Spelling errors and the development of orthographic knowledge among Chinese-speaking elementary students

This study investigates spelling and orthographic knowledge development in elementary Chinese-speaking children from grade one through six. The entire study consists of two substudies, study A and study B.; Study A first examines the patterns of children's spelling errors. Twelve hundred writing samples (200 per grade) were collected in which 7486 spelling errors were observed. These errors were sorted into fifteen types according to emerging patterns. Thirteen out of the fifteen types were further subsumed into three general categories--phonologically based spelling errors, graphemic spelling errors, and semantic spelling errors. Next, qualitative analysis was applied to interpret the possible relationship between each type of spelling error within the three categories and children's orthographic knowledge. Last, regression analysis was applied to examine the relationship between the types of spelling errors and children's learning (grade) level in order to determine possible developmental trends in children's invented spelling.; The result shows that children's invented spellings in Chinese are not random; rather they reflect development in children's orthographic knowledge. The analysis of data reveals a developmental trend in using spelling strategies through the grades: as grade level increases, the use of the phonological strategy decreases while the use of graphemic and semantic strategies increases.; Based on the findings of study A, study B proceeds to investigate whether children' s spelling errors show a stage-like progression throughout the entire elementary school years. Three hundred students from grades one through six (50 per grade) were given a spelling test which was developed by the researcher of this study. Two sets of one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were employed to examine the grade differences in overall spelling performance as well as the grade differences in each of the three categories of spelling errors identified in study A. Stepwise discriminant analysis was further applied to interpret the second set of ANOVA analysis in order to determine which of the three error categories contributed most to the group (grade) differences.; The analysis of data suggests that stage-like progression exists in the development of children's spelling knowledge. In overall spelling performance regardless error category, a five-level progression exists. As for the particular error categories, a five-level progression is present in the phonologically based spelling error category alone, and a three-level progression is observed in both the graphemic and the semantic error categories. Stepwise discriminant analysis reveals that among the three error categories, the phonological error category contributes most to grade differences.; The study concludes that an understanding of children's invented spelling is important in interpreting children's orthographic knowledge levels and literacy development levels in Chinese. Based on this understanding, educators can approach the teaching of elementary literacy among Chinese-speaking children with enhanced effectiveness.