners are expected to acquired writing alongside the other three language aspects (Van
Berkel, 1999, p. 14-15 and N.C. Ellis, 2002, p. 170). The orthographic representation of
words contains important information. Therefore, the acquisition of the L2 orthographic
system might speed up the association mapping of words. In other words, learning to read and
write might give a boost to the acquisition process (Hamada & Koda, 2008, p. 3 and
MacWhinney, 2007, p. 34).
2.1.2.1. Transfer from L1 to L2
Initially, the L2 learner builds on the knowledge and skills developed in de L1. The transfer
and sharing of skills and knowledge is initially beneficial for the L2 acquisition but when the
L2 learner becomes more proficient it can also restrain the L2 acquisition process. During the
first stages of L2 acquisition the L1 serves as a foundation on which the L2 can lean and
develop. In the starting phase of L2 learning the L2 learner directly links the meaning of a
word to the equivalent of that word in the L1 but this only works if there is a close conceptual
link between the L2 and L1. For example, words like the Dutch equivalent stoel for the
English chair are conceptual links but when an L2 learner becomes more proficient in the L2
this immediate transfer decreases (MacWhinney, 2007, p. 19-30). The process of drawing
19
generalizations and pre-empting these entrenched analogies is also complicated by the intense
competition of the deeply rooted L1 knowledge about constructions, word order, word
meaning and syntax (MacWhinney, 2007, p. 19-20). The transfer from L1 to L2 restrains L2
acquisition because the entrenched L1 constructions that were transferred to the L2 to
function as a default setting in acquiring the L2 block the L2 acquisition progress as the L2
learner become more proficient in the L2. The L2 learner needs to let go of this entrenched L1
knowledge as the L1 constructions may compete with the input received from L2 speakers
around the L2 learner that show that the current L1 analogies are not conventional for the L2
(MacWhinney, 2007, p. 19-20). Disregarding the already entrenched language knowledge
requires a cognitive reorganization because the language learner needs to realize that some
constructions that might be allowed within the L1 cannot be used in the L2 (MacWhinney,
2007, p. 19-20).
In sum, the two languages work together and compete against each other as the L1
mechanisms serve as a subset for the L2 acquisition where the L1 mechanisms can be more
powerful at times because they are more deeply entrenched than the L2 knowledge
(MacWhinney, 2007, p. 3). Thus, as the L1 influences the L2 acquisition process, the L2 is
learned in a piece-meal fashion by constantly blocking interfering L1 knowledge and
developing the L2 knowledge on top of, in collaboration with, and competition with the L1
knowledge (MacWhinney, 2007, p. 2-3).
2.1.3 Differences between L1 and L2 acquisition
Although the steps of L1 and L2 acquisition path roughly follow the same pattern, the
conditions for learning an L1 and an L2 are usually very dissimilar (Silverberg & Samuel,
2004, p. 383). Therefore, there are considerable difference between L1 and L2 acquisition as a
result of the manner of learning, the amount and frequency of the input and because of the
20
already acquired and entrenched L1 knowledge L2 learners have to suppress. Furthermore,
whereas L1 learners receive extensive formal instruction on learning to read and write, L2
learners have to acquire speaking, listening, reading and writing all at the same time. Another
factor with which L2 learners struggle is the perception and pronunciation of L2 sounds that
have no discriminative function in the L2 learner’s L1 (N.C. Ellis, 2005, p. 326). Although L2
learners are as able to, with some effort, distinguish sounds that are not discriminative in their
L1 they do rely on their L1 phonetic system to perceive and categorize these sounds (Cenoz &
Lecumberri, 1999, p. 262). However, when frequently used, L2 learners are capable of
producing these sounds as well, even though they still rely on their L1 phonemic inventory to
perceive these sounds (Cenoz & Lecumberri, 1999, p. 270).
2.1.3.1 Quality and Quantity of Language Learning
First of all, children who learn a language are simultaneously developing their brain and
social-cognitive skills as they are figuring out how the world works while these skills are
already developed when a learner starts to acquire an L2 (N.C. Ellis, 2002, p. 170,
MacWhinney, 1992, p. 12-13 and MacWhinney, 2007, p. 2). Secondly, as childrens’ only
focus is to interact with the adults surrounding the child, their brain only focuses on learning
to communicate in an naturalistic environment (N.C. Ellis, 2005, p. 312). Additionally, the
adults around them provide them with high quantity and good quality input that enables
children to develop their L1 in an implicit manner without thinking about how their learning
process is structured (N.C. Ellis, 2005, p. 312, MacWhinney, 2007, p. 2 and Tomasello, 2003,
p. 286-297, 313). Contrastingly, adolescent L2 learners have a nearly matured brain when
they start acquiring their L2 and also have to focus on different tasks besides language
learning. Furthermore, they have to learn this new language while their mind has already been
fully committed to the acquisition of their L1. The learner now has to divide the working
21
memory space over the L1 and the L2 as the L2 acquisition and retention takes up a lot of
working memory capacities as well (Tomasello, 2003, p. 286-287, 313). Additionally, the
quantity and quality of the input and usage frequency is also irregular and inefficient in
comparison to L1 language acquisition as the L2 is often only used within a classroom
environment and the teacher is usually not a native-speaker of the L2 (MacWhinney, 2007, p.
2). On the other hand, because L2 learners are in the possession of an almost matured brain,
this means they can treat language acquisition problems using explicit learning strategies,
such as conscious problem-solving and deduction techniques, to a much greater degree than
L1 learners because they can look up pitfalls they do not understand or ask for an explanation
(N.C. Ellis, 2002, p. 107).
2.1.3.2 Explicit and Implicit Language Learning
Whereas the L1 is usually acquired in a natural manner with help from formal instruction later
on, the L2 is mostly learned in a formal setting (Silverberg & Samuel, 2004, p. 383).
L2 learners are for the most part exposed to the L2 in the classroom and, with regard the
English as an L2, they can be exposed to the L2 through music, television programmes, films
and the Internet. These extracurricular activities promote the implicit learning of the L2 in
addition to the explicit learning in classroom setting. Also, as language acquisition depends on
input, usage, exposure, salience and frequency, it is difficult for L2 learners to acquire the low
salience grammatical functors of the L2 such as the acquisition of the difference between
plural and possessive [s] or the spelling of ambiguous suffixes (-ion or -ian, -ous or -ess)
(Ellis, 2008, p. 230-238). This does not mean that L2 learners are unable to acquire these
grammatical functors but it does require a serious amount of effort and explicit learning (N.C.
Ellis, 2008, p. 238).
22
In accordance with the general saying ‘practise makes perfect’ the more frequent the
L2 is used the better it becomes entrenched and the faster, more accurate and better the
recognition processes, speech perception, reading and object naming, and the lexical
production processes, speaking, typing and writing, in the L2 will be (N.C. Ellis, 2002, p.
152). The combination of implicit and explicit language acquisition, which is the L1
acquisition situation, renders the best results as both implicit and explicit learning generate
different aspects of language proficiency (N.C. Ellis, 2005, p. 339-340, Henneman, 2000, p.
17, Shea & Curtin, 2011, p. 243 and Williams, 2009, p. 339). This combination of explicit and
implicit learning would also render the best results in L2 acquisition but the implicit learning
process in L2 learning is of a lower frequency, quality and usage than in L1 implicit language
learning (N.C. Ellis, 2005, p. 339-340, Henneman, 2000, p. 17, Shea & Curtin, 2011, p. 243
and Williams, 2009, p. 339). In addition, the explicit teaching of rules to L2 learners can lead
to faster acquisition and retention of these rules, which enhances the L2 learner’s production
and comprehension (Shea & Curtin, 2011, p. 243). These rules need to be abstract and
relatively simple comprehensible rules in order for explicit teaching to be effective (Shea &
Curtin, 2011, p. 243).
Despite being able to employ both implicit and explicit learning techniques most L2
learners generally do not reach native-like attainment. There are, of course, L2 learners who
do succeed in obtaining native-like proficiency (N.C. Ellis, 2008, p. 233). This can be
explained by the unbalanced exposure to the L2 and the infrequent usage in combination with
the heavy workload the L2 acquisition places on the already major tasks occupying the
working memory of L2 learners. Furthermore, as L1 learners receive elaborate and extensive
formal instruction on all aspects of their L1, L2 learners start to receive formal instruction
from an older age onwards and the instruction is less extensive and cannot be compared to
naturalistic exposure in combination with the instructions L1 learners receive. As a result, L2
23
learners are unable to process the target language in the same manner as L1 learners do
(bottom-up perception). While L1 users are able to perceive all grammatical functors because
they apply bottom-up processing, which means they can use the context to uncover
ambiguities and disambiguate homophones from all kinds of syntactic categories (N.C. Ellis,
2008, p. 237 , Lee, 2005, p. 128-129 and MacWhinney, 1992, p. 13). Contrastingly, L2
learners are only able to apply top-down perception, which entails that they can understand
what is being said by perceiving two words but they do not fully understand the language
ambiguities or are able to distinguish the homophones in different syntactic categories (N.C.
Ellis, 2008, p. 237 and MacWhinney, 1992, p. 13). This may lead to the fossilization of the
language proficiency level of L2 learners, as they can obtain a native-like level in the L2 but
are unable to make the progress to native like proficiency (N.C. Ellis, 2008, p. 237 and
MacWhinney, 1992, p. 13).
2.1.3.3 Reading and Writing
According to Kleijnen (1997) learning to spell in an L1 can be subdivided in three phases (p.
43). During the first phase children start to recognize letters, for example the first letter of
their surname. This is the logographic phase and words are typically representation of sounds
because children make a connection between sounds and spelling (Henneman, 2000, p. 17,
Hulme, Snowling & Quilan, 1991, p. 162-165, Kleijnen, 1997, p. 43 and Van Berkel, 1999, p.
19,). In phase two, the alphabetic phase, children acquire the ability to make systematic
connections from sounds to letters and also sound and letter combinations that form clusters
(Van Berkel, 1999, p. 19, Kleijnen, 1997, p. 43). In the final phase, the orthographic phase,
children recognize letter, cluster and spelling patterns. As a result, they are also able to draw
analogies between known and unknown words by making connections between sounds and
letter clusters. For instance if they know how to read and/or write the word make they will
24
also know how to read and/or write bake, take, fake and lake (Hulme, Snowling & Quilan,
1991, p. 162-165, Kleijnen, 1997, p. 43, Snowling, Hulme & Nation, 1997, p. 88-90 and Van
Berkel, 1999, p. 19). Finally, L1 learners start to read and write when they already are
proficient speakers and listeners with a high amount of implicit knowledge about their
language and its phonological system, which facilitates the recognition skills between sounds
and letters (Henneman, 2000, p. 16 and Hulme, Snowling & Quilan, 1991, p. 159). L1 users
know what words mean and how they sound, they have mastered the meaning of grammatical
functors and the syntax of their language is also stored in their mental lexicon (Henneman,
2000, p. 16-17). Learning to read and write is an addition to the language knowledge of L1
users; every word receives an orthographic spelling pattern tag and the knowledge is
expanded with the help of formal instruction regarding, for instance, morphology that takes a
long time to learn and usage (Henneman, 2000, p. 17, Kemp & Bryant, 2003, p. 63 and
Snowling, Hulme & Nation, 1997, p. 88-90).
In the case of L2 acquisition all four aspects of the language acquisition process,
speaking, listening, reading and writing, are supposed to be acquired simultaneously (Van
Berkel, 1999, p. 14-15). Additionally, while L1 learners receive intensive and extensive
instruction about the spelling system of their language, are provided with an explanation
about the spelling exceptions, and are given grammar instructions for several years L2
learners do not receive these instructions. Dutch L2 learners of English, for instance, only
receive instructions on grammar and vocabulary acquisition but do not receive lessons in
spelling. L2 learners are supposed to acquire reading, writing and spelling by themselves (Van
Berkel, 1999, p. 15). Although intensive and extensive formal spelling instruction would lead
to the best proficiency, L2 learners who were provided with comprehensive corrective
feedback (CF) on their writing only would already benefit from this CF as it enhanced the
grammatical knowledge of the L2 (Van Beuningen, De Jong & Kuiken, 2012, p. 1-41). CF is
25
provided by underlining errors and labelling these errors with codes that indicated the kind of
mistakes made by the L2 learners, therefore, L2 learners had to think about what they did
wrong and this led to a better understanding and knowledge about the L2 (Van Beuningen, De
Jong & Kuiken, 2012, p. 1-41). Additionally, CF also stimulated the acquisition process
because the relation between sounds and forms had become more apparent (Van Beuningen,
De Jong & Kuiken, 2012, p. 1-41).
Furthermore, L2 learners have fully mastered their L1 phonological system and use
this L1 phonological system to interpret L2 sounds (Cenoz & Lecumberri, 1999, p. 270). This
means L2 learners use their L1 phonological system to categorize L2 sounds when spelling
L2 words. So spelling-to-sound in the L2 is partly done by using the L1 phonological system,
which could lead to structural difficulties in L2 spelling (Hulme, Snowling & Quilan, 1991, p.
163-166). Additionally, it also is important for L2 learners to obtain knowledge of the English
orthographic system because it can speed up their spelling and reading development as well as
improve it by connecting certain sound combination and location within a word to spelling
clusters (Hulme, Snowling & Quilan, 1991, p. 163-166, Kahn-Horwitz, Sparks & Goldstein,
2012, p. 360 and Snowling, Hulme & Nation, 1997, p. 88-90).
As a result of the lack of instruction on how to read and write in the L2, the
incomplete knowledge of the phonological system of the L2, and the later acquisition of all
L2 skills it appears to be difficult for L2 learners to learn to write in the L2. Acquiring the
ability to achieve high spelling proficiency in the L2 requires a lot of time, practise and
mastering of the phonological system of the L2, a vocabulary comparable to that of an L1
learner and complete knowledge about the orthographic system of the L2 and the ability to
apply this knowledge in spelling production (Hamada & Koda, 2008, p. 16). The differences
between the orthographic systems of the L1 and the L2 also impede the acquisition of L2
spelling.
26
2.2 Dutch and English Spelling Systems
Every language has its own phonological sound system that users employ to produce speech.
Language learners do this by linking speech sounds together as a chain. These sound chains,
in turn, form combinations that form words, sentences and utterances. A language’s
orthography is the written representation of speech sounds; in other the words, the spelling of
spoken words (Henneman, 2000, p. 13). These written patterns of speech sounds are formed
on the basis of the spelling rules and conventions of a language (Henneman, 2000, p. 13).
Spelling rules differ per language, although languages might make use of the same cues to
help their users in the writing task, the salience of these cues also differs per language. Words
can either by spelled by listening to the phonology of the words and translating these to
letters, in languages with a shallow orthography, like Dutch, or by listening to orthographic
cues that determine the spelling of a word, in languages with a deep orthography, like English
(Hamada & Koda, 2008, p. 4-5 and Wang & Geva, 2003, p. 1-2).
2.2.1 Dutch Spelling System
Dutch, as a language, has a strong spelling-to-sound relation, which means that spelling in
Dutch can often be done by transcribing sounds into speech (Schijf, 2009, p. 14). It thus has a
relatively phonetically-based orthography or, according to Gillis & Ravid (2006), Dutch has a
shallow morphology (p. 626-629). For instance, when being asked to spell the word huis
(house) a Dutch speller can rely on the speech sounds and produce the spelling of the word, hu-i-s, by transcribing the sounds to letters. In the same vein, the derived form huizen (houses)
is spelled with a /z/ as the /s/ is being replaced, which can easily be perceived by listing to the
pronunciation of the word (Schijf, 2009, 14-15 and Van Berkel, 2005, p. 102). As a result of
the spelling-to-sound relationship of words, Dutch is defined as a language with a semitransparent orthography (Kleijnen, 1997, p. 15-17, 33). Languages with a (semi-)transparent
27
are usually perceived as easier to acquire by language learners than languages with a complex
orthography (Kleijnen, 1997, p. 15-17, 33). Semi-transparent means that the Dutch spelling
pattern is relatively simple but semi-transparent languages also contains words like chocola
(chocolate) and belachelijk (ridicules) in which the same letter combination is pronounced
differently. The Dutch language allows its users to be guided by the speech sounds of the
words when having to spell them. As a result, Dutch language users were not taught to
respond to morphology cues, such as listening to the context to determine the correct spelling.
The spelling-to-sound strategy can often not be applied to the English orthographic system. In
contrast to Dutch, English is a language with a complex morphology (Bosman & van Orden,
1997, p. 187-189 and Schijf, 2009, p. 14-15, 197-203). Whereas speakers of Dutch rely on
phonological cues to determine the spelling of a word, speakers of English rely on
orthographic patterns and the context of a word to determine the spelling of this word. The
acquisition of the spelling system of a language with a deep orthography, like English,
appears to very difficult for Dutch learners of English because they have to pick up unfamiliar
spelling cues (Bosman & van Orden, 1997, p. 187-192, Kahn-Horwitz, Sparks & Goldstein,
2012, p. 343-344 and Schijf, 2009, p. 197-210).
2.2.2 English Spelling System
English is said to be a language with a deep orthography (Bosman & van Orden, 1997, p. 187192, Schijf, 2009, p. 197-203 and Wade-Woolley & Siegel, 1997, p. 389-390). For instance,
the manner in which an English user spells the consonant [f] is determined by the location of
the speech sound in the target word. If the [f] occurs at the end of the word it is spelled with a
<gh> as in rough or with <ff> in words like miff. However, if the [f] occurs at the beginning
of the word, it is spelled with a single <f> in words like far. Furthermore, the English
language has a great number of words that have the same pronunciation but have a different
28
phonetic representation and meaning such as I/eye and to/too/two or the vowel [i:] that can be
spelled in five different manners, y (specially), ee (feet), ie (piece), ea (heal), ei (Keith) or ey
(key). The context of the sentence defines the appropriate spelling pattern and it also
determines the implied meaning of the word (Bosman & van Orden, 1997, p. 182-185 and
Van Berkel, 2005, p. 108). Conversely, one letter, or letter combination, can be pronounced in
several ways. For example, [e] in yes differs from the [e] in enough and although shave only
has one consonant more than have they do not rhyme because the vowel [a] is pronounced
differently in shave than in have as a result of the context of the vowel in the word (Schijf,
2009, p. 197-200 and Van Berkel, 2005, p. 108). Furthermore, the English language is defined
as having a complex morphology as well. Therefore, English is a highly inconsistent language
and also has many word-specific spelling patterns and conditions (Bosman & van Orden,
1997, p.185-190, Cook, 1997, p. 483 and Hamada & Koda, 2008, p. 8-9 and Schijf, 2009, p.
200-204). These patterns and conditions prescribe the spelling and derivation of words as in
abolish-abolition or happy-happiness where the spelling of the base form changes in the
derived form of the base word. Additionally, the spelling of the suffix is also phonologically
ambiguous because it can either be spelled as happinous or abolitian based on the
pronunciation. The correct suffix spelling pattern is determined by orthographic and
contextual cues. Since Dutch spellers have never been formally instructed in school to pay
attention to morphological cues and have, instead, relied upon phonological cues in
determining the spelling of a word this might have led to an insensitivity for morphological
cues. When Dutch speakers hear an unknown English word they will try to determine the
spelling by listening to the speech sound and transcribing this sound to letters (Gillis & Ravid,
2006, p. 622-627 and Van Berkel, 2005, p. 103). As a result of the deep orthography of
English, the visual representation of a word contains more information for the reader than the
audible representation. Another complicating factor is that the English language has 44
29
phonemes, which is more than the 36 phonemes of the Dutch language (Van Berkel, 2005, p.
109-110). This too adds to the complexity of the English spelling system as it allows more
letter combinations than the Dutch language (Van Berkel, 2005, p. 109).
Fortunately, recent English loanwords in Dutch and English television series, films
and music have brought about a level of English language integration because Dutch people
encounter English spelling not only through technical terms during work, such as computer
terms as ‘delete’, but also in magazines and commercials. However, writing English remains
difficult for Dutch L1 speakers because of the differences describe above. If Dutch L2
learners of English apply a phonological spelling strategy to an orthographic word this could
indicate that the L2 learner is unable to draw the correct analogy and produce the correct
orthographic spelling pattern. It has been reported that L2 learners perform better in spelling
L2 words that can be spelled by applying the same spelling strategy used in the L1, in the case
of Dutch the phonological spelling strategy (Hamada & Koda, 2008, p. 7-8, 16 and Van
Berkel, 1999, p. 240-241). This especially appears to be true for low proficient L2 learners as
they do not have the critical mass of L2 orthographic knowledge to draw spelling analogies
from real words and apply these analogies to pseudowords, instead, they tend to apply the L1
spelling strategy to unknown words (Hamada & Koda, 2008, p. 6-7 and Van Berkel, 1999, p.
265-267). Contrastingly, high proficient L2 learners have been reported to be able to transfer
L2 real word orthographic knowledge and spelling strategies to L2 pseudowords spelling
production (Hamada & Koda, 2008, p. 16 and Van Berkel, 1999, p. 287-289).
Thus, asking Dutch L2 learners of English to spell L2 pseudowords appears to be a
great challenge and a good proficiency test. The L2 learners are forced to apply their obtained
knowledge about the L2 orthographic system because pseudowords cannot be spelled form
the mental lexicon, as they are completely new to the L2 learner. Furthermore, these
pseudowords cannot be stored in a learners working memory through frequent input and
30
usage because they do not exist in the L2 (Van Berkel, 1999, p. 254-255). Therefore,
pseudoword spelling production of L2 learners provides a clear picture of the spelling
capacities of L2 learners because the analogies that can be applied to produce the correct
spelling of real words can also be applied to pseudowords as a results of a language’s spelling
conventions. If L2 learners can draw correct analogies and apply them to the pseudowords
this indicates that the L2 orthographic system has been thoroughly entrenched (Van Berkel,
1999, p. 255). Still, spelling pseudowords remains difficult even for L1 learners because they
need to take into consideration all the complex orthographic conventions of the language
(Lee, 2005, p. 138-141 and Van Berkel, 1999, p. 287-289). So for (high proficient) L2
learners spelling pseudowords is even more challenging, in comparison to L1 learners, as they
need to take into account the complex orthographic conventions of the L2 and the difference
between the L1 conventions and the L2 conventions (Lee, 2005, p. 138-141 and Van Berkel,
1999, p. 287-289). Whereas producing these spelling patterns might be challenging, selecting
the correct form from two-choice options might be easier as the L2 learner is visually directed
by the two spelling patterns and only has to make the right connection between the
phonological input and the two orthographic patterns.
2.3 Orthographic Perception and Production
As reported by Hulme, Snowling & Quilan (1991), Marchman & Bates (1994), Snowling,
Hulme & Nation (1997) and Tomasello (2003) language perception proceeds language
production in young L1 learners. Similar to L1 acquisition, perception in L2 acquisition also
precedes production in L2 acquisition (Van Berkel, 1999, p. 18-19). Furthermore, KahnHorwitz, Sparks & Goldstein (2012) explain that reading and spelling abilities are interrelated
(p. 346). Orthographic patterns learned while reading have a positive effect on the spelling
capacities of a language learner and vice versa. Word recognition and spelling both require
31
the acquisition of the phonological representation and orthographic knowledge of these words
by the language learner (Hamada & Koda, 2008, p. 7-8 and Kahn-Horwitz, Sparks &
Goldstein, 2012, p. 343-344). L2 learners need to be able to produce the correct orthographic
pattern of a specific word they hear. In order to do just that the L2 learner needs to have
phonological and orthographic knowledge on how to represent that sound combination in the
given context in written form by correctly recalling and producing the orthographic pattern
(Hulme, Snowling & Quilan, 1991, p. 159-162, Kahn-Horwitz, Sparks & Goldstein, 2012, p.
343-344, Kemp & Bryant, 2003, p. 63-65 and Snowling, Hulme & Nation, 1997, p. 88-90). In
English this process is complicated as there are several different orthographic representation
of one sounds; the correct representation is determined by orthographic cues and the context
of the sound (Van Berkel, 1999, p. 16). Therefore, it is important for L2 learners to be able to
distinguish between sounds that are discriminative in the L2 but might not be discriminative
in their L1 as it could influence the spelling of a word (Van Berkel, 1999, p. 17).
Morphology also complicates the production task for L2 learners as the focus of
language acquisition usually lays on learning the meaning of whole words (Henneman, 2000,
p. 15, Kemp & Bryant, 2003, p. 63-65, Langacker, 2000, p. 46-47 and Wade-Woolley &
Siegel, 1997, p. 389). The acquisition of the orthographic pattern of grammatical functors
such as suffixes are of little importance and the spelling pattern of these bound phonemes is
not acquired properly until the L2 learner becomes highly proficient. Even though L2 learners
are able to understand the meaning of derived forms, they could struggle with the production
of the orthographic representation. Bosman & van Orden (1997) found that selecting the
correct spellings pattern from a two-choice recognition task appears to be easier than
producing the correct spellings pattern for real and pseudowords (p. 184).
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2.4 Previous Research on L2 Spelling Capacities
Schijf (2009) focused on the English reading and spelling capacities of 689 Dutch first year
secondary school students from all educational levels (p. 174-176). The secondary school
students in the investigation conducted by Schijf (2009) had a mean age of 12,7 years, which
means that their cognitive abilities had not matured yet and there was still flexibility available
to facilitate language learning. These students stood at the beginning of their English language
education. As a result, they had no experience with the English language apart from music,
television and perhaps some written commercial in magazines. In Schijf’s study, students had
to spell English words belonging to one of four categories, 1) phonological (fish), 2)
orthographic (full), 3) morphological (backside), and 4) logographic (know). These categories
were used to find out whether students applied spelling strategies when asked to spell
different word types. Furthermore, Schijf wanted to find out if some categories were easier to
spell for the students than other categories (Schijf, 2009, p. 215). The categories were
determined by the spelling strategy that had to be applied. So, phonological words had a
strong spelling-to-sound relation e.g. postcard; orthographic words required the application of
spelling conventions such as silly spelled with a <ll>; morphological words contained word
parts with identical spelling in every situation, for example <’re> in they’re, and logographic
words had word specific spelling patterns like the spelling of cousin with <ou> (Schijf, 2009,
p. 214). Schijf found that the students showed similar results in spelling orthographic and
morphological words, which was to be expected because these words have a comparable
spelling difficulty (Schijf, 2009, p. 215). Furthermore, Schijf reported that the students
obtained the highest correct score for the phonological category with a high spelling-to-sound
relation. The logographic words appeared to be the most difficult to spell (Schijf, 2009, p.
215). Additionally, Schijf found that the number of spelling errors decreased as the education
level increased. Also, frequently used words were easier to spell than words that were used
33
less often, which can be explained by the fact that students could have spelled familiar words
from the mental lexicon and this was impossible for unknown words (p. 216-225). Schijf’s
investigation is very impressive because the results show that low proficiency Dutch learners
of English are better at spelling phonological words that allow them to apply the spelling-tosound strategy they used in their first language. So, Schijf’s investigation only focuses on the
starting point of the English acquisition process, and, as a next step, it would be interesting to
see how students perform who are at the end state of their English acquisition path.
Furthermore, Schijf did not use derived words with a complex morphology in her stimuli, but
focused only on inflected words, such as they’re.
The study of Van Berkel (2005) went on to investigate participants a little further
along in their L2 learning than those examined by Schijf (2009) as it examined 137 Dutch
first and second year secondary school students with more exposure to English than the
participants from the study by Schijf (2009) (p. 110). These students had to spell 40 familiar
words from dictation, which were words like colour, clothing, newspaper, hungry, girls,
friends, write, yellow, ruler and first (Van Berkel, 2005, p. 110). Van Berkel wanted to find
out whether the participants transferred the L1 phonological spelling strategy or whether their
errors were the result of faulty L2 spelling knowledge (p. 111). In the former situation, the
students would spell words like yellow based on their speech sound and this would lead to a
spelling patterns such as jello (Van Berkel, 2005, p. 111). Errors from the latter category can
be mistakes such as spelling ruler by drawing an analogy from moving and this results in the
spelling pattern roler (Van Berkel, 2005, p. 112). Van Berkel (2005) found that low
proficiency participants applied a phonological spelling strategy in spelling English words and
it is not until they reach a higher proficiency that they started using orthographic spelling
strategies (p. 111-120). Based on these findings, the secondary school students appeared to
apply the phonological spelling strategy as a default option that is used when nothing else is
34
available. The participants in Van Berkel’s (2005) investigation also had to spell pseudowords
to test their knowledge of the English spelling system and these were unfamiliar words.
Kemp, Parilla & Kirby (2008) also tested real and pseudoword spelling. Specifically,
Kemp et al. (2008) tested 68 English university students, among which were high functioning
dyslexics, because they wanted to test the spelling capacities of these students in spelling real
and pseudowords in phonological and orthographic conditions (p. 108-110). Asking the
participants to spell pseudoword types gives insight into the English spelling intuition of the
participants since these words do not actually exist but do obey all the English morphological
conventions (Kemp et al. 2008, p. 108-111). Participants had to spell words belonging to one
of four categories: simple phonological, complex phonological, simple orthographic and
complex orthographic words. Simple phonological words had a spelling-to-sound relation and
a consistent spelling pattern in base and derived form like adapt-adapter (Kemp et al. 2008, p.
111-113). Complex phonological words, such as; discreet-discretion also had a spelling-tosound relation but the spelling pattern of the suffix was ambiguous because of its multiple
possible spelling patterns like –cian, -tian, -cion or –tion (Kemp et al. 2008, p. 111-113). The
orthographic word could not be spelled by transcribing the sounds to letters, as even the
simple orthographic words, for instance villain-villainous, require knowledge about the
English morphological system since the derived form can be spelled in two plausible ways
(Kemp et al. 2008, p. 111-113). The fourth category, complex orthographic, contained the
most difficult words as the spelling of the base form and derived form was ambiguous and the
base form spelling had to be altered in the derived form in words such as scarce-scarcity
(Kemp et al. 2008, p. 111-113. All participants were tested on the spelling patterns of the
words and whether they were able to notice the relation between the spelling of the base and
derived form. This was examined to determine whether participants recognized the
morphological similarity of the base spelling in the derived form and draw logical analogies.
35
Furthermore, Kemp et al. (2008) wanted to find out if participants were able to correctly apply
English spelling conventions (p. 121-125). As reported by Kemp et al. (2008) all participants
scored better in spelling base than derived words and spelling real words also appeared to be
easier than spelling pseudowords (p. 121-123). Furthermore, the participants found the
phonological words easier to spell than the orthographic words (Kemp et al. 2008, p. 121123). Finally, the dyslectic spellers made more spelling errors in all conditions and categories
than the non-dyslectic spellers, although the dyslectic spellers did come up with a higher
variety of plausible spelling options for pseudowords than the non-dyslectic spellers (Kemp et
al. 2008, p. 121-124). This might indicate that orthographic knowledge could potentially help
adults with dyslexia to compensate their spelling deficit (Kemp et al. 2008, p. 121-124, see
Bekebrede et al. (2009) for similar findings of Dutch L2 learners of English with dyslexia).
The study conducted by Hoeijmakers (2011) used the stimuli from the study by Kemp
et al. (2008) but investigated Dutch secondary school students. These students with a higher
level of proficiency than the secondary school students from the studies by Schijf (2009) and
Van Berkel (2005) because they received six years of formal English instruction. Hoeijmakers
(2011) investigated the English spelling capacities of 21 final-year grammar school students
by asking them to spell English real and pseudowords in base and derived form (p. 11).
Specifically, Hoeijmakers wanted to find out whether the kind of spelling pattern,
phonological or orthographic, or word complexity, base or derived words, influenced the
spelling performances of the students. The stimuli for this study were taken from the study by
Kemp et al. (2008), who kindly gave permission for the usage of the stimuli. The word from
the stimuli could be categorized as either phonological or orthographic, and the words
belonged to one of four categories; simple phonological, complex phonological, simple
orthographic or complex orthographic. The phonological words had a spelling-to-sound
relation and were expected to be the easiest to spell because applying a phonological spelling
36
strategy was familiar for the participants. Contrastingly, the orthographic categories were
expected to present a greater challenge to the students because they could not be spelled
through transcribing the sounds to letters. These words required the knowledge of the English
orthographic system in order to come to the correct spelling pattern. The words contain
spelling ambiguities in the base form and in the derived form. The pseudowords are especially
difficult for students to spell because these words require insight into the English spelling
system and, therefore, are a useful way to investigate the English orthographic intuition of the
participants since these words do not actually exist but do obey all the English morphological
conventions. Contrary to the study by Schijf (2009), word complexity turned out to be an
important factor in spelling outcomes and students had to spell base and derived words
because the investigators were interested in the spelling strategy applied by the students
(Hoeijmakers, 2011, p. 11-15). Another difference between the study by Hoeijmakers (2011)
and Schijf (2009) was the proficiency level of the test subjects. Schijf (2009) tested students
that stood at the beginning of their FL while Hoeijmakers (2011) tested students that were in
the end phase of their FL as they were about to graduate from secondary school. This means
that the students who participated in the study by Hoeijmakers received more instruction and
that they had more experience than the students from the study by Schijf. Therefore, finalyear grammar school students are expected to perform better than the first year secondary
school students from Schijf’s investigation. As reported by Hoeijmakers (2011) the students
were better at spelling base words, with an easy morphology, than derived words (p. 26).
Furthermore, the students performed better at spelling real words, of which the spelling
patterns could have been remembered because of previous usage of the real words, than at
spelling pseudowords that were unknown to the students and required thorough knowledge of
the English orthographic conventions (Hoeijmakers, 2011, p. 26). Finally, the grammar school
students produced higher correct scores on simple and complex phonological words in
37
comparison to simple and complex orthographic words (Hoeijmakers, 2011, p. 26-27). So,
final-year grammar school students were better at spelling-to-sound than they were at drawing
orthographic analogies to pseudoword spelling and responding to orthographic and contextual
cues that determine the correct spelling of the derivational spelling patterns. This indicates
that they had not yet mastered the L2 orthographic spelling pattern as they appeared to have
great difficulty is spelling pseudowords and producing derived word spelling patterns.
2.5 Hypotheses
Based on previous research, the following hypotheses are formulated for the present study,
which looks into the English spelling and perception capacities of real and pseudo base and
derived by Dutch university students of English.
●
Students are expected to perform better on spelling real words than pseudowords, as
real words can potentially be spelled from the mental lexicon of L2 learners in which the
spelling patterns of these words is stored through frequent input and usage (see e.g. findings
by Hoeijmakers, 2011, p. 26, Kemp & Bryant, 2003, p. 64 and Kemp et al. 2008, 122). The
spelling of pseudowords requires a high proficiency of the L2 orthographic spelling system
because the Dutch University students have to draw analogies based on their acquired
knowledge of the L2 spelling system and apply this knowledge to unknown words. Before L2
learners are able to draw analogies they should have mastered a critical mass of lexical items
to draw analogies from.
●
Furthermore, students are expected to be better at spelling base words than derived
words. As the derived words have an extra word part, a suffix, added to their base form this
complicates the spelling process because L2 learners have to employ morphological rules and
have to respond to orthographical cues in order to produce the correct spelling. Thus, a
complex morphology leads to more spelling difficulties than a simple morphology, these
38
findings are also reported by Henneman (2000), Hoeijmakers (2011), Kemp & Bryant (2003)
and Langacker (2000). Generally, whole words attract the learner’s focus because of the
meaning they carry and the frequency with which they are used. The added suffix makes
derived words harder to process as the low-salient, in itself meaningless, suffix part needs to
be processed, connected to the base word and produced as well (see also Henneman, 2000, p.
15, Hulme, Snowling & Quilan, 1991, p. 162-163, Kemp & Bryant, 2003, p. 63 and
Langacker, 2000, p. 46-47). The acquisition of morphological rules and the ability to respond
to orthographic cues take a long time to become entrenched in the minds of L1 and L2
learners (Kemp & Bryant, 2003, p. 63).
●
The third prediction is that the University students will obtain higher scores on the
spelling of the phonological targets in these categories than on the orthographic categories
because L2 learners are able to employ a spelling-to-sound strategy relatively easily as this is
the learning strategy they apply in the early stages of L1 acquisition and on unknown words
(see e.g. findings by Hoeijmakers, 2011, p. 2011 and Hulme, Snowling & Quilan, 1991, p.
159-162).
●
Also, based on what is know about perception and production, students are expected to
be better at selecting correct word patterns than on producing them. As put forward by
Tomasello (2003) perception exceeds production. Bosman & van Orden (1997) also report
that children find it easier to select the correct spellings pattern from two plausible options
than to produce them (p. 184). Furthermore, Snowling, Hulme and Nation (1997) put forward
that language learners learn to read, perceive and recognize orthographic patterns before they
are able to apply them to production (spelling) (p. 88-89). Therefore, University students
might also be able to select the correct spelling option more readily than produce them
themselves. The recognition of the right pattern might be just a little easier than having to
produce the spellings pattern because in production the L2 learners have to come up with the
39
spelling pattern without visual options being presented to them that could trigger the
connection between the spoken word and the correct orthographic spelling
●
Finally, the Dutch university students of English are expected to perform better on the
English spelling tasks than the final-year grammar school students from the study by
Hoeijmakers (2011).
40
Chapter 3: Method
3.1 Participants
Participants were all native speakers of Dutch from the Bachelor English Language and
Culture programme of Utrecht University. The participants were recruited during a meeting of
the English department study association and during University lectures with the permission
from the University teachers leading these lectures. Initially, the investigation started with 21
students but two students dropped out, the first because of illness and the second because of
time pressure. This rendered a total of 19 students (16 female, 3 male), with a mean age of
20,7 years. The students came from all the study years of the Bachelor programme; one of
them was a first year student, eleven participants were in their second year of the Bachelor
programme and seven students were in the third, and final, Bachelor year.
A brief questionnaire (Appendix G) indicated that the students were all raised in Dutch
and none of them reported to have a learning disability. Seven students (7/19=37%) reported
to communicate in both Dutch and English in their social environment. The remaining twelve
students only made use of the Dutch language within their social environment. All students
reported to watch English television programmes for at least 1,5 hour per week. Furthermore,
all students watched these programmes diversified with and without Dutch subtitles and with
and without English subtitles. It was interesting to obtain this information because watching
English television without Dutch subtitles stimulates the acquisition process through implicit
learning and frequent input.
41
3.2 Materials
3.2.1 English Dictation
The focus of the test battery were on the English dictation and English selection tasks. The
dictation experiment has been designed by and used before in a study by Kemp et al. (2008).
The goal of the dictation was to test the students spelling capacities in spelling base and
derived words. The stimuli consisted of base-derived word pairs with 64 real word pairs and
64 pseudoword pairs; the stimuli are provided in the appendix. All pseudoword pairs obeyed
the English phonotactic and orthotactic conventions and were matched to a real word pair
with regard to word length, phonetic complexity and ambiguous sounds like hermit-bernot
and hermitage-bernotage (Kemp et al., 2008, p. 108-113). The real and pseudoword pairs
were selected on the highest possible similarity between the base and derived form; Kemp et
al. (2008) chose words with almost the same spelling for the base word in base and derived
form to signal the relation between both forms. The target words could be spelling by
applying one of two spelling conditions, namely, phonology and orthography. These two
conditions were subdivided in simple and complex word forms, which rendered four
categories (Kemp et al., 2008, p.107-112). The categories are described below:
The phonological words all had a strong spelling-to-sound relation. For these words
participants could use the phonological information to determine the correct spelling of the
words. They did not have to rely on the orthographic spelling patterns of certain sounds to
produce the correct spelling.
Simple phonological pairs: The spelling of the words in this category was as phonetic as
possible. The use of words with multiple correct spelling options, such as; knight-knights and
night-nights, was prevented. Furthermore, the sound and spelling of the base word was the
same in the base form as well as in its derived form; apt-aptly and zect-zectly, for example,
42
both have identical base word spelling. In the derived form the phonetically spelled suffix -ly
is added to the base word and also had a strong spelling-to-sound relation.
Complex phonological pairs: These words also had a spelling-to-sound relationship, just like
the simple phonological pairs, which determined the spelling of the base form. The spelling of
the base word in both base and derived form is also identical, just like the simple phonological
pairs. The identical spelling showed the shared meaning of the words in base and derived
form but in the derived form the consonant sound between the base word and the suffix has
ambiguities. The final sound of the base word in the derived form allows more than one
plausible spelling for this section of the word. Students had to guess if they were not familiar
with the spelling of the targets, for example in pairs such as crucifix-crucifixion and andeloxandeloxion. The guess could be based on sound, which then would allow the two spelling
possibilities -ction or -xion. Their guess could also be based on the relationship between the
base and derived form, this means the students could have made an analogy by noticing that
as the base word is spelled with a final /x/ the suffix had to be -xion.
In contrast to the phonological words, the orthographic words all had spelling
ambiguities. They cannot be spelled by transcribing the sounds into letters because these
words require knowledge about English spellings patterns. These orthographic rules need to
be applied properly in order to get to the correct spelling.
Simple orthographic pairs: The words in this category all showed spelling ambiguities. Some
of the sounds in the words had more than one plausible spelling option. The spelling of the
base words had some ambiguities but the base words all sounded the same in base form and
derived form. Therefore, and to indicate the relationship between the base form and derived
form, the spelling of the base words was similar in both forms. The spelling of the suffix was
ambiguous as well because the suffix had multiple plausible spelling options. For example,
villain-villainous and bozel-bozelous could either be spelled with an -ess or an –ous. The
43
students had to decide which of these two options was correct and since this could not be
derived from the sound; the students had to already know the correct pattern, pick up the
orthographic cues that help determine which of the two to apply or guess.
Complex orthographic pairs: This category contained to most difficult words with the most
complicated spellings patterns. The words all make use of one of the four orthographically
complex spellings patterns this category contains. So, all the words had spelling ambiguities
in them, either in the base word, the suffix or both. The only way in which students could
arrive at the correct spelling pattern of a word was if they already knew the correct spelling or
if they had ample knowledge of the four orthographic conventions and applied the correct
convention, which resulted in the correct spelling pattern. If participants were not already
aware of the correct spelling of the target word and if they did not master the orthographic
convention employed by this word they had to guess the spelling of the word. The four
orthographic conventions used in this category were:
1. Single consonant alteration: To indicate the relation between the base form and the
derived form the spelling of the base words was similar in both forms. The final
consonant sound of the base words was ambiguous, for example, sparse-sparsity and
foze-fozily could be spelled with an s, z or c. The students had to choose the same letter
for the final consonant sound of the base words in base form and derived form to
indicate that they had noticed that both forms shared the same base word. The suffix
added to the base words in this subcategory had a spelling-to-sound relation and was
not ambiguous.
2. Geminate consonants: The difficulty with spelling these words was also cause by the
final consonant of the base word. The base words were spelled with a single consonant
in the base form, but in the derived form the final consonant of the base words had to
be doubled, e.g., beg-beggar and teb-tebber.
44
3. Replacing the y by i in the derived form of the base word: When spelling the base
words in its base form the words end with a y as in worry and melly. However, in the
derived form the final vowel from the base words had to be replaced with an i as in
worrisome and mellisome. Students had to be aware of this convention because the
change in spelling cannot be derived from a difference of the vowel sound between
base form and derived form.
4. Analogy: Students had to follow a standard pattern that leads to the correct spelling of
the word pairs in this subcategory. If the final consonant sound of the base words
changed from /t/ to /ʃ/ between the base form and the derived form, the spelling
between base form and derived form changed as well from <t> to <ss>. This sound
change of the base words’ final consonant leads to spelling ambiguities. For example,
in submit-submission and fulmit-fulmission the /ʃ/ in the derived form has multiple
spelling possibilities like -shion and -cian, but -ssion is the only correct option.
Students had to be aware that these words belong to the ‘it-to-ission’ word family and
had to apply this analogy accordingly. The sound change of the final consonant of the
base words between base form and derived form serves as a cue that the spelling of
this consonant also changed but students need to be aware of this orthographic
convention in order to be able to use it correctly, or, they have to guess the spelling
pattern.
A native speaker of Canadian English recorded the original stimuli2. The previous
investigators provided the audio material from the original research so that it could also be
used in the current investigation. All the words were presented to the students within the
context of a sentence. There was one sentence for the base word and a matching sentence for
the derived word. The relation between base and derived words was established in the
2
These audio-files were used with the permission from Nenagh Kemp. The researchers are very grateful for her
cooperation.
45
sentences context of a word pair as followed: ‘I’m starting to worry about the situation. It’s
getting more and more worrisome.’; ‘We were all feeling a bit melly last night. So we put on
some mellisome music.’ (Kemp et al. 2008). The sentences were a mixture of the four
categories, simple phonological, complex phonological, simple orthographic and complex
orthographic, the sequence was designed so that two sentence of the same category never
succeeded each other.
3.2.2 Orthographic Selection Task
The Orthographic Selection task was added to the test battery to investigate if students were
able to select the correct spelling pattern when presented with two spelling options for the
same word. The stimuli are provided in the appendix. The investigators wanted to test
whether students were able to select the correct spellings pattern even though they might have
been unable to come up with the correct spellings pattern themselves. However, it might also
be that students came up with the correct spellings pattern but selected to wrong spelling
option of the two options presented to them. So, the investigators wanted to see if the students
had active knowledge of the English spelling system by asking them to complete two English
dictations. In addition this orthographic selection test was added to test their passive
knowledge by asking them to select the correct spellings form in order to compare the
students active and passive knowledge of the English spellings system. In sum, this task was
added to the test battery to investigate whether students spelling comprehension was better,
worse, or the same, as their spelling production. The Orthographic Selection task contained
the same 64 real word pairs and 64 pseudo word pairs as the English dictation only this time
students were only presented with the base or derived target word, without a sentence context.
The target words were recorded by the same native speaker of Canadian English who
recorded the original stimuli of the English dictation. Students had to fill out an answer sheet
46
that presented the students with two plausible spelling options of all the real and pseudo- base
and derived words from the English dictation. After listening to the audio file of the target
word without a sentence context students were instructed to circle to correct spelling option of
that word to their best of knowledge.
3.2.3. Dutch Dictation
The Dutch dictation (Andries & Depessemier) used in this investigation contained 40 real
words and 10 pseudowords. All the pseudowords obeyed the Dutch phonotactic and
orthotactic conventions. The 50-word list was comprised out of loanwords (portefeuille the
Dutch equivalent for portemonnee, which means wallet in English), compounds (dorpsschool,
village school in English), base words (mirakel, Dutch for miracle), derived words (fusilleren,
which means shoot in English) and exceptional words (frambozenjam, or raspberry jam in
English). The Dutch dictation was added to the test battery to test the students’ Dutch spelling
capacities and to investigate whether there was a correlation between the spelling capacities of
students in Dutch and English. It would be interesting to see if a student that obtained a low
score for the Dutch dictation would also obtain a low score in the English dictations. Or if a
student that obtained a high score for the Dutch dictation would also obtain a high score for
the English dictations. However, there might be no relation between spelling in Dutch and
English and weak spellers in Dutch might obtain high scores for the English dictations. The
Dutch words were presented to the students without the context of a sentence; the students
only heard the target word. The Dutch dictation was comprised out of 50 words, so the
highest score that could be obtained was 50. For each misspelled word one point was
deducted from 50. So, if a student misspelled five words, this students obtained 45 points for
the Dutch dictation.
47
3.2.4 Dutch Timed Word Reading Test
The one-minute-test from now on referred to as ‘OMT’ is a Dutch timed reading task (Brus &
Voeten, 1980) A participant has to read as many real Dutch words correctly in the time span
of one minute. There is a maximum of 116 words that increase in difficulty. The scores
obtained for this task were raw scores because the norm score can only be applied on firstyear secondary school students. Therefore, the raw score was used to determine the
proficiency of students in Dutch word reading. The OMT was comprised out of 166 words
and each word equalled one point. If a word was mispronounced by a student one point was
taken from the total of 116 points. The raw score renders the number of words read correctly
by the students within the one-minute time frame.
This test was added to investigate if low proficiency Dutch readers are also poor
English spellers or if low proficiency Dutch readers are good at spelling English words.
Maybe high proficient readers could potentially be a high proficient spellers as well.
Therefore, this timed reading task was added to the test battery to test the Dutch reading skills
and Dutch proficiency of the students and to investigate whether there was a correlation
between students’ proficiency in Dutch reading and English spelling.
3.2.5 Dutch Timed Pseudoword Reading Test
The Klepel test (Van den Bos, Spelberg, Scheepstra & De Vries, 1994) is a timed
pseudoword-reading task with a time limit of two minutes. All the 116 pseudowords obeyed
the Dutch phonotactic and orthotactic conventions and were based on items used in the OMT.
Just like to OMT, the Klepel test was added to the test battery to investigate whether there was
a correlation between students’ proficiency in Dutch pseudoword reading and English
spelling.
48
The scores obtained for this task were raw scores because the norm score can only be
applied on first-year secondary school students. Therefore, the raw score was used to
determine the students’ proficiency in Dutch pseudoword reading. The Klepel test was
comprised out of 166 words and each word equalled one point. If a word was mispronounced
by a student one point was taken from the total of 116 points. The raw score renders the
number of words read correctly by the students within the two-minute time frame.
The scores for all three Dutch proficiency tasks, Dutch dictation, OMT and Klepel,
were collected to see if overall proficiency in Dutch could serve as an indicator for the
proficiency of students in English. Students were not judged on the scores of these three tasks
as this investigation focused on the English spelling capacities of Dutch University students.
3.2.6 Brief Questionnaire
Prior to the actual testing participants had to fill in a brief questionnaire about the kinds of
television programmes they watch; Dutch programmes, English programmes or both.
Furthermore, participants had to specify whether the English programmes they watched were
subtitled in Dutch or English. In addition to questions about their television behaviour,
participants also had to answer some questions about the language(s) they speak when
interacting with friends, family and fellow students. The purpose of this questionnaire was to
determine the frequency and amount of time individual participants spent employing the
Dutch and English language and to rule out the participation of bilingually raised students.
This questionnaire was added to the test battery to investigate whether the amount of English
usage by participants influences the English spelling capacity of participants. However, the
data obtained from this questionnaire is not very precise and therefore this information was
not used in the investigation.
49
3.3 Procedure
Students were tested in two testing sessions (see Table 1). The first session contained the
group-wise English dictation of the real and pseudo derived words and Dutch dictation. As a
next step all the students had to perform the OMT and the Klepel test in an individual setting
with the tester. Although the group-wise part of this session, the English dictation, did not last
the complete 70 minutes specified for the test session, the additional waiting and performing
the OMT and Klepel test did add up to approximately 70 minutes for some students.
The second, and final, session consisted of two tasks presented to groups of the 19
participants. First, the students had to complete the second part of the English dictation, this
time they had to spell the real and pseudo base words. After this, students had to complete the
Orthographic Selection task.
At the beginning of each dictation the students were informed that the tester would
make sure there was ample time between the sentences to allow the students to spell the target
word of the presented sentence at their own pace. Furthermore, the students were only
allowed to hear the sentences once; no repetitions were granted so students were also
instructed to pay close attention.
Session 1
Session 2
Experimental test
- English dictation  derived English dictation  base
(production)
words (128 items)
Experiment test (perception)
words (128 items)
English orthographic
selection (256 items)
Literacy
-
Dutch dictation (50
items)
-
OMT  timed real
word reading
50
-
Klepel  timed
pseudoword reading
Duration
70 minutes
60 minutes
Figure 1: Test procedure scheme
The English dictation was assessed through audio presentation; per target, one sentence was
provided. The tester paid close attention to assure that all students had finished writing before
presenting them with another sentence. The students were notified that the sentence would
contain real words and fake words and that these two types of sentences would be presented
in a mixed order. To prevent real word and pseudowords sequences the real word and
pseudowords were interchanged. In the same vein word categories were also mixed and the
word order of the derived and base word dictations were different from one another as well.
During the first session students were presented with both the base and derived
sentences. They were asked to spell the derived word form from a sentence context dictation
to the best of their knowledge. After completing the derived word form English dictation the
students had to spell the 50 Dutch words from the Dutch dictation. The tester presented the
target words to the students by reading them of a list. In line with the procedure of the English
dictation the words were only given once, no repetitions were allowed, so students were
instructed to pay close attention. The final part of the first test session was comprised out of
the Dutch reading proficiency tasks. During a one-on-one session each student had to take the
OMT and Klepel test.
Test session two contained only the base sentences of the English dictation. Students
were presented with the base word sentence only. They were asked to spell the base word
form from a sentence context dictation to the best of their knowledge. As a next step, and as
the final task of the test battery, students had to complete the orthographic selection task.
51
Prior to handing out the test form, students had to hand in the form with their dictation
answers to prevent them from checking their answers.
3.4 Data Coding
Kemp et al. (2008) designed an error analysis to decide which spelling patterns and options
were acceptable and understandable and which spelling patterns and options were
unacceptable in the English spellings system (p. 111-122). The former spelling patterns and
option were scored as correct, the latter were scored as incorrect. For example, Kemp et al.
(2008) decided that the pseudowords could potentially have more than one plausible spelling
pattern: for example, the vowel in the word keet-keetest could be spelled with -ee-, -ie- or –
ea-. These three options were all allowed as correct spelling option (Cook, 1997, p. 483 and
Kemp et al., 2008, p. 111-122).
During the processing of the data from the current investigation the researchers
applied the same error analysis as Kemp et al. (2008) did (p. 111-122). However, there were
also some differences between the Dutch and English language that needed to be kept in mind
when constructing a data processing procedure. For instance, a very common error speakers
of Dutch make when spelling English words is the doubling of the l at the end of a word such
as aptlly because this is a Dutch spelling convention, which could be transferred to English
when spelling English words. Double l spelling errors were accepted as plausible spelling
options as a result of Dutch spelling conventions that could have been transferred when
having to spell English words such as deceitful or abolition. Furthermore, alternative spelling
patterns for vowels such as yaze written with ea and dinet spelled as denet were also scored as
correct spelling options because these kind of errors did not have an influence of the
morphological spelling patterns of the words and did not interfere with the spelling
complexity (Cook, 1997, p. 485).
52
As a result of the exposure to both British and American English Dutch native
speakers found it hard to perceive the difference between the British and American ӕ sound.
Thus, bernat/berrelish were scored as correct spelling patterns for bernot/berralish. The same
lenience was granted to gaumel, which could be spelled as gammel. The spelling patterns
denet for dinet and imprat for impret were also allowed under the same scoring procedure just
applied. Additionally, Dutch native speakers struggled with perceiving the contrast between
the consonants m-n and s-c located at the beginning or the middle of a word. As a result,
imblinish could be spelled as imblimish and serent instead of cirent both were also accepted as
correct.
Another minor error that was allowed by the testers occurred in the stem of the word.
These were, adding another r to jerabin, which yielded jerrabin or the spelling of foze with an
initial v (voze). Mistakes like these did not alter the derivation and therefore, they were
processed as ‘correct’. Spelling errors that did occur in the derivation of words were scored as
incorrect, for example venomous with –ess, breezily spelled with final –ely, adapter spelled as
adaptor, worrisome with an y (worrisome) and hopician with –tian/-tion/-shian/shion. Kemp
et al. (2008) also allowed minor derivational vowel errors, such as orphanige instead of the
correct orphanage (p. 111-120).
The purpose of the investigation by Kemp et al. (2008) was to test participants on the spelling
and relation of the base word in base and derived form. Therefore, errors like orphanedge
were not allowed and scored as ‘incorrect’ (Kemp et al., 2008, p. 111-120). Although the
Dutch language does not allow spoken voiced consonants in word final position and, because
of that, native speakers of Dutch had a hard time perceiving this distinction voicing errors at
the end of a word were scored as incorrect, so prent and breese instead of prend and breeze
were marked as incorrect (Lowie, 2004, p. 8-10). The analyses on the test data were run in the
analytical programme SPSS, which rendered the results described below.
53
Chapter 4: Results
4.1 English Spelling Task: Real and Pseudowords
The first analyses were run to determine the correct score of all University students on real
words and pseudowords in their base and derived form. The mean proportion correct scores of
all items are presented in table 1.
Word
Pseudoword
Mean
(SD)
Base
,94
(,05)
Derived
,85
(,10)
Base
,52
(,13)
Derived
,39
(,10)
Table 1: Proportions correct (SD) on all the targets.
A repeated measures ANOVA with Word type (real and pseudowords) and Morphology
(Base and Derived) as the produced subject factor shows an effect of Word type; F(1,
18)=452,404, p<0,001 ƞ2p= 0,962. Thus, spelling of real words rendered higher scores than
spelling of pseudowords. There is also an effect of Morphology; F(1, 18)=49,315, p<0,001,
ƞ2p=0,733, with scores on base targets exceeding those of derived targets. There was no
interaction between Morphology and Word type; (F=0,865, p=0,365).
4.2 English Spelling Task: Base Words
As University students performed better on spelling base word forms, this condition was the
first condition to be examined further. The mean proportion correct scores for University
students for real and pseudo base words per target-type, simple phonological, complex
phonological, simple orthographical and complex orthographical, are presented in table 2.
54
Phon simple
Phon complex
Orth simple
Orth complex
Words
0,94 (0,08)
0,93 (0,06)
0,98 (0,04)
0,93 (0,09)
Pseudowords
0,66 (0,21)
0,54 (0,18)
0,38 (0,17)
0,46 (0,19)
Table 2: Correct base items score by word-type and target-type.
A repeated measures ANOVA with Word Type and Target Type (phonologically simple,
phonologically complex, orthographically simple, orthographically complex) as betweensubjects factors shows an effect of Word type; F(1, 18)=238,072, p<0,001, ƞ2p=0,930, with
Words > Pseudowords, and an effect of Target type; F(3, 54)= 8,183, p<0,001, ƞ2p=0,010.
Follow-up pairwise comparisons, with Bonferroni correction, show that the University
students performed significantly better on phonologically simple words in comparison to
orthographically simple and orthographically complex words.
Finally, there is also an interaction between Word type and Target type; F(3,
54)=10,359, p<0,001, ƞ2p=0,365. The measured interaction stems from the deviating
pseudowords results as the scores for the real words are relatively stable across target types.
On top of the observation that the pseudowords scores are significantly lower than the real
words score there also is a difference between the phonological and orthographic condition in
pseudowords type. The phonological condition scores are higher than the scores for the
orthographic condition, and the simple orthographic category received the lowest score in the
pseudowords condition while in the real word condition orthographic simple obtained the
highest score.
4.3 English Spelling Task: Derived Words
As a next step, a further exploration of the all derived targets items is presented in the next
section. Table 3 presents the mean proportion correct score for University students for real
55
and pseudo derived words per target-type (simple phonological, complex phonological,
simple orthographical and complex orthographical).
Phon simple
Phon complex
Orth simple
Orth complex
Words
0,88 (0,12)
0,91 (0,12)
0,87 (0,14)
0,74 (0,19)
Pseudowords
0,43 (0,21)
0,49 (0,18)
0,26 (0,16)
0,39 (0,21)
Table 3: Correct derived items score by word-type and target-type.
A Repeated measures ANOVA with Word Type and Target type shows an effect of Word
type; F(1, 18)=424,637, p<0,001, ƞ2p=0,959, with Words > Pseudowords and Target Type;
F(3, 54)=8,469, p<0,001, ƞ2p=0,320. Pairwise comparisons, with Bonferroni corrections show
that performance on the phonologically simple condition was significantly higher than the
orthographically simple condition, and the phonologically complex condition exceeded the
orthographically simple and complex conditions significantly.
Finally, there was an Interaction between Word type and Target type; F(3, 54)=6,513,
p=0,001, ƞ2p=0,266. The measured interaction occurs from the gradual decrease in real words
scores from phonological simple to phonological complex and from phonological complex to
orthographic simple, this continues with a steeper decline to the orthographic complex
condition. These measures are in contrast to the pseudowords measures in which the
orthographic simple score in significantly lower in comparison to the higher scored
orthographic complex condition.
Finally, the relationship between the Dutch reading and spelling tasks, EMT, Klepel
and Dutch Dictation, and the English Dictations was examined; there were no significant
correlations between these measures and the English spelling task.
56
4.4 Correct Real Base Word Scores
To discover the heterogeneity of the Dutch University students, the real base words were
taken as indicator for the spelling heterogeneity of the participants. The reason to select the
real base words as indicator was that these words can be familiar and do not have a complex
morphology to impede the spelling process so these words a expected to be the easiest to spell
for Dutch University students. From the group of 19 participants four of them managed to
spell all the 32 real base words correctly, which is 21% of the total participant group; these
two participants also made only two mistakes in real derived words. Six participants only
misspelled one word, which is 31,5% of the total participant group. There were two
participants that made the most spelling mistakes, which is 10,5% of the total participant
group. These two participants both misspelled five real base words and they both made twelve
mistakes in the real derived words.
4.5 Orthographic Selection Task: Words and Pseudowords
The first analyses on the Orthographic Selection Task were run to determine the correct score
of all University students on the selection of real words and pseudowords in their base and
derived form. The mean proportion correct scores of all items are presented in table 4.
Mean
Word
Pseudoword
(SD)
Base
,98
(,02)
Derived
,97
(,03)
Base
,78
(,09)
Derived
,83
(,08)
Table 4: Proportions correct (SD) on all the targets.
At first glance, these results show that University students perform better on this English
selection task than they did on the English spelling task. University students especially
57
achieve higher score on the pseudowords in the English selection task than they did on de
pseudowords in the English spelling task. A repeated measures ANOVA with Word Type and
Morphology (Base and Derived) shows an effect of Word Type; F(1, 18)=128,137, p<0,001,
ƞ2p=0,877. These results show that the University students performed significantly better
when selecting real words than they did on selecting pseudowords. There is no effect of
Morphology; F2,686, p=0,119. However, there is an interaction between Word type and
Morphology; F(3, 54)=6,053, p=0,024, ƞ2p=0,252. The measured interaction comes from the,
almost, identical score on base and derived forms in real word type and the higher score on
derived forms than on base forms in the pseudowords type.
4.6 Orthographic Selection Task: Base Words
As the separate analyses of the English Dictation started with the base word forms, this
condition was also further examined first in the Orthographic Selection Task data. The mean
proportion correct score for University students for real and pseudo base words per targettype, simple phonological, complex phonological, simple orthographical and complex
orthographical, are presented in table 5.
Phon simple
Phon complex
Orth simple
Orth complex
Words
1,00 (0,00)
0,99 (0,02)
0,99 (0,03)
0,92 (0,07)
Pseudowords
0,86 (0,12)
0,80 (0,12)
0,71 (0,17)
0,72 (0,12)
Table 5: Correct base items score by word-type and target-type.
A repeated measures ANOVA with Word type and Target type shows an effect of Word type;
F(1, 18)=87,554, p<0,001, ƞ2p=0,829 with words > pseudowords. There is also an effect of
Target type. The analyses with base target types, simple phonological, complex phonological,
simple orthographic and complex orthographic, as the produced subject factor shows an effect
of; F(3, 54)=8,794, p<0,001, ƞ2p=0,328. Pairwise comparison, with Bonferroni corrections
58
indicates that University students performed significantly better on phonological simple
words in comparison to orthographic simple and orthographic complex words. Furthermore,
University students also achieve significantly higher scores on phonological complex words
in comparison to orthographic complex words. These effects appear to be identical to the
effect of the separate base form analyses on target types in the English Spelling Tasks.
There is also an interaction between Word type and Target type; F(3, 54)=3,764,
p=0,016, ƞ2p=0,173. The measured interaction is revealed as a result of the relatively equal
score for the real words across target types, with as only exception the lower score for the
orthographic complex category, in comparison to the deviating pseudowords scores. The
results in the pseudowords condition can be described as a descending step with a slightly
higher score on the orthographic complex category in comparison to the orthographic simple
category.
4.7 Orthographic Selection Task: Derived Words
In addition to the analyses on all the base target items, a further exploration of the all derived
targets items is presented in the next section. Table 6 presents the mean proportion correct
score for University students for real and pseudo derived words per target-type (simple
phonological, complex phonological, simple orthographical and complex orthographical).
Phon simple
Phon complex
Orth simple
Orth complex
Words
0,83 (0,22)
0,99 (0,06)
0,97 (0,06)
0,90 (0,08)
Pseudowords
0,82 (0,11)
0,73 (0,15)
0,86 (0,12)
0,92 (0,11)
Table 6: Correct derived items score by word-type and target-type.
A repeated measures ANOVA with Word type and Target type shows an effect of Word type;
F(1, 18)=29,651, p<0,001, ƞ2p=0,622. These results show that University students found it
easier to select real words than pseudowords, similar to the findings of the base items. There
59
was also an effect of Target type; F(3, 54)=8,657, p<0,001, ƞ2p=0,325. Follow-up pairwise
comparisons using Bonferroni corrections show that the correct selection of phonological
simple targets was significantly higher than that of orthographically simple and
orthographically complex targets words. Furthermore, correct selection of phonologically
complex targets was higher than that of orthographically simple words.
There is also an interaction between Word and Target type; F(3, 54)=6,513, p=0,001,
ƞ2p=0,266. Real words lead to the highest correct selection in the phonological complex and
orthographic simple categories, the real word type with the lowest score it the phonological
simple category. The highest scores in the pseudowords type are obtained in the orthographic
complex category while University students achieve the lowest score in the phonological
complex category, in which they obtained the highest scores in the real word type conditions.
These interaction deviate from the interactions in the separate derived form analyses on target
types in the English Spelling tasks.
4.8 Problem Words
The errors in the data showed a few words with an overall high spelling error frequency. In
the real word condition, the following words were misspelled wrong with high frequency: The
complex orthographic wordpair sparse-sparsity also appeared to be problematic. The derived
form of this word appeared to be the hardest of the two to spell because sparsity was
misspelled 58% of the time. The derived form contained errors like; sparcity, sparseity,
sparcety. The base form was misspelled 26% of the time as sparce in all situations. Only two
participants misspelled both base and derived forms of this word. These two participants were
consistent with their error because the base and derive form were both spelled with sparc- as
the base form. and scarce-scarcity were spelled incorrectly 30% of the time. The phonological
complex real base word discreet also presented to be a problem. Participants were all very
united on the incorrect spelling pattern as this base word was spelled as discrete during all the
60
misspellings, 47% of the time. Although discrete is indeed a real English word the meaning of
discrete (separate/distinct from one another) is different from the meaning of discreet
(cautious/tactful). The context of the sentence in which the target word was placed did
exclude the meaning that represents the spelling pattern discrete but apparently Dutch
University students missed this contextual cue. The next word that appeared to be challenging
for the Dutch University students was phonological complex crucifixion. This derived word
was misspelled 42% of the time with as incorrect spelling pattern of the suffix as the reason
for the error crucifiction. The orthographic complex derived word worrisome was also
misspelled during 47% of the time because the participant did not substitute the y with an I in
the derived form and thus spelled this word as worrisome. Two other words were spelled
incorrectly 37% of the time. The last two real words that appeared to be problematic words
were the phonological simple derived word adapter, which was consistently misspelled as
adaptor 37% of the time, and the orthographic simple derived word villainous, which was
also misspelled 37% of the time as villainess or villainous. The errors made by the Dutch
University students mostly occurred as a result of the derivation and appear to be production
of the application of the spelling-to-sound spelling strategy without taking into consideration
the orthographic cues. The pseudoword received overall lower scores than the real words and
this category also contained some problem words.
As a result of the lower scores for pseudowords the problem words from this category
are reported to have a higher spelling error percentages than the real words. The results show
that the orthographic simple wordpair morkel-morkelage was difficult to spell in base and
derived form. The base word was misspelled 74% of the time. The spelling patterns for this
base word shows much variation as the base word was spelled as; morkle/morcle, morquel,
morhle and morckle. The derived word morkelage was misspelled 84% op the time in various
spelling patterns, such as, morcolidge/morkelidge, morquelage/morquelidge, morcleage,
61
morkolidge or marcalidge. Only two participants misspelled both base and derived forms of
this word. These two participants were consistent with their error because the base and derive
form were both spelled with morc-. The orthographic complex wordpair stron-stronnage also
appeared to be difficult to spell. The base word stron was spelled incorrectly 58% of the time
with the following spelling patterns; strawn, stran, stroughn or straun. The derived word
stronnage was, again, more difficult than the base word as it was misspelled 74% of the time
in various spelling patterns like; strawnage, stronige, straunidge or strouniage. Eight Dutch
University students misspelled both base and derived form. Although these students made
different mistakes, individually they were very consistent as the applied the same base form
spelling pattern in both base and derived words. The derived word fulmission from the same,
orthographic complex, category also appeared to be a major challenge for Dutch University
students because they misspelled this derived word 89% of the time. The produced spelling
patterns were; folmician, fallmission, foamishion, fulmition and faumition. Like the real
derived word adapter the pseudo phonological simple derived counterpart vereptor was
misspelled 61% of the time as veraptor, raptor or wraptor. Another phonological simple
word that was problematic for the participants was the base word prend: data showed that
most participants wrote this base pseudoword as prent in 42% of the time, which is a final
consonant voicing error. The last problem word was the phonological complex derived word
andeloxion, which was misspelled 84% of the time. This derived word was often misspelled
as andeloction, while the participant did produce the correct base form andelox, or
andalocktion, with the impossible consonant cluster for the English spelling system -ckt-.
Again, most of the spelling errors occurred as a result of the complexity of the spelling
because the added suffix parts of the derived words appear to be the cause of most of the
mistakes.
62
4.9 Dutch Proficiency Tasks
The Dutch dictation, OMT and Klepel scores were combined in table 7 and presents the mean
proportion correct scores.
Mean
(SD)
Dutch dictation
43,4
(3,3)
OMT
94,7
(18,9)
Klepel
104,4
(13,9)
Table 7: Proportions correct (SD) on all Dutch Proficiency Tasks
These scores were only obtained to investigate if there was an interaction between Dutch
proficiency and English proficiency and were not investigated in detail to determine the kind
of mistakes Dutch University student made in Dutch. So, finally, all tests were analyzed to
investigate a possible correlation between the Dutch reading and spelling skills of the
participants, the English spelling capacity and the English selection ability. However, there
were no significant correlations between the scoring of participants on these tasks. In other
words, the proficiency of the participants in the Dutch dictation and technical reading did not
have any significant influence on their English spelling or selection capacities.
63
Chapter 5: Discussion
The focus of this study was on the English spelling capacities and English word recognition
abilities of real and pseudowords in base and derived form by 19 Dutch university students
studying English. Based on knowledge from previous research the students are expected to
obtain higher scores on spelling real words than on spelling pseudowords. This hypothesis
was confirmed by the results because they show that Dutch university students are indeed
better at spelling real words than pseudowords. These findings can be explained because real
words can potentially be spelled from the mental lexicon of L2 learners in which the spelling
patterns of these words is stored through frequent input and usage (see e.g. findings by
Hoeijmakers, 2011, p. 26, Kemp & Bryant, 2003, p. 64 and Kemp et al. 2008, 122).
Pseudowords, on the other hand, are completely new words and cannot be spelled from the
mental lexicon. The pseudoword spelling pattern can be determined by the L2 learner by
drawing and applying the correct analogies from real words and making the connection
between real words and pseudowords spelling patterns. As a next step Dutch university
students have to apply these generalizations based on what they know about the English
spelling system and the contextual cues of the pseudoword. Then they need to translate all this
knowledge, generalizations and contextual cues, into a spelling pattern for the pseudowords.
As can be seen from the results, applying English spelling rules, patterns and conventions and
reacting to contextual cues appears to be challenging for Dutch university students because
they make more mistakes in spelling pseudowords, in which they need all the knowledge
described above to produce the correct spelling pattern, than in spelling, possibly stored, real
words.
The second hypothesis states that complexity is expected to negatively influence the
spelling performance of Dutch university students. This hypothesis was also confirmed by the
64
results. During the spelling task the Dutch university students obtained higher scores on
spelling base words with a simple morphology than on spelling derived words with a complex
morphology. The derived words require the application of English spelling rules as their
morphology is ambiguous, complex and the added suffix might influence the spelling of the
base form in the derived word. The results might mean that Dutch university students have
difficulty in producing the correct spelling pattern when a suffix is added on a base word. This
could indicate that drawing derivational spelling analogies might be difficult for Dutch
university students. They might not have obtained the necessary critical mass and sensitivity
for orthographic cues to be able to draw complex analogies and connect spelling patterns to
add the correct suffix to known and novel derived words. For instance, the words adapter and
verapter are both frequently spelled with the faulty suffix -or by the Dutch university students
while the most frequently used suffix in this situation is -er. Furthermore, the context of the
sentence also hints towards the suffix -er because the role of the target words in ‘are you a
fast adapter’ and ‘she is such a verapter’ point to the application of the -er suffix.
Additionally, Dutch university students are expected to perform better on spelling
phonological targets in all categories than on the orthographic targets in all categories because
Dutch L2 learners of English are able to employ a spelling-to-sound strategy relatively easily
as this is the learning strategy they apply in the early stages of L1 acquisition and on unknown
words (see e.g. findings by Hoeijmakers, 2011, p. 2011 and Hulme, Snowling & Quilan,
1991, p. 159-162). So, the phonological strategy is the default spelling strategy Dutch
university students apply when they do not know the required spelling strategy. In
phonological categories this strategy leads to the correct spelling pattern, so, Dutch university
students are able to obtain high correct scores on phonological targets by applying the
spelling-to-sound strategy. However, in the orthographic category, spelling-to-sound as a
default spelling strategy leads to an incorrect spelling pattern, which in turn leads to low(er)
65
scores. The results indeed indicate that Dutch university students find it difficult to apply and
pay attention to the orthographic cues because they perform better on words to which they can
apply the phonological spelling strategy.
A strong relationship between usage, frequency, input and language proficiency has
been reported in the literature (N.C. Ellis, 2002, 2005, 2006&2008, Eskildsen, 2008, Keijzer,
2007, Langacker, 2000, MacWhinney, 1992&2007, Tomasello, 2003 and Williams, 2009). As
the Dutch university students have received far more frequent input of a better quality and
also spend much more time using the L2 for a longer period of time than the final-year
grammar school students did, the Dutch university students are expected to outperform the
final-year grammar school students. The results partly confirm this hypothesis because the
University students outperformed the final-year grammar school students on spelling real
words but the scores on spelling pseudowords were almost equal. Based on findings that
second-year secondary school students are able to apply simple orthographic rules to spelling
and first-year secondary school with hardly any exposure to English are unable to do this Van
Berkel (2005) reports that more proficient L2 learners are able to apply orthographic spelling
strategies (p. 111-120). This is not readily confirmed by the results from the current study.
Although Dutch university students are better at using orthographic spelling strategies on real
words than final-year secondary school students the Dutch university students and final-year
grammar school students obtain almost the same results for pseudoword spelling. This could
indicate that the Dutch university students might not apply orthographic spelling strategies but
spell these orthographic words from their mental lexicon in which it is stored by usage events,
input and frequency. Even though the Dutch University students make an effort to apply
orthographic spelling strategies, and succeed to do this correctly a few times, they still
struggle with adopting the L2 spelling conventions and appear to be better at spelling words
that obey the phonological spelling principles from the L1. However, when comparing the
66
overall spelling task mean scores of the Dutch university students to the mean scores of the
control group from the study by Kemp, Parilla & Kirby (2008) the Dutch university students
were outperformed by the English university students in all conditions (p. 113-121). This
seems to bet that the Dutch university students did not (yet) obtain native-like spelling
proficiency. Although it is the ultimate goal of Dutch university students of English to obtain
native-like English proficiency the students might not be able to reach native-like level of
proficiency because they still do not use the language frequently enough to become nativelike. Furthermore, the input and usage frequency might still be too little because Dutch
university students do not use English on a regular basis in their social life, as reported in the
brief questionnaire about language behaviour, and because Dutch is the dominantly used
language it keeps interfering with the L2. This interference could potentially lead to spelling
acquisition problems for Dutch learners of English; they cannot rely on the spelling strategy
they apply in Dutch. Instead of being able to derive the spelling from the sounds, they have to
pick up the orthographic cues that determine the spelling pattern.
The final hypothesis states that Dutch university students are expected to be better at
selecting correct word patterns than on producing them. Bosman and Van Orden (1997)
mention that spelling recognition surpasses spelling production. The results of the Dutch
university students confirm this as they obtain significantly higher results in the selection task
than they achieve in the spelling task. Especially selecting the correct pseudowords spelling
pattern appears to be easier than to spell pseudowords correctly. In contrast to the spelling
task, Dutch university students are better at perceiving orthographic words than at perceiving
phonological words. And, unlike the spelling task, the selection task results do not show a
clear distinction between base and derived target scores. So, the Dutch university students
showed no preference for simple or complex morphology in selecting the correct spelling
pattern. Apparently Dutch university students find it difficult to create the correct spelling
67
pattern from English spelling rules, phonology and contextual and orthographic cues but they
can recognize these patterns from sight. As put forward by Snowling, Hulme & Nation (1997)
L1 reading exceeds L1 writing and therefore, recognizing written words exceeds producing
written words, this also applies to L2 reading and writing, and perception and production in
L2 (p. 89). In addition, the spelling pattern activation threshold also provides a good
explanation because the activation threshold might be lower for spelling pattern recognition
than it is for spelling production. Perception triggers the activation of the correct pattern but in
production recognition cannot guide the L2 learner because the L2 learner has to produce the
spelling pattern so there is no two-choice option.
The correlation between the spelling task and the selection task is not surprising. In the
spelling task the phonological categories are produced better than the orthographic categories
because the Dutch University students rely more on phonological cues than on orthographic
cues. These results are to be expected as Dutch university students are more sensitive to
phonological cues because of the salience of these cues in their L1. Hence, Dutch university
students appear to be less sensitive to orthographic cues, which are very important in the
English language. The orthographic categories appear to be easier than the phonological
categories in the selection task because Dutch university students are given the choice
between two options and they start to actively think which of the two is correct. As a result,
they might over-think the phonological words and choose the wrong option. In spelling
selection and recognition the orthographic cues are perceived to be salient when deciding on a
spelling pattern and phonological cues are disregarded (see also Snowling, Hulme & Nation,
1997, p. 89). The written representation of words contains more information than the auditory
version. During the word selection task, the Dutch University students can think about which
option is more appropriate by considering the orthographic knowledge available to them and
by comparing both spelling pattern options. The fact that one of these options is indeed the
68
correct one might also help because the Dutch university students can disregard the option
they know to be wrong. During the spelling task there was no written representation other
than the one spelled by the Dutch University students. The visible orthographic information is
missing and Dutch University students have to retrieve this possible orthographic information
from their mental lexicon. As a next step, the Dutch university students have to compare the
possible orthographic information in their mind in combination with the audible information
presented to them and their (in)ability to perceive all orthographic and contextual cues. All
these activities appear to be very imposing on the working memory of the L2 learner. Given
that using phonological translation requires less effort and is highly efficient in the L1 of the
Dutch University students this spelling strategy might place a lighter load on the working
memory than applying an orthographic spelling strategy.
In sum, Dutch University students are better at spelling real words than pseudowords.
Testing the spelling capacities in L2 pseudowords provides a clear insight into the L2 spelling
proficiency and knowledge because these novel words can be spelled by connecting them to
the real word counterparts, which provides good insight into the L2 proficiency of Dutch
University student. By drawing these analogies the correct spelling pattern for pseudowords
can be produced. The results show that Dutch University students find it difficult to spell
pseudowords, especially orthographic pseudowords, which indicates they are not completely
able to connect real word spelling patterns to pseudowords and to draw analogies between
them to produce the correct spelling pattern of novel word forms. The correct spelling patterns
in real word categories can be representations of specifically learned spelling patterns instead
of a full understanding of the English spelling system or the ability to pick up and apply
orthographic cues that help to produce the correct spelling patterns. Furthermore, the base
words are spelled better than derived words. This too in an indication that, although the Dutch
University students try to produce correct orthographic patterns, they have not completely
69
mastered the English spelling system yet. Additionally, on the basis of this test it seems that
Dutch University students also have not mastered the ability to respond to orthographical
cues, such as context, to apply the correct suffix form and, if necessary, adjust the spelling of
the base form in the derived word because of the derivation. It has been reported by Hamada
& Koda (2008) and Van Berkel (1999) that highly proficient L2 learners, which Dutch
University students of English are supposed to be, are able to adopt the spelling system of the
L2. Dutch University students achieve significantly higher scores in the selection task than in
the production task. This indicates that perception precedes production even in high proficient
L2 learners. Furthermore, while the dominant spelling strategy in the dictation task was
phonology the students seemed to focus on orthographic spelling strategy during the selection
task. This could indicate that they are susceptible for orthographic spelling cues but not yet
able to apply them in production. Although the Dutch University students are more capable in
applying orthographic spelling patterns than final-year grammar school students, they still
have to make more progress to obtain a near-native like level of L2 proficiency.
What is remarkable in these results is that the orthographic simple category presents
the biggest spelling challenge for the Dutch University students. This is counterintuitive from
a usage-based point of view because language acquisition is usually focused on whole word
learning. The simple categories only contain whole base words with a simple morphology. In
theory uninflected word are expected to be easier to spell than word with a complex
morphology because base words do not require the application of derivation spelling rules.
Therefore, the orthographic complex category is expected to be the most difficult to spell
because of the ambiguities in the spelling pattern and the complex morphology. Kemp et al.
(2008) and Hoeijmakers (2011) also reported these results in their study on, respectively,
English university students and Dutch final-year grammar school students. Kemp et al. (2008)
puts forward that these orthographic simple words might have been more difficult because
70
some of the spelling patterns in these words might have various, more frequently used,
orthographic representations which made them more difficult to spell than all the other
categories (p. 122). This explanation might be valid as the spelling of, for instance, the
consonant /f/ in orphan is determined by the location in the word. Furthermore, consonants
such as in for example quarrel and morkel and vowels in words like deceit and gaumel can
also potentially be spelled several plausible variations. Contrastingly, the orthographic
complex category contains words like worry, beg, breeze and shonty that might be used more
frequently and are better entrenched because of frequency and usage.
The results from this investigation need to be interpreted with caution as it is a smallscale study and further research needs to be undertaken before a concrete conclusion may be
drawn on the ability to acquire an L2 spelling system on top of an already entrenched L1
spelling system. Additionally, the current study has only examined Dutch reading proficiency;
adding and identical English reading task would provide insight in the relation between L2
reading proficiency and L2 spelling proficiency. It might be interesting to see if these two
factors are related to one another because, when used correctly, these two factors could give a
boost to the proficiency in both reading and spelling. Furthermore, the stimuli have been
selected for L1 learners and might be too ambitious for L2 learners because the L2 learners
may use some of the target words more often (worry, blonde and deceit) than others (sparsity,
hermitage and scarcity). The whole words and suffixes in the stimuli are not scanned on
usage frequency. From a usage-based point of view, words and suffixes that are used very
frequently might be easier to spell, and the spelling pattern might be more readily available,
than less frequently used words and suffixes. Furthermore, the study did not evaluate the kind
of spelling mistakes made and all the mistakes were just scored as an ‘error’ without
specifying the place, nature and result of the mistake. Analyzing all spelling mistakes could
result in a more detailed picture of bottlenecks, strategies and process made for L2 learners.
71
Finally, the Dutch university students, the English university students and the Dutch finalyear grammar school students are only compared based on mean scores and not on individual
difference because this information was not available for all three groups. Therefore, it is
impossible to make individual comparisons.
Nevertheless, the results could have important implications for developing L2
language programmes on secondary school and perhaps even university. The results reveal
that even Dutch university students of English struggle with obtaining thorough knowledge on
morphological and orthographic L2 spelling patterns. Additionally, Dutch university students
still find it difficult to pay attention to and act upon orthographic and contextual cues, which
might help in producing the correct spelling pattern. L2 learners will benefit most from
intensive and extensive reading and writing explanations following the way they are taught to
read and write in the L1. Teaching reading and writing and explaining spelling might be very
time-consuming but it could benefit the L2 learners because it enhances the orthographic
knowledge, which is vital for obtaining high language proficiency. Understanding a spelling
system by teaching phonological awareness and linking phonology and orthography could
stimulate and facilitate the L2 acquisition process because the visual representation of word
contains more information than the auditory version and this could help to discriminate
between ambiguous sounds and words, which enhances the understanding and knowledge of
the L2 (Snowling, Hulme & Nation, 1997, p. 90). However, as FL teaching time is limited
and teachers are already expected to teach students too much for the time they are given to
teach. Therefore, teaching methods can be more creative and efficient by combining teaching
disciplines. It might help to turn homework assignment into small essays to which teachers
can assign direct CF during the first year of FL teaching as direct CF provides the correct
target for the produced error by the L2 learner (Van Beuningen, De Jong & Kuiken, 2012, p.
1-41). Then, during the second or third year of FL teaching, teacher can start to provide
72
comprehensive CF feedback that also stimulates writing proficiency and L2 grammatical and
morphological knowledge as L2 learners have to think about their mistakes and correct them
with help from the CF coding (Van Beuningen, De Jong & Kuiken, 2012, p. 1-41). So, by
becoming more creative and combining homework assignment with writing instruction, by
providing L2 learners with CF that helps L2 learners to understand their mistakes and make
the L2 learners gain more knowledge and proficiency on L2 grammar and morphology,
secondary schools can start to teach an FL in a more effective, wholesome and efficient
manner.
73
Chapter 6: Conclusion
This investigation aimed to assess the English spelling capacities of Dutch university students
in spelling real and pseudowords in morphologically simple and complex base and derived
forms. Furthermore, this study set out to determine the interaction between language
comprehension (word pattern recognitions) and language production (spelling). The final
purpose of the current study is to determine whether Dutch reading and spelling proficiency
have an influence on the spelling proficiency in English.
The most important finding to emerge from this study is that Dutch University
students are better at spelling real words than pseudowords. This could indicate they might
still be unable to draw correct analogies by connecting the spelling patterns of real words,
possibly stored in the mental lexicon, to unknown English words. The second major finding is
that words with a simple morphology (base words) are easier to spell for Dutch University
students than words with a complex morphology (complex words). So, the Dutch university
students might not have fully mastered the English orthographic and morphological spelling
system and experience difficulty in correctly responding to contextual and orthographic cues
that guide the spelling process. It was also shown that the competence in perception precedes
production because Dutch University students performed better on the selection task than on
the spelling task.
A remarkable finding was that in spelling Dutch University students applied the
phonology strategies, while they make more use of the orthographic spelling strategies in the
selection task. This can be explained by interference from the L1, Dutch university students
are more sensitive to phonological cues in spelling because of the salience of these cues in
their L1. The orthographic categories appear to be easier than the phonological categories in
the selection task because the written representation of words contains more information than
74
the auditory version. In spelling the visible orthographic information is missing and Dutch
University students have to retrieve this possible orthographic information from their mental
lexicon, weigh the possible spelling option, apply contextual cues and then produce a spelling
pattern. All these actions place a heavy load on the working memory of an L2 learner that also
needs to suppress the entrenched L1 knowledge in spelling L2 words.
The evidence from this study suggests that University students do apply orthographic
strategy but they still struggle with the correct application. Although L2 learners are able to
adopt L2 spelling strategies, they seem to acquire this ability at a slow piece-meal pace with
help of extensive training through explicit and implicit learning. The Dutch university
students outperform final-year grammar school students but a comparison with the mean
scores from Kemp (2008) shows they have not (yet) achieved native-like proficiency. In
general, therefore, it seems that Dutch University students have made good progress with
regard to their English proficiency.
These findings enhance our understanding of the L2 production and perception
acquisition process and the capacities of L2 learners in L2 production and perception and the
pitfalls in the acquisition process. This research could serve as a basis for future studies and
might provides insight into the bottlenecks of the teaching methods and acquisition process.
For future research, it might be interesting to assess secondary school students from all levels
on a yearly bases to investigate and determine their progress, difficulties and acquisition
order. By making students complete all kinds of English proficiency tasks, such as; reading,
writing, spelling, listening and speaking, the progress of the students can be measured and the
acquisition difficulties can be detected. This could lead to a better understanding of the L2
language acquisition progress per educational level and per year. Results from this study
might serve as a guideline to develop a new L2 teaching method that could potentially be
75
more efficient, and interactive manner of L2 learning with a better quality to come to a higher
proficiency in, especially, L2 spelling.
To conclude, the findings from this study suggest that it is important to teach
phonological and orthographic awareness because it makes the L2 acquisition process more
efficient and comprehensible. The sooner L2 learners start the better results they will obtain in
the L2. Therefore, starting the teach all aspects of the English language (listening, speaking,
reading and writing) in primary school might be a first step in obtaining a high L2 proficiency
for all Dutch students.
76
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80
Appendix A: Sequence Orthographic Selection Task
Word order Orthographic Selection Task:
Word Order:
1.
Ghostly
2.
Trocial
3.
Slippage
4.
Acknowledgement
5.
Beralition
6.
Fruition
7.
Belderous
8.
Fiercest
9.
Treshen
10.
Beggar
11.
Zectly
12.
Abolition
13.
Jerabinment
14.
Crucifixion
15.
Mimbersome
16.
Imbuction
17.
Quarrelsome
18.
Prendest
19.
Discretion
20.
Tebbar
21.
Addiction
22.
Fulmission
23.
Astonishment
24.
Foration
25.
Submission
26.
Imblinishment
27.
Yazey
28.
Plentiful
29.
Verepter
30.
Facial
31.
Cirentful
32.
Aptly
33.
Bozelous
34.
Scarcity
35.
Hopician
36.
Villainous
37.
Dinetion
38.
Venomous
39.
Keetest
40.
Electrician
41.
Stronnage
42.
Regretful
43.
Fozily
Word Category:
Real Simple - Orthographic
Pseudo Complex - Phonological
Real Complex - Orthographic
Real Simple - Orthographic
Pseudo Complex Orthographic
Real Complex - Phonological
Pseudo Simple - Phonological
Real Simple - Orthographic
Pseudo Complex – Phonological
Real Complex - Orthographic
Pseudo Simple - Phonological
Real Complex - Orthographic
Pseudo Simple - Orthographic
Real Complex - Phonological
Pseudo Real - Phonological
Pseudo Complex - Phonoligical
Real Simple - Orthographic
Pseudo Simple - Phonological
Real Complex - Phonological
Pseudo Complex - Orthographic
Real Complex - Phonological
Pseudo Complex - Orthographic
Real Simple - Phonological
Pseudo Complex - Phonological
Real Complex - Orthographic
Pseudo Simple - Phonological
Pseudo Simple - Orthographic
Real Complex - Orthographic
Pseudo Simple - Phonological
Real Complex - Phonological
Pseudo Simple - Orthographic
Real Simple - Phonological
Pseudo Simple – Orthographic
Real Complex - Orthographic
Pseudo Complex - Phonological
Real Simple - Orthographic
Pseudo Complex - Phonological
Real Simple - Phonological
Pseudo Simple - Orthographic
Real Complex - Phonological
Pseudo Complex - Orthographic
Real Simple - Phonological
Pseudo Complex - Orthographic
81
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
76.
77.
78.
79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.
85.
86.
87.
88.
89.
90.
91.
Adapter
Andeloxion
Conqueror
Impretful
Ashen
Breezily
Blondest
Gaumelsome
Partial
Morkelage
Bothersome
Mellisome
Deceitful
Wertial
Sparsity
Meeferer
Hermitage
Shontiful
Orphanage
Bernotage
Worrisome
Mimber
Plenty
Wert
Meefer
Sparse
Andelox
Orphan
Belder
Addict
Cirent
Face
Melly
Fruit
Beralish
Hermit
Troce
Acknowledge
Imbuct
Slip
Bernot
Ghost
Teb
Astonish
Bozel
Blond
Yaze
Part
Real Simple - Phonological
Pseudo Complex - Phonological
Real Simple - Orthographic
Pseudo Simple - Phonological
Real Complex - Phonological
Pseudo Complex - Orthographic
Real Simple - Phonological
Pseudo Simple – Orthographic
Real Complex - Phonological
Pseudo Simple - Orthographic
Real Simple - Phonological
Pseudo Complex - Orthographic
Real Simple - Orthographic
Pseudo Complex - Phonological
Real Complex - Orthographic
Pseudo Simple - Orthographic
Real Simple - Phonological
Pseudo Complex - Orthographic
Real Simple - Orthographic
Pseudo Simple - Phonological
Real Simple - Orthographic
Pseudo Simple - Phonological
Real Complex - Orthographic
Pseudo Complex - Phonological
Pseudo Simple - Orthographic
Real Complex - Orthographic
Pseudo Complex - Phonological
Real Simple - Orthographic
Pseudo Simple - Phonological
Real Complex - Phonological
Pseudo Simple - Orthographic
Real Complex - Phonological
Pseudo Complex - Orthographic
Real Complex - Phonological
Pseudo Complex - Orthographic
Real Simple - Phonological
Pseudo Complex - Phonological
Real Simple - Orthographic
Pseudo Complex - Phonological
Real Complex - Orthographic
Pseudo Simple - Phonological
Real Simple - Orthographic
Pseudo Complex - Orthographic
Real Simple - Phonological
Pseudo Simple - Orthographic
Real Simple - Phonological
Pseudo Simple - Orthographic
Real Complex - Phonological
82
92.
93.
94.
95.
96.
97.
98.
99.
100.
101.
102.
103.
104.
105.
106.
107.
108.
109.
110.
111.
112.
113.
114.
115.
116.
117.
118.
119.
120.
121.
122.
123.
124.
125.
126.
127.
128.
Prend
Abolish
Tresh
Morkel
Crucifix
Breeze
Bother
Deceit
Zect
Beg
Dinet
Conquer
Impret
Worry
Venom
Gaumel
Electric
Foze
Regret
Stron
Discreet
Jerabin
Adapt
Shonty
Apt
Keet
Ash
Fulmit
Fierce
Imblinish
Submit
Hopic
Scarce
Verept
Villain
Forate
Quarrel
Pseudo Simple - Phonological
Real Complex - Orthographic
Pseudo Complex – Phonological
Pseudo Simple - Orthographic
Real Complex - Phonological
Pseudo Complex - Orthographic
Real Simple - Phonological
Real Simple - Orthographic
Pseudo Simple - Phonological
Real Complex - Orthographic
Pseudo Complex - Phonological
Real Simple - Orthographic
Pseudo Simple - Phonological
Real Complex - Orthographic
Real Simple - Phonological
Pseudo Simple - Orthographic
Real Complex - Phonological
Pseudo Complex - Orthographic
Real Simple – Phonological
Pseudo Complex - Orthographic
Real Complex - Phonological
Pseudo Simple - Orthographic
Real Simple - Phonological
Pseudo Complex - Orthographic
Real Simple - Phonological
Pseudo Simple - Orthographic
Real Complex - Phonological
Pseudo Complex - Orthographic
Real Simple - Orthographic
Pseudo Simple - Phonological
Real Complex - Orthographic
Pseudo Complex - Phonological
Real Complex - Orthographic
Pseudo Simple - Phonological
Real Simple - Orthographic
Pseudo Complex - Phonological
Real Simple - Orthographic
83
Appendix B: Orthographic Selection Task Stimuli
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
Ghostly
Trocial
Slippedge
Acknowlagement
Beralishion
Fruicion
Belderous
Fiercest
Treshen
Begger
Zactly
Abolition
Jerabinmend
Crucifixion
Mimbersem
Imbuction
Quarrelsome
Prendest
Discretion
Teber
Addicion
Fulmission
Astonishment
Foration
Submishion
Imblinissment
Yaezy
Plentyful
Vereptor
Facial
Cirentfel
Aptly
Bozeless
Scarcity
Hopitian
Villainess
Dinetion
Venomeous
Keetest
Electrishian
Stronnage
Regretful
Fozely
Adaptar
Andeloxion
Ghostley
Trotial
Slippage
Acknowledgement
Beralition
Fruition
Belderess
Fearcest
Trashen
Beggar
Zectly
Abolishion
Jerabinment
Crucificion
Mimbersome
Imbuxion
Quarrlesome
Prendst
Discreshion
Tebber
Addiction
Fulmishion
Astonnisment
Foratian
Submission
Imblinishment
Yazey
Plentiful
Verepter
Fasial
Cirentful
Apptly
Bozelous
Scarsity
Hopician
Villainous
Dineshion
Venomous
Kietest
Electrician
Stronnedge
Regretfull
Fozily
Adapter
Andeloction
84
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
76.
77.
78.
79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.
85.
86.
87.
88.
89.
90.
91.
92.
93.
Conqueror
Impretful
Ashen
Briezely
Blondst
Gaumelsem
Partial
Morkelage
Bothersom
Mellysome
Deceitfull
Wershial
Sparcity
Meeferer
Hermitedge
Shontiful
Orphanedge
Bernotedge
Worrisome
Mimber
Plenty
Wert
Meever
Sparse
Andelocks
Orphen
Beldour
Adict
Cirent
Faze
Melly
Froot
Beralish
Hermitt
Troce
Acknowledge
Imbucked
Slippe
Bernad
Ghosth
Teb
Astonish
Bozel
Blonde
Yease
Parte
Prend
Abollish
Conquerrer
Impretfull
Asjen
Breezily
Blondest
Gaumelsome
Parshial
Morkeledge
Bothersome
Mellisome
Deceitful
Wertial
Sparsity
Meeverer
Hermitage
Shontifull
Orphanage
Bernotage
Worrysome
Mimbre
Plenti
Werd
Meefer
Sparce
Andelox
Orphan
Belder
Addict
Cerent
Face
Mellie
Fruit
Berrelish
Hermit
Troose
Acknowlidge
Imbuct
Slip
Bernot
Ghost
Tep
Astounish
Bosol
Blont
Yaze
Part
Prent
Abolish
85
94.
95.
96.
97.
98.
99.
100.
101.
102.
103.
104.
105.
106.
107.
108.
109.
110.
111.
112.
113.
114.
115.
116.
117.
118.
119.
120.
121.
122.
123.
124.
125.
126.
127.
128.
Tresh
Morkel
Crucifix
Brees
Bodder
Deceit
Zacked
Beg
Denet
Conquer
Imprad
Worry
Venom
Gaumel
Elektric
Vose
Regrat
Strun
Descreet
Jerabin
Adapte
Shonty
Apt
Keat
Ash
Fulmit
Fierce
Imblimish
Submid
Hopic
Scarse
Verrapt
Villan
Forate
Quarrel
Tres
Morkle
Cruscifics
Breeze
Bother
Deceet
Zect
Bag
Dinet
Conquor
Impret
Worrie
Veneum
Gaummel
Electric
Foze
Regret
Stron
Discreet
Jeraben
Adapt
Shaunty
Abt
Keet
Asj
Fullmit
Fears
Imblinish
Submit
Hopik
Scarce
Verept
Villain
Forait
Quarell
86
Appendix F: Brief Questionnaire
Prior to the experiment there are some things I would like to you about you and your
‘language use and exposure’:
Name:……………………………………. Gender:
M
/
F
Age:……………………………………… Study year: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / Ma /
TV Behaviour:
How many hours a week do you watch English spoken television?

Never

0,5 – 1,0 hours

1,0 – 1,5 hours

1,5 – 2,0 hours

2,0 – 2,5 hours

more than 2,5 hours
Are these programmes:
A). English shows on Dutch television with Dutch subtitles
B). English shows on English television without subtitles
C). English shows on English television with English subtitles
D). A combination of A, B & C
Personal Environment:
Which language do you speak with your friends and/or family?
A). English
B). Dutch
C). Both English and Dutch
Have you been raised in:
A). English
B). Dutch
C). A combination of both Dutch and English
D). Another language, namely………………
Do you have (a history of) language or literacy disorders?
A). No
B). Yes, namely………………
Practical Matters:
Could you please fill in when you are available for testing? Which days and times would suit
you?
87